Testimony of Intersectional Violence From the Tutsi Genocide; Visual History Archives (VHA) Analysis.

OVERVIEW OF THE HUTU-TUTSI TENSIONS, AND SUMMARY OF THE 1994 TUTSI GENOCIDE

While the normative standpoint is that the Genocide began on the 7th of April, 1994, the actual conflict and ethnic tensions in and around Rwanda, began a few decades earlier. Thus, my summary will begin with an overview of the pre-genocide tensions. The 1994 genocide was the culmination of ethnic tensions spanning back to the German and Belgian colonial periods. Historian, Gérard Prunier, argues that while Hutu and Tutsi distinctions pre-dated European arrival, these were more fluid social or class categories, not rigid racial identities¹. As means of facilitating control of Ruanda-Urundi, colonial powers propagated cultural myths tied to the ethnicities of the region, which pitted Tutsi identity as a superior racial type. This theory of superior race, hypothesising that the Tutsi were foreign invaders from areas like Ethiopia or Tibet², was institutionalised by the Belgian administration, who privileged the Tutsi monarchy and elite, giving them access to education and administrative positions³. However, by the late 1950s, Belgian authorities reversed this policy, switching their support to the Hutu majority instead⁴. This shift resulted in the 1959 social revolution, which inverted the previous colonial power structure, replacing the Tutsi elite with a new Hutu elite - this did not, however, dismantle the racial ideology. The revolution, actively supported by Belgian authorities, was characterised by widespread violence against Tutsis⁵. Therefore, it was this period that triggered the first massacres of the Tutsi population, leading to a major wave of Tutsi refugees who fled to neighbouring countries. Crucially, it was this displaced population that would become the central figures of the future Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).

A few decades later (post independence), Juvénal Habyarimana, who was a Hutu Major-General from the north of Rwanda, seized power over the country through a coup⁶, starting a regime that institutionalised anti-Tutsi discrimination, as evidenced, primarily, through state policies. A notable one being the ethnic quota system, which, amongst other restrictions, limited Tutsis to 9% of positions in education and employment⁷ (something that Rugasaguhunga addresses in her testimony, when she provides an anecdote of her sister being denied entry to high school after supposedly failing her entrance exam, despite being top of her class).

Around the late 1980s, Rwanda suffered an economic crisis, which a group of extremist Hutu elites, known as the akazu (or “little house”), formed - with President Habyarimana’s wife, Agathe Habyarimana, and some of her close relatives, at the centre of this group - and they supported and propagated the narrative that the Tutsi population were to blame for the nation’s failings⁸ (despite numerous other global factors, such as the collapse of coffee and tin prices, being primary factors for this economic strain⁹).

On the 1st of October, 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), composed largely of the children of the 1959 refugees, invaded northern Rwanda, starting the Rwandan Civil War¹⁰. The Habyarimana regime saw this invasion as an opportunity to justifiably escalate their anti-Tutsi campaign. As noted by Alison Des Forges, for Human Rights Watch, the Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), established in 1993, and supported by akazu and other regime supporters, began to broadcast increasingly extremist views towards Tutsis (as will be further unpacked in this paper), eventually directly inciting violence¹¹. Crucially, around this time, France intervened to support the Habyarimana regime, launching “Opération Noroit” to provide arms, training, and direct military support to the government’s Forces Armées Rwandaises (FAR) ¹², believing that the RPF was a plot orchestrated by the Ugandan government. Human Rights Watch documents that this support from France continued, even as the regime’s genocidal intentions became clear.

In 1993, the regime signed the Arusha Peace Accords, to end the Civil conflict, however, the accords mandated a power-sharing transitional government which included both RPF and Hutu opposition parties¹³.

In October 1993, Burundi’s first Hutu President, Melchoir Ndadaye, was assassinated by Tutsi soldiers. This galvanised extremists, as it served as a form of “proof” that power-sharing with Tutsis was impossible, and that a “final solution” was necessary, to solve these ethnic tensions¹⁴. Consequentially - according to Human Rights Watch - the akazu and military hardliners began planning a genocide against the Tutsis, training militias, and distributing weapons.

On the 6th of April, 1994, a plane carrying President Habyarimana, and the new Burundian President, was shot down over Kigali, killing both leaders. Importantly, the assassins remain unconfirmed, however Prunier argues that evidence points overwhelmingly to Hutu extremists within the akazu. Regardless, the Hutu government blamed this assasination on Tutsi extremists, and used the deaths as the pretext to execute their pre-planned genocide.

