Title : Rwanda's Ordinary Killers: interpreting popular participation in the Rwandan genocide
Working Paper No : 77 (series 1)
Author(s) : Omar McDoom
Date : December 2005
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Abstract: This paper
examines the question of why so
many ordinary Hutus participated in the genocidal killing of
Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994. The author finds that mass mobilisation
was contingent on the fulfilment of two main conditions.
Firstly, it required a mindset - the internalisation of a set of
historical and ideological beliefs - within the Hutu
population. These were predominantly beliefs in a historical
Hutu oppression at the hands of Tutsi and in an ideological
definition of the ongoing civil war as an ethnic one, a Tutsi
attempt to reinstate this historical order. Secondly, it
required the commitment of State institutions to the genocidal
project. This commitment provided the initial trigger,
legitimacy and impunity for civilian participation in an
anti-Tutsi programme. However, once triggered, the degeneration
into genocidal violence was the product of a complex interaction
of other motives ranging from coercion, opportunism,
habituation, conformity, racism and ideological indoctrination.