1. Out of a total population of about 7.8 million, that is almost 13 per cent. An attempt at establishing a casualty figure can be found in F. Reyntjens, ‘Estimation du nombre de personnes tuées au Rwanda en 1994’, in S. Marysse and F. Reyntjens (eds), L’Afrique des grands lacs. Annuaire 1996–1997 (L’Harmattan, Paris, 1997), pp. 179–186. A census conducted by the Rwandan government in 2000 arrived at the comparable, but ridiculously precise, figure of 1,074,017 (République rwandaise, Ministère de l’Administration locale, de l’information et des affaires sociales, Dénombrement des victimes du génocide. Rapport final, Kigali, November 2002). However, it must be made clear that the two estimates do not reinforce each other, as the government figure claims that at least 94 per cent of the victims were Tutsi, an assumption contradicted by demographic data (Tutsi numbered well under one million) and empirical fact (about 200,000 Tutsi survived the genocide, and hundreds of thousands of Hutu died at the hands of other Hutu and the RPF).
2. On this, see F. Reyntjens, ‘Constitution-making in situations of extreme crisis: the case of Rwanda and Burundi’, Journal of African Law, 40 (1996), pp. 236–239.
3. However, already in November 1994, the main opposition party MDR published a document (Position du M.D.R. sur les grands problèmes actuels du Rwanda, 6 November 1994) quite critical of the new regime. Other early warnings can be found in Amnesty International, Reports of Killings and Abductions by the Rwandese Patriotic Front, April–August 1994 (London, October 1994); Human Rights Watch, The Aftermath of Genocide in Rwanda (New York, September 1994);
4. Human Rights Watch, Rwanda: A New Catastrophe? (New York, December 1994). In the same period, I publicly expressed concern in a November 1994 memo, a summary of which was later published in English (
5. F. Reyntjens, ‘Subjects of concern: Rwanda, October 1994’, Issue, 23, 2 (1995), pp. 39–43).