Within hours, massacres of the Tutsi population began across the country, structured in two-phase operation, as documented by Human Rights Watch:

The first phase was annihilation of the political opposition (primarily 6th-7th of April), whereby the Presidential Guard and the Interahamwe (civilian militia reporting to the Hutu regime) set up roadblocks and used widely distributed lists to hunt down and execute top political opponents¹⁵. Note that, beyond Tutsis, these early victims also included journalists, Hutu moderates, and human rights activists, or other figures who could form a rival centre of power.

The second phase was annihilation of the Tutsi population (7th April to 19th July). At this stage, the interim government of Hutu extremists focused on the total extermination of the Tutsi population. Killings were organised through a sort of vertical structure of power, where the state government would collaborate with local/regional governments to organise and order civilian militiamen (who would actually partake directly in the physical violence). As Prunier puts it, “It is absolutely impossible to produce now an accurate figure for those killed in the Rwandese genocide¹⁶”, however, in this 100-day time period, deaths of the Tutsi population are estimated to have been between 800,000 and 1,000,000. Assuming that the death rates were closer to this lower boundary, that puts the daily killing rate at about five times that of the Holocaust¹⁷. Despite global public knowledge of this ongoing bloodshed, the international community did very little to intervene. Moreover, on the 21st of April, a mere two weeks into the massacres, the UN Security Council voted to withdraw the majority of its UNAMIR (UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda) peacekeeping force, leaving the remaining soldiers essentially powerless.

The Genocide was ultimately stopped by the RPF’s military victory. Right from April, the RPF had renewed its offensive, with the intention of securing control over the country, and they were able to steadily advance through government held regions, taking Kigali on the 4th of July, and finally capturing the last government stronghold, Gisenyi, on July 18th¹⁸. However, the Hutu government orchestrated a last (somewhat catastrophic), ordering the entire Hutu population to flee to Zaire (now DRC), in order to avoid retribution. Naturally, the entirety of Rwanda’s Hutu population did not flee to Zaire, but a large enough population (estimated to be around one million individuals) did, that a refugee crisis emerged in Goma, which triggered a massive cholera epidemic¹⁹. France, too, contributed to this refugee crisis, in its final intervention - Opération Turquoise - which created a “Safe Humanitarian Zone”, serving as a passage for some Tutsi survivors (and many retreating FAR members) to escape the conflict into Zaire.

TESTIMONY TO THE GENOCIDE

To contextualise the genocide and explore the role of intersecting identities in one’s experience of such a mass atrocity, I will review Yvette Nyombayire Rugasaguhunga’s witness testimony of the Genocide, an interview on USC Shoa Foundation Visual History Archive. Rugasaguhunga is a Tutsi Rwandese woman, born 13th March, 1980, in Mugambazi (a commune in Kigali, Rwanda). Her current place of residence is unclear. Rugasaguhunga witnessed the genocide at 14 years old.

Summary of Rugasaguhunga’s Witness Testimony

Rugasaguhunga’s testimony contains clear indictments of an organised campaign of discrimination, culminating in Genocide. Her experience, as recalled, spans from her political awakening as a child in 1990 (during the Rwandan Civil War), through the Genocide, serves as a sort-of microcosm of the conflict, detailing the systematic radicalisation of a majority of the country’s Hutu population via media like radio broadcasts, and outlining some of the specific patterns of persecution employed during the Genocide. Beyond the more evident distinctions faced by being a Tutsi, there is a distinctly gendered nature of violence in Rugasaguhunga’s testimony. Watching her interview, one can also infer how the intersection of her ethnicity, gender, and age defined both the threats she faced, and her struggle (and means of) survival.

Organised Discrimination

Initially “living in a bubble”²⁰ Rugasaguhunga notes when she first became aware of the prevalence and the severity of radio-broadcasted discrimination against Tutsis in the country. In 1990, she recalls state radio describing the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) as “an enemy of Rwanda … with long horns and long tails”²¹, which is an early dehumanisation of Tutsi liberators, which later descends into crueler terminology, such as “cockroaches”²², as the violent rhetoric towards Tutsis increases. This would form an early example of organised discrimination, as the RTLM was sponsored by Radio Rwanda, a government radio. Early, state-sponsored dehumanisation was a deliberate government strategy, according to Alison Des Forges, as documented in Leave None to Tell the Story; the Habyarimana regime used radio as a tool for mobilising the population to exterminate the Tutsi. This discrimination manifested directly in Rugasaguhunga’s life through the education system. She testifies that in her classes (in the years leading up to the genocide), Tutsis were taught to be foreigners who had been violent against Hutus for centuries²³. This narrative was contradictory to her own experience, but was a powerful tool of indoctrination nonetheless.

