Rwandan Genocide

Brooks Newmark Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, when over the course of a 100-day period in 1994 at least 800,000 Rwandans were murdered; and calls on the Government to reinforce its commitment to the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine and to working within the UN to promote international justice and to avoid mass atrocities which are still committed across the globe today.

I am delighted to have the opportunity, on my birthday, to open today’s debate marking the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, a 100-day period in 1994. That appalling episode left almost 1 million dead, 3 million refugees, a region riddled with insecurity, and a country and a people struggling to comprehend the enormity of the horrors inflicted on them.

To all the Tutsis and moderate Hutus who died, 7 April 1994 marked the beginning of 100 days of hell—100 days of rape, torture, murder and unspeakable horrors. It was the beginning of 100 days that took nearly 1 million lives. For those who bore witness to Rwanda’s genocide, it was a time that humanity seemed to forget. The Rwandan genocide saw wives become widows and children become orphans. Roughly three quarters of the Tutsi population were eliminated, and Rwanda suffered greatly. Attackers burned down churches with hundreds or thousands of Tutsis inside and slaughtered their victims with machetes. Hundreds of mass graves were dug across the country to bury the victims of what was a long-planned killing spree.

As Linda Melvern, the journalist and author, said in one of the Committee Rooms of the House on 26 March to those of us commemorating the genocide:

“Here was the direst of all human situations. The crime of genocide—the intent to destroy a human group…There were no sealed trains or secluded camps in Rwanda. A planned and political campaign, the genocide of the Tutsi took place in broad daylight.”

On the 20th anniversary of the genocide, people are talking again of tribes in Rwanda—the Hutu tribe, the Tutsi tribe—but it is important to remember that the Hutus and Tutsis were the same before colonial rule created a divide. They lived in the same space on the same hills, spoke the same language, had the same religion and often intermarried. The only difference was a superficial judgment on appearance and occupation. In 1994, Rwanda was 85% Hutu, 14% Tutsi and 1% Twa.

As many Members will know, the catalyst for the Rwandan genocide came about on 6 April 1994, when President Juvénal Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down as it came in to land at Kigali airport. Immediately, a pre-planned policy of extermination of all Tutsis was triggered, and throughout the entire country, right down to every village, Hutus turned on their Tutsi neighbours and slaughtered them. The Hutus who attempted to intervene or prevent the violence were also killed.

The international community should have responded to the Rwandan genocide, but in 1994 it collectively failed to do anything to help the Rwandan people in their hour of need. The Americans had been traumatised by the “Black Hawk Down” incident in Somalia the previous October, making the Clinton Administration unwilling to intervene, especially in Africa. Regrettably, Britain did nothing, having no interest in a former Belgian colony. France, much to its shame, continued to support the interim Rwandan Government even after it became clear that they were driving the planned genocide.

The international response to the Rwandan genocide was woeful, as was the lack of action by the United Nations. There were dreadful misreadings of what was happening, and the plight of the Tutsis was ignored, with many people refusing to acknowledge that the events taking place were a genocide of the Tutsis. Indeed, not one Government called on the perpetrators to stop the genocide. Not one UN member state severed diplomatic ties. Not one Government called for the representative of the interim Rwandan Government to be suspended from the chamber of the UN. The international community turned its back on Rwanda and left the Tutsi people to their fate.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

One real problem at the time was the fact that the UN international assistance mission for Rwanda was there under a chapter VI mandate from the Security Council—peacekeeping rather than peace enforcement—and had really rotten rules of engagement. No one in the Security Council was prepared to increase the potency of those peacekeepers on the ground. More than that, as my hon. Friend knows, the Belgians withdrew their paratroopers and left the general there absolutely alone, with 246 people.

[Mr Newmark]

My hon. and gallant Friend is absolutely right. Anybody who has seen the film “Shooting Dogs” will know the frustrations that the general felt at the lack of support and the lack of acknowledgment that a genocide was taking place. The title “Shooting Dogs” was because the peacekeepers could shoot dogs, since they might eat dead bodies or attack people, but could not shoot individuals who were slaughtering the Tutsis right in front of them.

