RWANDA

Human Rights Developments

The Genocide

On April 6, 1994 Hutu extremists bent on retaining control over the Rwandan state launched a campaign of genocide against the Tutsi, a minority who made up about 15 percent of the approximately 7.2 million people living there in early 1994. A plane crash of suspicious origin that killed President Juvenal Habyarimana triggered the massacres, but the campaign to eliminate the Tutsi had been planned for months as a way to upset a peace agreement that reduced the extremists' hold over power. The international community beat a hasty retreat from the killing fields, where between one half million and one million persons were slaughtered before mid-July.

The Rwandan Patriotic Front, a predominantly Tutsi exile force, brought an end to the massacres by defeating the forces of the government responsible for the genocide. The defeated government and its armed forces and militia fled to Zaire, ordering Rwandans under its authority to follow it into exile. The resulting catastrophic exodus to Goma and Bukavu cost thousands of lives as Rwandans died of disease, starvation, and lack of water. The authorities responsible for the genocide rapidly re-established their rule over the refugees, using control over the humanitarian supplies of food, water, and medicine to force compliance with their orders. By the end of the year, the guilty authorities were proclaiming their intention to return to Rwanda "to finish the work" of killing Tutsi, and their army and militia, nourished for months by the international community, were preparing for incursions into Rwanda.

In August 1993 the Rwandan government had signed the Arusha Accords, formally ending its three-year old war with the Rwandan Patriotic Front. An important group of Hutu leaders, however, were determined never to implement the agreement, which would have required them to share power with the RPF and to integrate the RPF's guerrilla force into the army. As President Habyarimana repeatedly postponed installation of a transitional government, preparations continued for a massive attack on Tutsi and those Hutu members of the political opposition willing to cooperate with them. A campaign of broadcast propaganda prepared the ground by inciting the Hutu majority to violence against the Tutsi_ and against those Hutu who supported reconciliation between the two groups and a power-sharing arrangement in government. In August 1993 a radio station owned by members of Habyarimana's inner circle, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, had begun broadcasting ever more dramatic incitements to hatred and killing. They targeted by name leading members of the opposition and civil society, as well as the Tutsi minority as a group.

In late 1993 and early 1994, the Hutu extremist political parties (the National Republican Movement for Democracy, MRND, and the Coalition for the Defense of the Republic, the CDR) recruited increasing numbers of unemployed young men to swell the ranks of exclusively Hutu militias. The militia members were trained by soldiers of the Rwandan Armed Forces, particularly by members of the elite Presidential Guard, and arms were distributed to militia members throughout the country. In February militia members killed a moderate Hutu cabinet minister, Emmanuel Gatabazi, who was likely to have opposed Habyarimana in a presidential election, along with several dozen others in the capital. Supporters of Gatabazi then assassinated the president of the CDR party, whom they held responsible for Gatabazi's death.

Arms for the army and militia flowed into the country in considerable quantities in the two years before the genocide from South Africa and Egypt, while advisory assistance was provided by a French military mission. In January, the Human Rights Watch Arms Project issued Arming Rwanda: The Arms Trade and Human Rights Abuses in the Rwandan War, a report that documents the arming both of the government forces and the RPF. The report includes as an appendix a secret Rwandan government document setting out the organizational structure of the Hutu militias that were to play such a crucial role in the genocide, including details of their arms requirements and their place in the government's command and control structure.

The preparations for slaughter were well known to the resident expatriate community, including diplomats as well as representatives of nongovernmental organizations. The special representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the commander of a United Nations peace-keeping force (UNAMIR), present to facilitate the execution of the Arusha Accords, were also informed about these threatening developments. The U.N. commander even apparently sought authorization from New York for some form of preventive action. But no effective measures were taken. By March 1994 tensions were so great within Kigali that Rwandan human rights activists had sent their children out of the city. When the president's plane crashed on April 6, the armed forces command seized the opportunity to set in motion a plan of genocide that had developed over months. Within thirty minutes of the plane crash, military, police, and civilian militia set up roadblocks around the city, and the killing began.

