Weech 4 The Stain of the Rwandan Genocide: 1994 An Interview with Prudence Bushnell By Katherine Weech America in the 20th Century World Instructor: Mr. Whitman 19 February 2009 Weech 5 Table of Contents - Release Forms 2-3 - Statement of Purpose 4 - Biography of Prudence Bushnell 5 - Historical Contextualization Paper 7 - Transcription 18 - Time Indexing Log 39 - Analysis Paper 41 - Works Consulted 47 Weech 6 Purpose Statement The purpose of the American Century Oral History Project interview with Prudence Bushnell is to further investigate the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 and what role the United States played during it. This interview will show the horrors and obvious crisis of the genocide. If not for the interview with Prudence Bushnell, one important perspective of this historical event would be lost. Weech 7 Biography of Prudence Bushnell Prudence Bushnell was born on November 26, 1946, in Washington, D.C. She is married to Richard Buckley, a former lawyer, and has 5 step-children and 11 grandchildren. Daughter of a diplomat, she spent sixteen of her first nineteen years overseas. She has lived in Germany, France, Pakistan, Iran, Senegal, India, Kenya, Guatemala, and the United States. Bushnell had a very diverse educational background. She went to an American school in Germany for first and second grade. She went to part of third and fourth grade in Fairfax County, Virginia, and then went to fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade in a school in France. Her ninth, tenth and eleventh grades of high school were spent at the Karachi American School located in Pakistan, and then she graduated high school from the Tehran American School located in Iran. She spent one more year in Iran, and then came back to the United States to study at a women’s college for two years, and then ended up transferring to the University of Maryland. Bushnell earned a Bachelor of Science degree (B.S.) and a Master of Science (M.S.) Public Administration degree through her studies. Her first job was working as a bilingual secretary at the Embassy of Morocco in Washington, D.C. From there, she went on to become a Conference Coordinator, Management Trainer, Management Consultant, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Ambassador of Kenya, Ambassador of Guatemala, Weech 8 and then Dean of Leadership/Management School. Through her work in the Department of State, Bushnell was responsible for the Rwanda and Burundi portfolios, and dealt with multiple issues through the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. As the Ambassador to Kenya, she had to help restore their community after an Al Qaeda bombing of the Embassy in 1998. As Ambassador to Guatemala in 1999, she helped Guatemala to be more involved in organic and specialty coffees. After resigning as U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala in 2002, Bushnell became the Dean of the Leadership/ Management School at the Foreign Service Institute. She is currently living with her husband in Falls Church, Virginia. Weech 9 The Stain of the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 Rwanda is a beautiful country with a very troubling history. It is a place in the world that has suffered tremendously over the years, but is especially known for the unimaginable terror that occurred there in the mid-1990s. The geography of Rwanda relates to and helped fuel the tensions amongst its people. Located on the continent of Africa, Rwanda is landlocked and consists mainly of grasslands and hills. It is a small country has a population of more than eight million people, making it one of the most densely populated countries in Africa. The hills allowed for separation and agonizing struggle among many. Because of this geography, Rwanda is characterized by the tension between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes, who are crowded together on this relatively tiny piece of land. This conflict between the tribes has continued for centuries. This persistent conflict and hatred ultimately resulted in a horrific mass murder, which is now known as the Rwandan Genocide. When the genocide broke out on April 6, 1994, governments around the world failed to intervene to stop the slaughter. In order to understand the perspective of someone who participated in decision-making in respect to the United States’ response to the Rwandan Genocide, it is important to first examine the historical roots and causes of this crisis and the relationship of the United States to Rwanda. The earliest settlements ever to be identified in Rwanda date all the way back to 10,000 B.C. The inhabitants at that time were people who hunted and gathered for their living. Their descendants are now known as the Twa, who make up a small percentage of the Rwandan population today. By about 700 B.C., farmers, now known as the Hutu, discovered this region’s