It is easy for us to say, “It must never happen again”, but it may happen at any moment, and perhaps already is in Syria, the Central African Republic and north-eastern Nigeria—places where the wrong ID card or recognition of one’s tribe can still carry a death sentence. I wish to take this opportunity to reflect on not only the lessons and legacies of the genocide itself but the steps taken by the international community to ensure that it never happens again and by Rwanda in its transition to a peaceful and more prosperous future.

The horrific events that transpired during the Rwandan genocide, and later in Srebrenica, served as the impetus for all UN member states to commit unanimously at the 2005 world summit to the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. At the world summit, states acknowledged that the world should no longer tolerate political indifference and inaction, whenever and wherever populations face an imminent risk of mass atrocity crimes. By committing to the responsibility to protect, known as R2P, countries committed to protecting populations at risk of crimes such as the one experienced in Rwanda in 1994.

Since 2005, UN member states have taken important steps to strengthen the responsibility to protect at both international and domestic level. Those initiatives include the creation of a global network of focal points and the development of domestic and regional capacities to prevent genocide and other mass atrocity crimes. Since 2011, the UN Security Council has also invoked R2P when authorising measures to protect civilians in Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, the Central African Republic, Libya, South Sudan and elsewhere, although I believe that today we are once again falling short of our responsibility to protect in Syria. Preventing mass atrocity crimes is a responsibility that we must all bear and a principle for which we should all work. States should continue to build support for R2P and ensure that it is consistently and effectively implemented in practice.

The UK has also taken steps to reduce international war crimes and protect civilians. The Foreign Secretary’s work in calling for an end to rape as a weapon of war is highly necessary and important. In June he will ask 140 nations to write action against sexual violence into military training and doctrine. If that vital piece of work had been in place 20 years ago, perhaps many women and girls would have been saved from this cruel weapon of war. We need to continue to work to ensure that the horrific events in Rwanda do not unfold elsewhere in the future.

Dr Simon Adams, executive director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, noted that the best way to honour the memory of those murdered in 1994 is to build a world where the international community permits no people to stand alone when threatened by genocide. The 20th commemoration of the Rwandan genocide compels us to reflect, but also to act and uphold our collective responsibility to protect.

I believe that the UK will continue to fight to ensure that the events of 7 April to 17 July 1994 do not recur, and I was pleased that the Foreign Secretary and the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds), took time to attend commemorations in Kigali to mark the 20th anniversary of the genocide. It is important that we remember the terrible events of 1994 and as a nation pay tribute to the victims.

Over the past 20 years, Rwanda’s development has been truly astonishing, and the UK has played a leading role in helping to transform it from a failed war-torn state into a stable and growing economy. In particular, the UK has done much to help the country’s poorest people lift themselves out of poverty over the past two decades. Britain is helping thousands of children across Rwanda to get an education, giving them the chance of a better future. We are helping more than half a million people to get a job so that they can lift themselves out of poverty. We are also helping thousands of families to ensure that they have enough food to eat to lead healthier, happier lives.

The UK is supporting a programme in Rwanda to help build peace and reconciliation following the genocide. We are helping to teach schoolchildren how they can become ambassadors for peace in their country, and funding vital research into how we can prevent genocide from happening again. To commemorate the genocide, the Department for International Development provided £2.5 million to support the Aegis Trust’s work in upgrading the Kigali genocide memorial and helping communities to reconcile their differences. Over the next three years, Britain’s support will help to establish a genocide archive and fund new research on how to prevent future genocide, and ensure that the event of the genocide is stored and made more accessible, including with online documentation from the Gacaca courts. Finally, Aegis will undertake research on preventing genocide, and will provide education about it and its causes to Rwandan schoolchildren, communities and youth leaders.

Since I first visited Rwanda in 2007, I have seen an enormous amount of progress. The overriding feeling that I get every time I visit the country is of a people wanting to move onwards and upwards to a better future. Indeed, I am making my own small contribution to Rwanda by setting up my own charity, A Partner in Education, and building a primary school in Kigali called Umubano, which means togetherness in Kinyarwandan. The school was built two years ago and currently educates 175 children, including many vulnerable children from poor backgrounds. Rwanda has few natural resources, and therefore its future lies in its children. Through my school, I am delighted to make my own small contribution to Rwanda’s future.

As we mark the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, we owe it not only to the victims of the 1994 genocide, but to all victims of genocide to remain vigilant, proactive, and to remember the sacrifice that they never deserved to make. To mark the 20th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda we should say: never again.

