Juvénal Habyarimana

Juvénal Habyarimana
Habyarimana in 1980
President of Rwanda
In office July 5, 1973 – April 6, 1994
Preceded by	Grégoire Kayibanda
Succeeded by	Théodore Sindikubwabo
Personal details
Born	(1937-03-08)March 8, 1937 Ruanda-Urundi
Died	April 6, 1994(1994-04-06) (aged 57) Kigali, Rwanda
Nationality	Rwandan
Political party	MRND
Spouse(s)	Agathe Habyarimana

Juvénal Habyarimana (Kinyarwanda: [hɑbɟɑ̂ːɾimɑ̂ːnɑ]; March 8, 1937 – April 6, 1994) was the third President of the Republic of Rwanda, serving longer than any other president to date, from 1973 until 1994. He was nicknamed "Kinani", a Kinyarwanda word meaning "invincible".

Habyarimana was a dictator, and electoral fraud was suspected for his unopposed re-elections: 98.99% of the vote on 24 December 1978, 99.97% of the vote on 19 December 1983, and 99.98% of the vote on 19 December 1988.^[1] During his rule, Rwanda became a totalitarian order in which his MRND-party enforcers required people to chant and dance in adulation of the President at mass pageants of political "animation".^[1] While the country as a whole had become slightly less impoverished during Habyarimana's tenure, the great majority of Rwandans remained in circumstances of extreme poverty.^[1]

On April 6, 1994, he was killed when his airplane, also carrying the President of neighbouring Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down close to Kigali International Airport. His assassination ignited ethnic tensions in the region and helped spark the Rwandan Genocide.

Rule

On July 5, 1973, while serving as Army Chief of Staff, Habyarimana seized power in a coup d'état against the incumbent President Grégoire Kayibanda and ousting Kayibanda's ruling Parmehutu party. In 1975, he created the Mouvement Révolutionaire National pour le Développement as the country's only legal party. The government stayed almost entirely in military hands until 1978, when a new constitution was approved in a referendum. At the same time, Habyarimana was elected to a five-year term as president as the only candidate. He was reelected in single-candidate elections in 1983 and 1988.

A Hutu himself, he initially won favor among both Hutu and Tutsi groups given his administration’s reluctance to implement policies that catered to his primarily Hutu supporters. This restraint did not last and Habyarimana eventually began to oversee a government that mirrored the policies of Kayibanda. Quotas were once again applied to jobs for “universities and government services” which intentionally disadvantaged Tutsis. As Habyarimana continued to favor a smaller and smaller coterie of supporters, the more Hutu groups —slighted by the nation’s leader— cooperated with Tutsis to weaken his leadership. By the start of the invasion from Uganda by the army of the Rwanda Patriotic Front, a rebel army made up mostly of refugee Tutsi who had helped Uganda's Museveni seize control of the presidency, Habyarimana’s supporters had shrunk down to the akazu ("little house" or "President's household"), which was mainly composed of an informal group of Hutu extremists from his home province, namely from the regions “Gisenyi and Ruhengeri in the north-west”.^[2]

From 1975 to 1990, the MRND and the Habyarimana government were one. Local administrations simultaneously represented the official party as well as the local authority. Legal and party policies were communicated and enforced from the Head of State down through the local administrative units, especially the general policy of Umuganda where Rwandans were required to “allocate half a day's labour per week” to infrastructural projects.^[2] Habyarimana is sometimes described as a moderate^[3][4] though the party is said to have used right-wing propaganda methods,^[5] advanced a conservative political agenda^[6] and was anti-communist.^{[7][8][9][10]}

However, in 1990, before the RPF invasion, and because of mounting pressure from several sources—Rwanda's main ally and financial backer, France, its main funders, the IMF and the World Bank, and from its own citizens wishing for a greater voice and economic change—he agreed to allow the formation of other parties such as the Republican Democratic Movement, the Social Democratic Party, the Liberal Party and the Christian Democratic Party.^[2]

Invasion

In October 1990, an invasion against Habyarimana's government began when rebels from the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a force of mostly Tutsi Rwandan refugees and expatriates who had served in the Ugandan army (many in key positions), crossed the border from Uganda. The French and Zairian militaries intervened on behalf of Habyarimana's government forces, and a troubled ceasefire was officially reached in 1993 through the Arusha Accords.

Assassination

On April 6, 1994, Habyarimana's private Falcon 50 jet was shot down near Kigali International Airport, killing Habyarimana. Cyprien Ntaryamira, the President of Burundi, the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan military, and numerous others also died in the attack. The plane crashed on the grounds of the presidential residence.^[11]

The circumstances of the crash are unclear. At the time, the Hutu Power media claimed the plane had been shot down on orders from RPF leader Paul Kagame. Others, including the RPF, accused militant Hutus from within Habyarimana's party of orchestrating the crash in order to provoke anti-Tutsi outrage while simultaneously seizing power. Since the aircraft had a French crew, a French investigation had been conducted; in 2006 it concluded that Kagame was responsible for the killing and demanded that he be prosecuted. The response from Kagame, who has since become the president of Rwanda, was that the French were only trying to cover up their own part in the genocide that followed.^[12] A more recent French probe, with a team of French investigators and two French judges concluded, in a January 2012 report, that the missiles could not have come from a military base occupied by Kagame supporters, and appears to exonerate Kagame's role in the assassination. This report however may have been wrong because members of Kagame's inner circle have since come out publicly stating that the attack was ordered by Kagame himself. These include his former chief of staff and ambassador to the United States Dr. Rudasingwa,^[13] the former army chief and ambassador to India General Kayumba Nyamwasa, the former secretary in the ministry of defense Major Jean-Marie Micombero,^[14] and others.

Aftermath of death

The death of Habyarimana ignited a murderous spree by extremists from the majority Hutus against Tutsis and those Hutus who had opposed the government in the past or who had supported the peace accords. Within 100 days, somewhere between 800,000 and 1 million Rwandans were massacred.^[15]

Storage of body and cremation in Zaire

At some point following the April 6, 1994 assassination, Habyarimana's remains were obtained by Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko and kept in a private mausoleum in Gbadolite, Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo). Mobutu promised Habyarimana's family that his body would eventually be given a proper burial in Rwanda. On May 12, 1997, as Laurent-Désiré Kabila's ADFL rebels were advancing on Gbadolite, Mobutu had the remains flown by cargo plane to Kinshasa where they waited on the tarmac of N'djili Airport for three days. On May 16, the day before Mobutu fled Zaire (and the country was renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Habyarimana's remains were burned under the supervision of an Indian Hindu leader.^[16]

Family

Habyarimana is survived by his wife, Agathe Habyarimana, who was evacuated by French troops shortly after his death. She has been described as having been extremely influential in Rwandan politics.^[17] She has been accused by Rwandan justice minister Tharcisse Karugarama of complicity in the genocide and was denied asylum in France on the basis of evidence of her complicity.^[18] She was arrested March 2010 in the Paris region by police executing a Rwandan-issued international arrest warrant.^[19] In September 2011, a French court denied Rwanda extradition of Agathe Habyarimana.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Juvénal Habyarimana.

• Rwanda: How the genocide happened, BBC News, 1 April 2004