Rwanda

Throughout 1996 more than 1 million Rwandan refugees, most of them Hutu, remained in camps in Zaire. The civil war that erupted in eastern Zaire in late 1996 revealed that these camps contained small percentages of armed Hutu militias. These Hutu, likely the same who led or participated in the 1994 massacres of Tutsi, used the huge refugee camps as places of refuge while they organized raids into Rwanda with the goal of overthrowing the RPF government. The Hutu refugees remained in the camps either out of fear of Tutsi retribution in Rwanda or because they were held against their will by the militias. The militias clashed with the largely Tutsi eastern Zairian rebels around Lake Kivu, often very close to the border between Rwanda and Zaire. The Hutu militias were aided by the Zairian government, the Tutsi rebels in Zaire, by the Rwandan government. Cross-border artillery shelling was reported near Gisenyi, north of Lake Kivu.

In October and November 1996 the Tutsi rebels successfully routed Hutu militias in several huge refugee camps near the border. Some 800,000 Rwandans poured home, but several hundred thousand remained in Zaire. As the civil war spread and the rebels gained territory, the Rwandan refugees were forced west, deeper into the jungles of Zaire. Despite international outcry over their plight, the constantly moving refugees remained largely beyond the reach of aid workers. By the end of Zaire’s civil war in May, tens of thousands of Rwandan refugees had been killed in the fighting, or had died of disease or starvation.

The UN voted in late 1994 to establish the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to try the organizers of the massacres (see War Crimes Trials). The tribunal opened in Arusha, Tanzania, in 1996. Trials began in early 1997, but the UN tribunal was criticized for mismanagement, poor organization, and the slow pace of the trials. The RPF government began its own trials of midlevel massacre organizers in 1996. In 2002 the tens of thousands of Rwandans accused of participating in the actual killings began to be tried in traditional local courts called Gacaca Courts.

In March 2000 Bizimungu resigned the presidency after clashing with the RPF over the composition of a new Cabinet. He accused parliament of targeting Hutu politicians in anticorruption investigations. Vice president and defense minister Paul Kagame succeeded Bizimungu. Kagame, the former head of the RPF rebels, had long been considered Rwanda’s real political leader. Kagame became the first Tutsi president since the nation’s independence. Following the adoption of a new constitution, Kagame won an August 2003 multiparty presidential election.