Members of the army's presidential guard were initially dispatched to the homes of moderates within the government. Among the earliest victims were Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a progressive Hutu from an opposition party; Lando Ndasingwa, a Tutsi cabinet minister in the Habyarimana transition government, who was executed along with his Canadian wife, their two children, and his mother; President of the Supreme Court Joseph Kavaruganda; and numerous human rights activists. The presidential guard also tortured and executed ten Belgian soldiers from UNAMIR who had attempted to protect Prime Minister Uwilingiyimana.

The presidential guard was soon joined by the party militias. Together, they killed an estimated 20,000 people in Kigali and its immediate environs within a week. Shortly after the crash and the beginning of the massacres, a group of politicians close to Habyarimana and backed by the military proclaimed themselves the new government. The RPF resumed the civil war on April 8, with an immediate objective the rescue of its troops in Kigali and in an attempt to stop the massacres. On April 12 Belgium announced its intent to withdraw its 400-person UNAMIR contingent. Emboldened by the evacuation of Belgian troops and the failure of the remaining UNAMIR forces to respond, the leaders of the genocide extended its scope outside the capital to the east and the southwest by April 15.

In communities where the killing was not proceeding rapidly or thoroughly, outside elements, usually militia members, were imported to spur the slaughter. In the southern prefecture of Butare, it was both militia and members of the presidential guard who were brought in to execute massive killings in a region in which local people had largely resisted carrying out the genocide of their Tutsi neighbors. In such cases, local people were often given the choice of kill or be killed. Faced with such a choice, most agreed to join in the slaughter.

In most communities, local government officials organized and personally directed the murders. Eyewitnesses in several places reported that the killers arrived under the direction of local officials to begin their "work" at 8 a.m. and to finish at 4 p.m. The assailants then returned home singing, to come back the next morning and begin the slaughter once more. In most communities, the repeated attacks continued until all the Tutsi were killed: clearly the goal was complete elimination of the minority rather than its simple defeat.

Barriers on all roads and paths prevented victims from fleeing massacre sites. All Rwandans were required to carry identity cards which specify their ethnic group. Tutsi who sought to pass the barriers were selected on the basis of these identity cards and killed on the spot. When people sought shelter in neighborhood churches, hospitals, or schools, they were killed all the more efficiently, often through the use of grenades. Survivors were finished off with machetes, clubs, or guns. At such sites as Kibungo, Cyahinda, and Shangi, thousands of people were executed in a matter of hours.

By mid-May, militia leaders were calling upon their members to finish "cleaning up" (nettoyer) Tutsi and members of the Hutu opposition who had escaped death up to that point. In the months that followed, militia backed by the military made nightly visits to other locations where people at risk had taken refuge and removed groups of people to be executed. Anyone who was educated or had shown capacity for leadership was targeted first to ensure that the mass of victims would be left disorganized and unresisting for later slaughter. A substantial number of Catholic clergy were among the victims. The RTLM radio urged attackers not to repeat the mistake of sparing children, as had been done in previous massacres. The killers, some of whom had a radio in one hand and a machete in the other, heeded the advice and slaughtered children as well as adults.

Reliable accounts describe the heroism of some Rwandan authorities, both civilian and military, who sought to prevent or halt the slaughter in their regions. Unfortunately, their efforts proved futile in most cases. Military officers who tried to maintain order or to save threatened civilians were themselves killed. The systematic murder of the Tutsi population continued even as forces of the RPF engaged the military in an advance on Kigali.

Although representatives of the RPF and the Rwandan army reportedly agreed to a cease-fire on June 14, the agreement never took effect. In tandem with the genocide, but quite distinct from it, the active fighting continued throughout the month of June. On July 4 the RPF took control of Kigali, prompting a mass exodus of Hutu soldiers and civilians to Zaire, Burundi, and Tanzania. In late October there were an estimated 1.2 million Rwandan refugees in Zaire, 270,000 in Burundi, and over 500,000 in Tanzania.

By the end of 1994, soldiers of the former Rwandan army and members of the militia were terrorizing the refugee camps, particularly in Zaire. Unrestrained either by authorities of the former Rwandan government or by authorities of the local government, they were murdering, raping, and stealing at will. They systematically intimidated any refugees who might have wanted to return to Rwanda and in several cases killed those who appeared ready to leave the camps. One of the most serious incidents occurred in late August in Kibumba camp where several hundred refugees awaiting transport were attacked by militia members. Thirty Rwandan boy scouts in Katale camp, who had been charged with organizing security and helping with food distribution, vanished in late September, apparently murdered because they had represented an obstacle to full militia control of the camp. Militia members also threatened expatriate members of the relief community in late 1994.

