Rwanda: Dehumanization of the Tutsi a key weapon in their annihilation

Author: Moses Kayinamura

• 2023-04-25 05:27:00

Gregory Stanton published “The Stages of the Genocide” in 1998 where he analyses the different stages of a genocide. Dehumanization appears to be the third stage after Classification and Symbolization and before Organization, Polarization, Preparation, Extermination and Denial.

Dehumanization is the denial of the humanity of others, which is the step that permits killing with impunity. During the Holocaust, Nazi propagandists routinely used terms like vermin or list of diseases including bacilli, parasites, cancer, and excrement to refer to the Jewish population in the areas under their control. The targeted group is often likened to a “disease” “microbes” “infections” or a “cancer” which means the group is stripped of their standing as humans.

In Rwanda, before 1994, the term inyenzi (which means cockroaches) was used by public officials and media to designate the Tutsi group.

Kangura Newspaper infamously ran an article entitled “A cockroach cannot give birth to a butterfly” proclaiming that “a cockroach gives birth to another cockroach”. A word for the Tutsi that frequently came up during propaganda that led to the genocide against the Tutsi is “Ibyitso” or accomplice. In order to get rid of a cockroach infestation, you have to kill the eggs and larvae as well as the adult cockroaches.

Besides being called cockroaches, the Tutsi in Rwanda were referred to as snakes and rats, creatures with poisonous venom and able to transmit diseases. The massacres of the Tutsi between 1959 and 1973 paved the way to the mass killings during the Genocide against Tutsi in 1994. 

By killing the Tutsi, the killers would say it was “work,” a national duty. Those who got rid of enemies of the country known as snakes and cockroaches were paid. 

Between 1959 and 1973, those who participated in killing the Tutsi were rewarded by owning lands, houses and cows of their victims.  Between 1967 and 1969, President Grégoire Kayibanda signed a decree that those who fled the country do not have a right to their properties left in Rwanda.

The dehumanization of the Tutsi in Rwanda assumed at least three forms: the familiar name-calling, the reframing of the Tutsi as an enemy of the country and the rhetoric that the Tutsi were traitors who deserved no other punishment except death. The Tutsi were also referred as parasites who benefit from the work of the Hutu (ba rutemayeze). 

Dehumanization played a big role in facilitating mass participation in the Genocide against Tutsi. The government persuaded people to kill the Tutsi by spreading dehumanizing rhetoric and language.

Hassan Ngeze, the editor of Kangura, argued that all Tutsi women were RPF agents and that all Tutsi were dishonest. The hate radio, RTLM, made hate jokes about the Tutsi. It increased hateful rhetoric as the government and RPF began negotiations in Arusha, Tanzania.  The use of repulsive creatures to describe the Tutsi made it easier to convince people that all the Tutsi, and not just the RPF, needed to be eliminated.

The genocide ideology ensured the Hutu would not think twice about stamping on a cockroach to kill it. Reducing the Tutsi to cockroaches, helped to remove the moral imperative against killing a fellow human being, by turning them into a creature that must be stamped out. The Tutsi lost access to resources and rights in their own country. 

The education system played a pivotal role.  At an early age, in schools, the Hutu were told that the Tutsi are evil.

The dehumanization process renders a target psychologically and socially easier to kill, and therefore makes killing appear legitimate and more widespread. 

The dehumanization of the Tutsi under President Kayibanda and later, President Juvénal Habyarimana, helped to deprive the Tutsi of human qualities. 

The Hutu were prepared to think of the Tutsi as bad and ugly creatures, making it easier to kill them without any remorse or compassion. 

If dehumanization had not happened under the first and second Republics, Rwanda would have had fewer extremists, hence fewer killers as well as fewer numbers of genocide victims.