Kibeho incident

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The Kibeho incident occurred in a camp for internally displaced persons near Kibeho, Rwanda on April 22, 1995. Between 2000 and 4000 people in the camp were killed by soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Army.

[edit] History

Following the Rwandan Genocide and the victory by the army of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), many ethnic Hutus, including an unknown number of those who had committed genocide, fled from the RPF-controlled areas to zones controlled by the French Opération Turquoise and the neighbouring states of Burundi, Zaire, and Tanzania.

When the French withdrew in August 1994, the administration of the camps was taken over by UNAMIR and a number of aid organizations. The new Rwandan government, dominated by the victorious Tutsi RPF, wished to identify those people in the camps who had committed genocide.

The RPA established a tight cordon around the camp with the aim of forcibly separating known génocidaires from others. Following a day of mounting tension between those in the camp and the RPA soldiers, the RPA fired at people in the camp, killing thousands. ^[1]

A group of UN Australian Army medical officers and infantry soldiers as well as the Medicins Sans Frontieres^[2] were witness to the killings in April 1995, however were unable to defend the refugees because of strict rules of engagement. All they could do was provide medical assistance to the wounded. Writing in the Australian Army Journal, Paul Jordan, one of the officers who witnessed the killings, has said that:

"While there was little that we could have done to stop the killings, I believe that, if Australians had not been there as witnesses to the massacre, the RPA would have killed every single person in the camp."