Soldiers in Zaire continued to be paid by the former Rwandan government and, as the year ended, were preparing to resume the war against the new government of Rwanda. At the end of October, these soldiers were apparently the assailants responsible for killing thirty-six civilians in an early morning raid in the northwestern prefecture of Gisenyi.

The New Government of Rwanda

The new government of Rwanda, headed by President Pasteur Bizimungu and Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu, was installed on July 21. Although the cabinet includes representatives from all the parties that signed the Arusha Accords except the MRND, the party responsible for the genocide, the new government is clearly dominated by the victorious Rwandan Patriotic Front. Speaking for the new authorities, the Minister of Justice announced plans to prosecute all those accused of having participated in the genocide. He disposed of absolutely no resources, however, to carry out the enormous task of bringing to justice thousands of killers

The former government had taken along all bank funds, vehicles, computers and other movable property in its retreat to Zaire. The Ministry of Justice, like other branches of the new government, had no funds to draw upon for salaries or equipment as it struggled to begin operations. The Minister appealed for international assistance, both in the form of seconded personnel_judges and prosecutors_and in the form of funds. As of early November, no significant international assistance had begun, either to the Justice Ministry or other parts of the government.

Findings of an investigation by Human Rights Watch/Africa indicate that the RPF troops killed hundreds of civilians as they advanced south and west through Rwanda prior to and just after the cease-fire in mid-July. They executed these unresisting civilians in groups ranging in size from several dozen to several hundred, often in regions where Tutsi had been massacred in large number. The victims, some of whom included Tutsi, were killed indiscriminately and were not interrogated before being killed. In an incident in late October, approximately forty persons were killed in the commune of Gisovu, and in early November, nine others were killed and thirteen wounded at Musebeya in the prefecture of Gikongoro.

RPF soldiers were also responsible for the removal of thousands of other persons, individuals, and small groups who were accused of having played a role in the genocide. Human Rights Watch/Africa documented several cases in which the accused were subject to interrogation and then summarily executed. Further investigation was needed to establish the number of such victims, but it was clearly at least in the hundreds. Thousands of those who disappeared could have in fact have been alive in detention, but given the initial absence of an administrative capacity to register and keep track of prisoners, it was impossible to know for sure who was in custody and who had been killed.

Approximately 10,000 of the people accused of involvement in the killings were detained in civilian prisons at the beginning of November. Thousands of others were imprisoned in irregular conditions at military camps, communal lockups, private houses, latrines, and shipping containers. Conditions in the regular prisons were deplorable, largely as a result of overcrowding and lack of resources. Sanitary conditions were lamentable, and dysentery was a major problem. Between two and seven prisoners died daily from this and other diseases at Kigali Central Prison. Prisoners at the regular prisons counted themselves lucky, however, because they were not subject to beatings or torture, as were those less fortunate persons who were detained in irregular facilities. About 20 percent of the prisoners in Kigali Prison had had some kind of preliminary hearing by early November. Some have been in detention since August, but the lack of personnel in the courts posed major obstacles to rapid processing of cases. Hundreds of persons were arrested every week and, given the paralysis of the judicial system, there was little prospect for speedy trials of the accused.

Various government authorities have repeatedly asserted that reprisal killings of those accused of genocide would be severely punished, and the government has in fact arrested several dozen of its own soldiers on charges that they killed civilians. To bring an end to reprisal killings, the government must have the resources to make its judicial system operational so that the accusations of participation in the genocide can be dealt with in an orderly fashion.

In the absence of a police force, the maintenance of order remained in the hands of the army, creating widespread fear. An atmosphere of insecurity was also heightened by frequent and bitter disputes over property. Refugees who left Rwanda decades ago had returned and appropriated property, including a large number of the houses and businesses in the capital. Authorities insisted that the original proprietors would be able to reclaim their property but, in many cases, those who tried to do so ended up being arrested, accused of having participated in the genocide by those who wished to keep their property. In some cases, property owners seeking to reclaim their houses were attacked outright by the squatters, who often have the support of local military forces.