A particularly personal example of this discrimination was when her older sister, top of her class, was denied an appeal after supposedly “failing” her high school entrance exam. Although this is a single incident, it was part of the aforementioned widespread, systematic practice of the Hutu-power to block Tutsis from economic advancement, by limiting access to education, through quotas. As this testimony outlines, this systematic discrimination escalated to organised persecution, such when her own family’s home was repeatedly vandalised by Hutus²⁴. Beyond education and the radio, she further identifies state-level patterns of persecution such as the mass jailing of Tutsis in 1990²⁵, and targeted killings in 1992²⁶, long before the 100 days of genocide began.

Through Rugasaguhunga’s testimonies, one can also analyse how early this build-up of systematic discrimination was, prior the commencement of the official 100-day Genocidal period. In some ways, one could infer that Genocidal intent actually extends into the years preceding the mass violence, as based on this testimony of witnessing the state-sponsored discrimination - however, it would be hard to determine when this discrimination actually concretely turned into explicitly inciting violence.

Patterns of Persecution and Crime

Rugasaguhunga’s account of the genocide itself shows the calculated, systematic nature of the crimes she witnessed, thus implicitly refuting notions of any random or chaotic violence.

The first pattern one can identify from her testimony is targeted, pre-meditated murder; she asserts that on the 7th of April, 1994, (the first official day of the genocide), her aunt was one of the first people killed. In Rugasaguhunga’s eyes, yes “every Tutsi was a target”²⁷, but her aunt’s open support of the RPF and recent visit to CND (the Parliamentary buildings), and the likelihood of spies operating in the area, made it probable that her aunt had been specifically listed as a Tutsi target. This pattern aligns with research (discussed in the first section of this paper) showing that the genocidal regime operated from lists of Tutsi leaders, intellectuals, and political opponents to be eliminated first. Scott Straus, in The Order of Genocide, argues that the violence was a state-led project²⁸, that relied on pre-established, vertical chains of command and local knowledge²⁹ to target victims efficiently.

The second pattern is the total annihilation of the family unit. On the 9th of April, her father and grandmother were killed, and her brother was brutally tortured and left for dead³⁰. The details of their deaths are crucial to understand the persecution at play here: her father was captured and ordered to retrieve her brother, a known RPF supporter, in exchange for his own life. This is a form of psychological torture, ultimately ending in his execution, alongside her grandmother. Afterwards, the militiamen chose to torture her brother instead of shooting him, because of his more direct political ties. This sequence represents two major crimes under International Law, namely: genocide (intent to destroy the Tutsi group), and crimes against humanity (murder and torture as part of a widespread, systematic attack). Beyond violations of International Law, these forms of public torture inflicted upon her father and brother served as a tool of terror for the community; a means of persecution, in this sense.

The third pattern is the mobilisation of the civilian population. When Rugasaguhunga and her sister were captured by a gang of Hutu miliamen on the same day as the aforementioned executions occurred, she described being entirely encircled by this militia crowd, who began to debate on what to do with the girls, or who would kill them³¹. This scene demonstrates the success of the state’s propaganda campaign; the RTLM had deputised citizens on the ground-level, who now saw the murder of two children as a sort of civic duty. What is striking, here, is that by the second official day of genocide, this “debate” concerning the girls did not concern whether they should be killed, but how, and by whom.

