Three decades ago, Rwanda witnessed one of the world’s most tragic genocides of the 20th Century. The 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda claimed the lives of more than one million people in only 100 days.

On April 7, Rwanda starts commemoration activities for the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi.

The United Nations had a peacekeeping mission in the east African country at the time. But what happened was beyond imagination. UN troops withdrew when they were most needed, leaving the Tutsi in the hands of the mass murderers.

In 1993, the UN deployed to Rwanda a peacekeeping mission referred to as the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), with a mandate to oversee the implementation of the Arusha peace Accords.

The Arusha Accords were a set of five accords signed between the then Rwandan Government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in Arusha, Tanzania, on August 4, 1993. It was under mediation, to end a then three-year war.

With an approximate 2,500 peacekeepers, UNAMIR was supposed to oversee the implementation of the Arusha Accords.

However, the UN troops withdrew in April 1994, and abandoned the Tutsi to be killed massively, in broad daylight.

Following the crash of the plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, the Hutu hunted and massacred the Tutsi. It was the time to execute the long planned plot of exterminating the Tutsi in Rwanda.

As the mass killings began, the UN ordered its troops to evacuate foreigners – but not intervene to save any Tutsi civilian.

The 1999 UN report assessing the Rwanda deployment called the mission disgraceful for abandoning the Tutsi in schools and other supposed safe zones they had created.

“Troops were withdrawn when they were most needed,” said former UN chief Ban Ki-moon in 2014. “We should have done much more.”

According to Alain Destexhe, a liberal-conservative Belgian politician, one of the most dramatic examples of the UN's abandonment of populations in danger of death took place at ETO Kicukiro (former Don Bosco Official Technical School).

Around 3,000 Tutsi took refuge there believing they were under the protection of Belgian contingents. A company of 90 Belgian soldiers in the UN mission, under command of Captain Lemaire, was stationed at ETO Kicukiro. However, the peacekeepers departed on April 11, leaving the Tutsi to be mercilessly massacred by government forces and Interahamwe militia.

The Interahamwe had surrounded the school threatening to jump the fence, showing their weapons, and screaming their hatred of the Tutsi, calling them “cockroaches”.

The same day, Lemaire received the order to evacuate the cantonment in order to regroup Belgian forces around Kigali airport.

 

When the Belgian column moved, the refugees run all around imploring: "Don't abandon us. The militia are going to kill us. The soldiers are just waiting for that. Save us, don't abandon us, we are all going to be killed. Some clung to jeeps and trucks. The peacekeepers shot into the air. Believing that they are shooting at us, we scattered in all directions,” said one of the survivors.

As the vehicles moved off they collided with refugees who blocked the entrance. Realizing their abandonment, some lied down on the ground, across the trucks, but were quickly dispersed by shots in the air.

The Interahamwe and Rwandan soldiers who surrounded the school were just waiting to seize the moment. Immediately, they invaded the ETO compound through another entrance, while the Tutsi could still see the cloud of dust raised by the passage of vehicles used by UNAMIR.

The refugees were completely unarmed, unable to put up the slightest resistance to men armed with guns and machetes. The killers started beating them with rifle butts, knives and sticks.

The refugees were then forced to undertake a death march of several kilometers, surrounded by militiamen and soldiers who robbed them along a road populated by the Hutu who mocked them, screaming and predicting death.

“We were surrounded on all sides. There were the Interahamwe, the army and, it seemed, all the Hutu in the world. They insulted us all the way. Once again, several dozens were cut, mutilated or killed during this ordeal,” said another survivor.

“They beat us all the way. Corpses littered the road. We felt like we were going to die from the way they beat us throughout our journey to death. We were surrounded. Behind, to the right, to the left, everywhere, it was crowded with soldiers, Interahamwe and civilians. Children, women, young people, it was as if all the Hutu in the world had come to exterminate us.”

The Belgian soldiers left the school at 2 pm, at around 5 pm survivors arrived at the top of Nyanza hill where the number of killers had multiplied nearly twenty-fold.

According to survivors interviewed by African Rights, for a short while, nothing happened. Then, again, those with rifles and grenades took up positions on the embankment while those armed with machetes and clubs took up positions below. Together they formed a belt around the Tutsi. A few minutes later, the massacre began. They started shooting at the Tutsi and the grenades kept raining.

An order was given to save bullets and kill them using traditional weapons; machetes, axes, sticks, and clubs.

Militiamen, skilled at killing innocent victims, were much less skilled when it comes to fighting against armed adversaries. Fearing the arrival of the RPF-Inkotanyi, they left around 8 pm, after three hours of murderous orgy, while dozens, perhaps hundreds, of the tortured died under mountains of corpses.

Another survivor said that it had rained, and it was already starting to get dark. This is what saved those who were still alive that day. The night would, in fact, be the salvation of some survivors.

The following morning, Interahamwe militia returned to check whether any Tutsi was still alive, by standing on their bellies to see if they would be breathing. Some survivors, lying among the corpses were saved by the arrival of the RPF in Nyanza on April 12, 1994.

Most of the refugees at ETO would not have gone there if they did not believe that the UN troops would save them.