The Right to Monitor

Until April, Rwandan human rights organizations were permitted to function_albeit in the face of growing threats. Numerous members of the human rights community, including Charles Shamukiga, Fidele Kanyabugoyi, Ignace Ruhatana, Patrick Gahizi, Father Chrysologue Mahame, S.J., and Abbé Augustin Ntagara, were massacred by the presidential guard immediately after the plane crash on April 6. Subsequently, Matthieu Uwizeye, a human rights activist and judge, was killed by Hutu extremists, as were Joseph Habarugira, Augustin Ruzindana, and Sylvestre Nkubili. Charles Mbabajende, permanent secretary of the human rights league LIPREDHOR, was executed by the RPF in Byumba. Among those singled out by Radio Mille Collines as "enemies" or "traitors" who "deserved to die" was human rights activist Monique Mujawamariya, executive director of the Rwandan Association for Human Rights and Public Freedoms, who narrowly escaped with her life.

Following the organization of a new government by the RPF, local human rights organizations resumed their activities and organized teams which have begun documenting the genocide. Although the new government agreed to allow U.N. human rights monitors to be posted inside Rwanda and professed to be open to investigations by local and international human rights organizations, the new government sometimes restricted access to particular areas. For example, the representative of the U.N. special rapporteur on Rwanda was refused permission to visit Butare Veterinary School. A representative of Human Rights Watch/Africa, who was investigating reports of abuses by the current Rwandan government, was intercepted by soldiers and discouraged from continuing her research. Out on the hills densely occupied by soldiers, many people were afraid to talk about abuses.



The Role of the

International Community

The international community, satisfied with the success of the Arusha Accords in August 1993, found itself faced with a terrible defeat nine months later. Following the plane crash, the beginning of the massacres, and the resumption of the civil war, the U.N. and the U.S. initially reacted with retreat, confusion, and lethargy. This apparent indifference, combined with the lack of any reaction by the international community to the massacres in Burundi in October and November 1993, made the Rwandan Hutu extremists think that they too could kill with impunity.

U.N. Policy

The Rwandan tragedy should have come as no surprise to the international community. Repeated warnings by human rights activists, as well as sources within the Habyarimana government, combined with the broadcasts by Radio Mille Collines, sent a clear signal that a crisis was imminent. But neither the U.N. nor any individual nation took any effective action to avert the disaster. When the massacres began, UNAMIR troops did not even draw their guns to defend themselves_a result of their limited mandate which extended only to monitoring, as well as insufficient arms and equipment. If UNAMIR had intervened rapidly and firmly in the first week, the massacres might not have turned into genocide. On April 21 when the U.N. Security Council withdrew all but a token number of UNAMIR troops, the de facto authorities were encouraged to extend the scope of the killings.

Even in the face of convincing proof of the true nature of the massacres, a few Security Council members refused to acknowledge that they constituted genocide. Part of the reason may have been that Jacques Roger Booh-Booh, the Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General in Rwanda, who appears to have been sympathetic to the self-proclaimed regime throughout his tenure, repeatedly characterized the slaughter as free-for-all fighting between the RPF and the army. Finally, after eight hours of discussion, the Council adopted a declaration on April 30 that used all the terminology of the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, but paradoxically rejected the usage of the term "genocide" itself. The members of the Council apparently wanted to avoid the obligation to act under the terms of the Convention, which requires its signatories to "prevent and punish" this crime against humanity.

Faced with the horror in central Rwanda and the mass exodus of refugees to Tanzania on April 29, delegates from the Czech Republic, New Zealand, Spain, and Argentina took steps to persuade the other states represented on the Security Council to send more troops to Rwanda with an expanded mandate. On May 17 the Council finally authorized the deployment of UNAMIR II, with up to 6,800 soldiers, including ninety police, to defend displaced persons, refugees, and civilians in danger. However, internal U.N. conflicts and bureaucracy caused further delays. The poor countries that had agreed to provide troops and the rich countries that had agreed to provide equipment continuously begged each other to deliver what they had promised. Moreover, the key actors seemed unwilling to expedite their normal decision-making processes. In late June a contingent of French troops entered Rwanda and established a peacekeeping zone in the southwestern region of the country. The Security Council welcomed the French intervention, which lessened pressure on the U.N. for speedy action. As of early November, only 5,254 UNAMIR II soldiers were in place; their numbers included only thirty police.