Intersectional Discrimination: Ethnicity, Gender, and Age

Throughout the testimony, it is clear that Rugasaguhunga’s experience was defined not solely by her identity as a Tutsi, but more fundamentally by her identity as a young Tutsi woman. While the entire Tutsi population was intended to be killed, the very method of persecution was often gendered. Her brother, a young Tutsi male, was perceived as more of a direct political threat than her or her sister, thus his fate was brutal public torture and death. A woman of a comarable status (associated with the RPF to a similar extent) would likely have suffered torture before execution, too, however the nature of torture would encompassed sexual torture, one can assume, based on how prolific sexual violence was during the genocide, as documented by scholars like Nowrojee, who states in a report for Human Rights Watch, “Although the exact number of women raped will never be known, testimonies from survivors confirm that rape was extremely widespread and that thousands of women were individually raped, gang-raped, raped with objects…, held in sexual slavery (either collectively or through forced ‘marriage’) or sexually mutilated”³². Rugasaguhunga and her sisters, as young Tutsi females, but with no direct ties to the RPF, were less likely to face the same form of torture as their brother, but were at an exceptionally high risk of suffering Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV); their risk was particularly high as a result of their identity positions in the intersection of young, Tutsi, and female. This is made particularly clear when one of their sisters is abducted by militamen, for gang rape by other soldiers. Rugasaguhunga’s reaction to this event is particularly telling, as she expresses how “it was that moment when the genocide became real”³³, to her. In this segment of the testimony, one begins to understand the unique terror of SGBV as a tool of conflict and mass atrocity; the “real” genocide was also an intimate tool to destroy the social fabric of the Tutsis, through these violations of victims and their families. This idea would further align with Nowrojee’s report, which emphasises this idea that “rape was the rule, [not] the exception”³⁴, and was used as a weapon of conflict against Tutsi women to destroy the Tutsi group³⁵. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), moreover, would also affirm this specific intersectional, genocidal intent, in ruling in the landmark Akayesu case³⁶ that systematic rape constitutes a genocidal act. While her sister is ultimately physically unharmed, the girls develop constant legitimate fears of being abducted for gang rape, a fear which male Tutsis of her age, in comparable situations, would not have felt as profoundly (if at all). The girls’ entire survival calculus was dictated by the dual threat of being killed for being Tutsi and being raped for being Tutsi females. This additional psychological burden was, thus, one faced most commonly by those with similarly intersecting identities in the genocide.

APPLICATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (henceforth “Genocide Convention”) and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (henceforth “Rome Statute”) provide the definitive legal framework for prosecuting genocide. This crime is infamously difficult to prove, as it requires a two-part test: the physical acts, or actus reus, and the specific mental state, or mens rea. Intent is central to the crime of genocide; “special intent”, or dolus specialis, requires proving an “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such”³⁷. I argue that Rugasaguhunga’s testimony provides witness evidence that substantiates both the requisite dolus specialis, and multiple forms of actus reus. I will first address the crucial Intentionality consideration, before unpacking evidence of Actus Reus.

Evidence of Incitement and Intent

A genocide does not begin with killings, but with the intent to kill. Rugasaguhunga’s testimony provides examples of state-sponsored, anti-Tutsi propaganda, thus providing evidence of “Direct and public incitement to commit genocide”³⁸. She traces this from pre-genocide, noting that in 1990, she did not know of her family members in exile, instead learning of the RPF’s invasion of Rwanda from Uganda via the radio, through the aforementioned broadcasting that “an enemy of Rwanda attacked Rwanda”³⁹. The “enemy” here is the Tutsi-majority army, however, as this propaganda spreads to vilify all Tutsi citizens, regardless of their political engagement, over the next three years, it also devolves into more direct and explicit incitement to violence. This is where the evidence of state-sponsored intent to kill becomes clear. Rugasaguhunga testifies that around 1993, the year of their establishment, the RTLM were calling Tutsis “cockroaches” and “enemies to kill”. This phrasing is incitement through both dehumanisation, and through direct command; the former, because the term “cockroaches” served to posit Tutsis as a sub-human vermin-like category, thus lowering the psychological barrier for mass murder, as it created a mental divide between ‘human’ Hutus, and ‘non-human’ Tutsis, and the latter, because the phrase “enemies to kill” is simply an unambiguous term which calls the entire populace to action, with a very clear aim.

As the ICTR established in the Prosecutor v. Nahimana (2003) case (also known as the “Media Case”), the RTLM was instrumental in the orchestration of genocide, specifically acting with intent to spread hatred towards Tutsis and spark violence, and to prepare the population to commit genocide⁴⁰. Rugasaguhunga’s testimony that this rhetoric increased the Tutsi-Hutu divide, and even resulted in her own family home being vandalised, confirms the direct causal link between the incitement (the mens rea) and the subsequent violence. It is, therefore, clear evidence of a coordinated, state-sponsored plan to destroy the Tutsi group.

Evidence of Physical Acts of Genocide

I argue that this testimony provides evidence for at least three of the five prohibited acts listed in Article II of the UN Genocide Convention.