I conclude by thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) for taking me to Rwanda in 2007 on project Umubano—a Conservative party initiative that has worked on a variety of social action projects over the past seven years. That early introduction to Rwanda has led to a love of the country and its people, and a lifetime commitment to support its future development.

I thank my team, both past and present, at A Partner in Education, for all they have done and continue to do, including Kitty Llewellyn, Alvin Mihigo, Pippa Richards—who shares a birthday with me today—Stephen Bayley, Kate Hanon, Emily Gilkinson and Angie Kotler. I also thank SURF, the survivors charity, and the Aegis Trust, for their work in ensuring that future generations learn the lessons of the terrible event of 1994. I thank my constituent, Hayley Boatwright, for her input into this speech, and finally I thank Louise Mushikiwabo, Rwanda’s Foreign Minister, for her friendship and support for my endeavours to give Rwanda a better future.

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[Stephen Twigg]

I hope so. That is my honest answer. I will come to the specifics of how we might move forward on the responsibility to protect. It would be terrible if we had another situation where an atrocity was emerging and, for definitional reasons, we were unable to take appropriate action to prevent it from happening.

While I was in Kigali last month, in addition to attending the national commemoration at the football stadium, we had the 10th anniversary commemoration of the Kigali genocide memorial, which all Members have mentioned. The commemoration event was incredibly powerful. During that day, the mufti of Rwanda, the leader of the Muslim community there, spoke, and he did so on behalf of the Muslim community and also the main Christian Churches in Rwanda. He spoke about a new cross-faith initiative to take up what is happening in the Central African Republic. One of the things that has come out of the Rwandan genocide is that the Government as well as the people of Rwanda are key voices in demanding international action in situations that they rightly fear could result in genocide or other mass atrocities.

Remembrance is vital, especially in this year. Commemoration and education are crucial, but as Members on both sides of the House have said, we need also to focus on prevention, and it is on that subject that I wish to finish my remarks. How can we make this responsibility to protect a concrete reality? I concur with the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). There are some real challenges in forging a consensus globally on this. We cannot underestimate the scale of those challenges, but it is vital that the United Kingdom is at the forefront of taking this forward.

Will the Minister say something about the current initiative from the French Government, who are proposing a code of conduct concerning the use of the veto power by the permanent members of the Security Council? The French Government propose that this should be adopted—this comes back to the point made by the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart)—in cases of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. The proposal is for a mutual commitment by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to suspend their right of veto in situations of mass atrocities.

We know that in 1994 there was a failure of collective action to prevent Rwandans from being killed simply because they were Tutsi or because they were Hutu people intervening on behalf of Tutsis.

[Mr Newmark]

On that important point, the French proposal is excellent but the weakness in it is what we see in Syria today, where the Russians have a vested interest in what is going on. It would be impossible to achieve a consensus, whereby all five suspended their veto, if vested interests were at stake.

[Stephen Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, which anticipates something that I am about to say. He is right to remind us of the scale of the challenge. The French proposal is an important step in the right direction and I encourage the British Government to take a positive approach to it, but clearly it is not sufficient if we cannot secure the political will of the other members. We are talking here primarily about Russia and China in the context of challenges that we face today.

When the responsibility to protect was adopted universally by the UN General Assembly, that marked an important moment in the collective recognition of our shared responsibility. However, we all know that it is one thing to adopt principles and another to act on them. The veto power has been used on a number of occasions, most recently in the context of Syria, when double vetoes by Russia and China have blocked actions that could have saved civilian lives. I urge the Minister to signal the UK’s support for the French initiative as a way of strengthening the resolve of the permanent members of the Security Council to prevent atrocities from happening and to respond to them more quickly when they do happen.

“Never again” was the slogan the world adopted after the Nazi holocaust. We have learnt a lot since then, but we have also seen what happened in Cambodia and Srebrenica, what is happening in Syria, in the Central African Republic and in Darfur and, of course, what happened in Rwanda. We still have a long way to go, but I hope that in this House, as this debate demonstrates, we can show that there is a real sense of shared concern, shared humanity and solidarity with those working in other parts of the world, often in far more challenging circumstances, to prevent genocide and to educate people about it.