Shamefully absent at the moment of the killings, the international community is now moving slowly to bring those guilty to justice. On July 1 the Security Council voted to establish a Commission of Experts to examine crimes against humanity perpetrated in Rwanda since April 6 and to advise on the desirability of further proceedings through an international tribunal. After several months of study, the Commission recommended establishment of an international tribunal to try those accused of these crimes. In early November the Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to consider genocide, crimes against humanity and other violations of international humanitarian law. The Tribunal will be expanded by the addition of two trial chambers. The Tribunal will share an appeals chamber with the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and will be served by the same chief prosecutor, South African jurist Richard Goldstone. Rwanda, which has a seat on the Security Council, voted against the resolution_largely because the International Tribunal would not have the power to order the death penalty. The government of Rwanda did agree, however, to cooperate with the Tribunal.

In an extraordinary session held in May, the U.N. Commission for Human Rights recommended that a special rapporteur and human rights field officers be sent to investigate the genocide in Rwanda. In reports published in June and July, Special Rapporteur René Degni-Ségui documented the genocide and other human rights violations. The first U.N. human rights field officer arrived in Rwanda on June 10 but received none of the personnel or resources needed to carry out her important charge. In August the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights promised 147 observers, but only fifty-two were in place by early November. They received almost no training and had great difficulty obtaining vehicles and communication equipment.

U.N. human rights monitoring efforts were further undermined by a conflict between U.N. departments. In September the UNHCR published a report charging the RPF with systematic revenge killings and suspended further repatriation of refugees. U.N. authorities in Kigali, including UNAMIR and representatives of the U.N. Center for Human Rights, publicly challenged the validity of the report. They subsequently investigated the charges in a cursory fashion before declaring them unfounded.

U.S. Policy

From the beginning of the Rwandan civil war on October 1, 1990, the U.S. tried to play the role of "honest broker" between the Rwandan government and the RPF. This strategy, reasonable at the beginning of the conflict, appeared to have attained its greatest success with the signing of the Arusha Accords in August 1993.

Aware of the Rwandans' preparations in anticipation of the resumption of civil war and shocked by the extent of the killings, the executive branch responded by setting up, in the first week of the crisis, an inter-agency working group, which included among its members representatives from the Pentagon, the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency. According to one of the participants, this working group asked all the necessary questions but never formulated effective answers.

The U.S. remained constrained by its earlier interpretation of the situation as a civil war and failed to confront the genocide that was launched as part of a strategy for winning the war. The priority of the U.S. was to achieve a cease-fire and a return to the terms of the Arusha Accords. When this misplaced strategy proved unsuccessful, the U.S. had no alternative plan of action. Certain White House officials counseled that military intervention would be useless because they believed that the war resulted from deeply rooted "tribal hatreds" which, "because they had always existed," would continue forever. A few weeks after the massacres had begun, when it had long been evident that genocide was taking place, a senior member of the Clinton administration ordered officials not to speak of "genocide" because the use of this term could increase the moral pressure on the President and force him to act. Only in mid-June, in the face of Congressional outrage and a rash of critical articles in the press, did Secretary of State Warren Christopher finally invoke the term.

Focused on the combat between armies, the U.S. failed to deal with the massacres of civilians_which were clearly more than simple and inevitable consequences of the war. American officials refused to consider asking the Pentagon to jam broadcasts of Radio Mille Collines through which the murder squads were directed, as human rights activists and members of Congress had asked. They likewise refused to organize the international community to condemn the massacres and to isolate the de facto government for its having been established on the basis of genocide. The rump genocidal regime was permitted to operate out of the Rwandan Embassy in Washington and to represent Rwanda at the U.N.

Members of Congress expressed their concern about the massacres and pressured the administration for more action. On April 26 the Senate passed a resolution condemning the systematic massacre of civilians in Rwanda. The House Subcommittee on African Affairs held hearings on the subject on May 4, and the Senate held hearings in July. These efforts had little effect due to the American public's lack of interest. Public pressure on President Clinton to act developed only later, after the mass exodus of refugees to Goma.