First, killing members of the Tutsi group - Article II(a). This article is the most straightforward in its application to the testimony, as her account details a systematic pattern of killings intended to destroy the Tutsi group “as such”. This is evident in the killing of her aunt on the 7th of April, where Rugasaguhunga concludes that her aunt was likely a listed target due to her support for the RPF⁴¹. These details are legally significant as they demonstrate organised killings of the Tutsis through their intellectuals and political activists first. This is also evident in the destruction of the family unit, as witnessed through the killings of her father and grandmother on April 9th⁴². Her father, captured by Interahamwe, was taken to their home and shot in front of his mother (Rugasaguhunga’s grandmother), before she, too, was shot. Her father was killed for obstructing the militia’s hunt for his son, a known RPF supporter, however her grandmother’s execution served no military or political purpose. She was an elderly woman killed simply for being Tutsi. This confirms that the intent was not just to fight the RPF, but to exterminate the entire ethnic group.

Second, causing serious bodily or mental harm - Article II(b). This article encompasses acts that fall short of immediate killing but are intended to destroy the group's vitality. Rugasaguhunga’s testimony, containing mentions of both torture and sexual violence, constitutes genocide under this article of the convention. Concerning torture, when her brother, a known RPF supporter was captured by the Interahamwe, he was subjected to a lengthy beating with nail studded clubs⁴³. While torture is explicitly a Crime Against Humanity under Article 7(f) of the Rome Statute, it also constitutes “causing serious bodily harm” in the Genocide framework. The very method of killing is the evidence. This public and prolonged torture was calculated to inflict “serious bodily and mental harm” not only on the victim but on the entire Tutsi community, including his relatives. Concerning sexual violence, She witnesses this through the abduction of her sister by militiamen. Here, there is evidence of enforced prostitution, sexual slavery, and rape, all of which constitute Genocide, “Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”. Again, beyond Genocide, there are clear and notable signifiers of Crimes Against Humanity - this is a textbook example of “Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity” from Article 7(g) (Rome Statute) - however, these crimes could be addressed through the “serious bodily or mental harm” article through precedent; most notably in a case like Prosecutor v. Akayesu (2008), where the crime of rape, specifically, was found to constitute Genocide⁴⁴. She later testifies that during their forced march with the militia, girls around them were being picked by militiamen for rape and then returned⁴⁵. This detail shows how this harm was an organised and repeated practice by these génocidaires; this systemic application of sexual violence links the actus reus of rape to the dolus specialis of genocide.

Third, deliberately inflicting conditions of life - Article II(c). Rugasaguhunga’s testimony provides examples of acts “calculated to bring about [the group’s] physical destruction in whole or in part”. An example of this is on the 12th of April, when groups of Tutsis, including Rugasaguhunga and her sisters were ordered to leave Kigali and march south, as there was an RPF group advancing towards the city (at this point, the girls were under the protection of a Hutu militiaman) - while this may seem to be an evacuation to safety, considering how the girls were being kept alive by the militia, this was instead forcible displacement away from the RPF and towards Hutu-controlled territory. While this would directly constitute a Crime Against Humanity under Article 7(1)(d) of the Rome Statute, it could also constitute genocide, as this forced march strips the girls of their home and shelter, exposing them to increased vulnerabilities towards the systematic rape described above - as a result, it constitutes a “condition of life calculated to bring about … destruction”.

Ultimately, I argue that this testimony does contain moments constituting genocide. During the genocide, Rugasaguhunga acts as a witness to heinous genocide crimes, although she does not suffer any of them directly. She provides evidence for the mens rea through the RTLM’s direct and public incitement. She then acts as a direct witness to the actus reus: the killing of her family members (Art. II(a)), the serious bodily and mental harm inflicted through her brother’s torture and the systematic sexual violence against her sister and other girls (Art. II(b)), and the deliberate infliction of conditions of life through the forced death march (Art. II(c)).

References

Des Forges, Alison. ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’: Genocide in Rwanda. 2. ed. Human Rights Watch, 2003.

Nowrojee, Binaifer. SHATTERED LIVES: Sexual Violence during the Rwandan Genocide and Its Aftermath. Human Rights Watch, 1996. https://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/Rwanda.htm.

Prunier, Gérard. The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide. Columbia University Press, 1995.

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 1998.

Rugasaguhunga, Yvette. “Interview 57984”. Interview by (Unknown). Visual History Archive, Interviews of “The 600: The Soldiers’ Story” Documentary Collection, November 01, 2018. https://vha.usc.edu/testimony/57984. Accessed October 19, 2025.

Straus, Scott. The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda. Cornell University Press, 2006. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt24hg8g.

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, The Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul AKAYESU (Trial Judgement), ICTR-96-4-T, September 02, 1998.

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, The Prosecutor v. Ferdinand NAHIMANA, Jean-Bosco BARAYAGWIZA, and Hassan NGEZE (Trial Judgement and Sentence), ICTR-99-52-T, December 03, 2003.

United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948.