I finish by thanking the hon. Member for Braintree once again for giving us the opportunity to air this very important set of issues.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) on securing this very important debate commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. I would also like to wish him a happy birthday. The fact that the Backbench Business Committee granted the debate shows that it sees this as a serious issue that should be discussed. It is a great pleasure to follow not only my hon. Friend, but other hon. Members who have spoken passionately, drawing on first-hand knowledge of visiting Rwanda. There is nothing better than visiting the country to see what the situation is like on the ground. I actually met my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) there before the election, with Project Umubano.

Members have congratulated my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) on setting up Project Umubano for the Conservative party. It has been phenomenally successful, not just in what we have done—there has been some extremely good work—but in enabling people who might never have had the opportunity to visit that country to go and see it for themselves, particularly some of the young people who have worked there for two weeks during the summer. When they come back they understand what it is like and why we give money for international development. It is a very important initiative to have started.

[Mr Newmark]

Will my hon. Friend join me in thanking our right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) for all his efforts and hard work in setting up that initiative, because he has introduced people like me and colleagues on the Government side of the House to the concept of international development and to the tragedy that happened in Rwanda? We have much to thank him for.

[Pauline Latham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I also note that the Prime Minister endorsed it when in opposition, and Lord Ashcroft has been incredibly supportive of various initiatives out there, so many people have been involved. However, our debate is not about what the Conservative party has done, even though it has been fantastic for many people; it is about what has happened.

I have now been to Rwanda six times: four with Project Umubano, one with the International Development Committee and, most recently, in April, with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. I have seen how the country has progressed over that period. It has changed from being quite a good African country to being an amazing African country, and the example it has set could provide many lessons for other African countries. There have been criticisms by the international press about the President of Rwanda, but we should consider where he has moved the country from and to in just 20 years. We might think that we have done quite well in moving on from the second world war, and that was 70 years ago. People have not forgotten what happened, but I believe that they are prepared to put it behind them and to move on. I have been astonished at the consensus that that has generated among people there.

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[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) and, indeed, everyone who has already spoken. We have heard some excellent and moving speeches.

In April 1994, I and my family lived in Tanzania and our only real contact with the outside world was the BBC World Service. At this point, I pay tribute to the importance of the World Service for broadcasting by and large the best unbiased news around the world. We have already heard how important the service was to many Rwandans. Whenever we talk about the future of the World Service—whether in this Parliament or the next—let us never forget how much it is valued by hundreds of millions, even billions, of people around the world.

I was particularly interested in two things that were going on in April 1994. The first was the remarkable events in South Africa, where a really serious situation that could have resulted in severe civil unrest—possibly even a civil war—was turned around by national reconciliation and international mediation, which resulted in the wonderful election that brought President Nelson Mandela to power. There could have been chaos, but there was not.

At the same time, the opposite was happening in Rwanda, where the Arusha accords—which had given a glimmer of light not just to Rwanda, but to Burundi—were torn apart when the plane carrying the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi crashed on 6 April 1994. I remember that particularly well, because on that very evening someone was waiting at Kigali airport to receive a friend of ours who was going to work in Rwanda for a few weeks before coming to Tanzania. His plane had to be diverted and the man who was meant to meet him at the airport did not survive that night—he was caught up in the genocide.

Since then, as we have been reminded, Rwanda has made enormous progress. This is not just about the economic growth of up to 8% a year on average, but about education. It is investing in higher education and there is recognition, as has been said, that the future of Rwanda is in its human capital. It lacks natural resources other than its beauty and its agriculture. It does not have the minerals, but it does have the people, which is why the President and the Government are absolutely right to invest in higher education.

One example of the progress Rwanda has made is the way in which it is tackling malaria. The President and the Government have now said that they want to eliminate deaths as a result of malaria by 2018. I do not doubt that that is possible, such is the progress they have made with the distribution of bed nets, indoor residual spraying and the improvement of the health service. Other Members have referred to the lack of corruption, and Rwanda is indeed a model of a country that says that corruption is bad for development and for the ordinary people.