The decision of the U.S. to restrict its role in Rwanda to traditional diplomacy was most significant for its impact on U.N. policy in the crisis. The U.S. supported the formation of UNAMIR in October 1993, even though the vote in the Security Council took place on the day after eighteen American soldiers were killed in Somalia. By April 1994, however, the specter of U.S. troop losses in Somalia had come to haunt Washington, and U.S. officials sought only to limit U.N. peacekeeping in Rwanda.

Rwanda was the first case to be treated under Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD 25), which dictated that the U.S. would provide military or financial support only to peacekeeping operations that met certain criteria: well-defined objectives and a plan to attain them, a detailed budget, a cease-fire between belligerents and their agreement to the presence of U.N. forces, a relatively fixed date for the termination of the operation, and an indication of countries that would make soldiers available.

Given the weak roles played by Belgium_because of the prior withdrawal of its soldiers_and France_because of its close relationship with Habyarimana's government, the U.S. played a key role in the U.N.'s decision to withdraw the majority of UNAMIR forces in late April. The long delay in deploying UNAMIR II was also largely a result of U.S. intransigence.

To its credit, the U.S. government actively encouraged the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, José Ayala Lasso, to become involved in investigating and condemning the mass slaughter. Only a few days after meeting with John Shattuck, the State Department's Assistant Secretary for Human Rights, in mid-May, Ayala Lasso called for the appointment of a special rapporteur on Rwanda and convened a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Following the French entry into Rwanda in late June, the U.S. government deferred to the French. The U.S. did not call upon the French to jam the radios and arrest persons involved in genocide. Nor did the U.S. speak to the need for other governments, such as Tanzania and Zaire, to arrest suspected mass murderers who had fled to refugee camps there or provide the means to help them do it. Meanwhile, the deployment of a proposed African UNAMIR enhancement stalled, with no additional men made available for want of equipment from the West.

Only after the RPF had taken over all of Rwanda except the French zone and announced the formation of a national government did the Clinton administration take its first actions to stigmatize and denounce those who had committed genocide. On July 14 President Clinton announced that he would close the Rwandan Embassy in Washington, D.C. and freeze the assets of Rwandans in the U.S. The U.S. government also announced that it would seek the expulsion of the rump government from Rwanda's seat at the U.N.

In late July the U.S. stepped up its relief efforts in Rwanda. The U.S. contributed over $237,000,000 in emergency assistance to Rwanda between April and mid-November 1994. Like the rest of the international community, the U.S. conditioned direct bilateral assistance on the new government's human rights record.

The Work of

Human Rights Watch/Africa

Before the Rwandan genocide began, Human Rights Watch/Africa attempted to alert the international community to the imminent crisis and to assist Rwandan human rights groups in monitoring an increasingly dangerous situation. Following the April 6 attacks on Tutsi and members of Rwandan civil society, the organization tried to protect its colleagues and to facilitate evacuation, where possible. It also focused on persuading decision makers and the press to call the killing "genocide" instead of labeling it "tribal bloodletting" and worked to get a new and enlarged U.N. force with a broader mandate sent back to Rwanda to halt the massacres. In addition, it lobbied the U.N. Human Rights Commission to send a special rapporteur to investigate the situation and prepared documentation for his inquiries.

At the height of the genocide, Human Rights Watch/Africa published a report entitled Genocide in Rwanda: April-May 1994 as well as numerous news releases, articles, and editorials denouncing the genocide and demanding an international response. In May the organization brought a lawsuit in U.S. federal district court on behalf of Tutsi Rwandans living in the United States against the head of the CDR for his role in inciting the genocide.

Human Rights Watch/Africa undertook missions in mid-August and again in October to gather documentation on the genocide and to monitor the human rights situation.

The organization is currently attempting to ensure that those individuals guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity are brought to justice in an orderly fashion. To this end, it welcomed the establishment of the international tribunal and urged governments to contribute funds, equipment, services, and expert personnel and to collaborate in apprehending former Rwandan leaders. Human Rights Watch/Africa is also advocating for increased international assistance to the Rwandan judiciary.

The organization continues to report on and seek to deter abuses, including vengeance killings, by or with the acquiescence of the new government. It is assisting Rwandan colleagues in rebuilding the human rights movement, encouraging them to remain representative of the entire spectrum of ethnic and political groups in the country.