wonderful highlands and forcibly moved the Twa off of the best land. A few hundred years later, a large migration occurred in which cattle herders came Weech 10 into Rwanda and became the dominant group. This group is now known as the Tutsi. According to David King, from about 1000 A.D. on, a king was known as a mwami, and it appears that all of the kings were Tutsi. By the 15th Century, a Tutsi leader and mwami, Reganzu Bwimba, established a kingdom near Kigali, and expansion by kings continued for years to come. Kigeri Rwaburigi of the 19th Century is considered to have been the greatest mwami, and he expanded Rwanda almost to where the country’s borders are recognized in present time (King 19). In pre-colonial times, cattle were identified with wealth and aristocracy. The Tutsi, being cattle herders, were able to amass wealth and land, which left the Hutu farming the land for them as second-class citizens. Divisions between Hutu and Tutsi revolved mainly around wealth and power, while both groups of people shared common customs, beliefs, and traditions. Ironically, the rise of colonialism brought about the idea that the Hutu and Tutsi were of different ethnicities. The new colonial perceptions and practices had the effect of making this concept practically a reality. For Rwanda, the start of the colonial period began with the Berlin Conference of 1884, in which European countries agreed to the General Act of the Berlin Conference which set out how to divide up the continent of Africa. Germany claimed, as part of German East Africa, the region then called Ruanda-Urundi, which is now known as the countries of Rwanda and Burundi. This event marked the beginning of the German Era. When the Germans came in, they observed the highly controlled hierarchy of Rwanda which consisted of neighborhoods, hills, districts, and provinces. The Hutu, who now accounted for the majority of the population, mainly ran the neighborhoods and obeyed the Tutsi who were generally ranked in power above them. Known as “the land of a Weech 11 thousand hills” (Power 336), Rwanda had many hills administered by hill chiefs. Above the hill chiefs, there were the district chiefs and provincial chiefs, who were nearly all Tutsi, and all reported to the King. The German rule did not last long and was not very severe from a control standpoint. The German era ended during World War I, between 1914 and 1918. In 1923, the League of Nations created Ruanda-Urundi as a League Mandate under Belgian rule. The Belgians maintained their control for about 40 years, until the end of the era of colonialism. Belgium was supposed to allow for freedom of speech and religion, but instead created a harsh environment. Forced labor began in order to build roads, but whipping of the workers became prevalent and many people left for Uganda to become migrant workers. Because of such cruel conditions, it is said that there was extreme suffering of the Hutus (Melvern 5). By 1933, divisions among the society were made more visible and rigid as the Belgians decided to require each Rwandan person to register for an identification card with the individual ethnic group listed as Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa. Author Linda Melvern said, “Every Rwandan was counted and measured: the height, the length of their noses, the shape of their eyes. For many Rwandans, though, it was not always possible to determine ethnicity on the basis of physical appearance” (Melvern 6). This separation based on specific ethnic groups allowed for the idea of race to become an issue. Under Belgian rule, the idea that some people were superior to others based on physical characteristics had the effect of strengthening the divide between the privileged and politically dominant Tutsi cattle herders and the Hutu farmers and Twa hunter-gathers. By 1950, the Belgians had begun to want Rwanda to be more democratic, and they began to gradually switch their support from the Tutsi minority to the Hutu Weech 12 majority. Throughout the 1950s, the Belgians encouraged the Hutu to participate more in politics and overcome the Tutsi political domination. As a continuation of the Hutu wanting to gain more power over the Tutsi, the Hutu created the Hutu Manifesto of March 24, 1957 that called for majority rule. This manifesto claimed that Tutsi supremacy was not legitimate and that the Hutu should be free from Tutsi rule. The Hutu started to believe that the Tutsi peoples were not Rwandans at all. As the movement toward independence from Belgian colonial rule took shape, the Hutu and Tutsi groups had different ideas of what might be the outcome. The Tutsi supported the idea of independence from the Belgians so that they could restore their rule as kings over the Hutu. Two years later, in 1959, the mysterious death of Tutsi king, Mwaami Rudahigwa, was thought to be the work of the Belgians and Hutu extremists.