The UK has played a major role under both the previous and the current Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire and I had the pleasure of going on an international development trip, during which we saw an excellent programme for the establishment of a land registry and the granting of titles to every single plot—about 10 million of them—in Rwanda. That has already resulted in improvements in investment, productivity and agriculture, particularly smallholder agriculture, which is vital for employment and household incomes in Rwanda and elsewhere. Rwanda also has stability, which is vital and prized and probably the primary reason why President Kagame is so popular.

Instability, however, remains in the region. The people of Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo have felt the consequences of that instability at various times. Nowhere is that more true than in the DRC, which has seen millions of people die and hundreds of thousands, even millions, of women suffer the brutality of rape and sexual violence. There must be no let-up in the work to bring peace to that region. We cannot focus on Rwanda without focusing on the entire region. We must ensure that those who, for whatever reason, perpetrate this violence are defeated and brought to account.

If there is one lesson that I want the United Kingdom and the international community to learn above all—I hope that we do learn it—it is that when there is prevarication and delay in confronting evil, it consequences will only be worse. The example of the Rwandan genocide was one of prevarication and delay in confronting evil, a word which I do not use lightly. Evil was present in Rwanda at that time, as it has been in other places that have subsequently seen the kind of devastation experienced by Rwanda.

This is a time to remember not just those who perished and their families, but the survivors. I, too, have been very privileged to take part in Project Umubano, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). One organisation we work with in Rwanda is SURF, or the Survivors Fund UK. With tremendous support from the UK—from DFID and Comic Relief, and from individual donors—it is working with local organisations to support survivors, whether widows, young people or orphans, and umbrella organisations. Together, such organisations care for the needs of more than 300,000 survivors and their dependants, who are often some of the poorest. They obviously suffer from disability and unemployment, and they include widows and children who have had to bring up their siblings from a very young age. The work of all the organisations aims to foster self-reliance. I read about a lady called Francine, who said:

“Before I was alone, I never thought about the future of my life. After joining this group”—

a project supported by DFID in Rwanda—

“I can look forward because I share my life experience with others.”

That is so important. We should not forget the survivors, and I am sure that we will not do so.

Survivors have a need not just for food and employment, but for justice. For many of them, justice has still not come. There has been the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, which will close this year. It has cost $1 billion, which is an enormous amount of money. It has done important work, but it has no mandate for reparation, and the Rwandan survivors have received none. In many ways, the Gacaca courts have been much more effective and efficient than the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda—they have a mandate for restitution and have made many thousands of restitution grants, although many of them have not been fulfilled—but even they do not have a mandate for reparation. It is very important to the survivors—or, God forbid, to victims of any future mass killings—that the concept of reparation is implemented and not forgotten, because it is a vital part of justice.

[Mr Newmark]

I thank my hon. Friend for his amazing work in leading Project Umubano, and I commend his excellent Swahili, which I have heard at first hand. Does he agree that, following this terrible tragedy, what was most impressive was the ability of the Government to abolish the death penalty, rather than to use it to seek retribution?

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I did not realise that that had happened until my second or third visit to Rwanda, and I was hugely struck by it. If we compare even the reaction of the allied powers after the second world war with what Rwanda has done, I think that it was a very gracious and humble but formidable act that speaks very powerfully and should be much better known.

What lessons can we learn? We have heard much about the responsibility to protect, which is absolutely vital, but I want to draw a few other conclusions. The first is about intelligence. General Dallaire, who has often been mentioned—I have read his excellent book—knew and passed on information at quite an early stage, and certainly several months before the genocide took place, about a potential catastrophe in the country, but it was ignored. We ignore intelligence at our peril in such matters. We may at the moment have intelligence from countries around the world about something serious that is brewing, and we must take note of it and act on it.

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[Mr Newmark]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee, and indeed the Leader of the House, for their support in enabling this important debate to take place in the main Chamber. I also thank Members in all parts of the House for their excellent contributions, and for sharing their respective experiences. I congratulate this Government and the last Government, especially the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development, on their commitment to helping Rwanda on its path to recovery, and—this point was made by the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas)—on welcoming Rwanda to the Commonwealth of Nations.

As for those who died in 1994, we will remember them, and honour them, by reaffirming in the House today the words “Never again.”

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, when over the course of a 100-day period in 1994 at least 800,000 Rwandans were murdered; and calls on the Government to reinforce its commitment to the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine and to working within the UN to promote international justice and to avoid mass atrocities which are still committed across the globe today.