Misinformation About Kibeho: How It Started

According to Wikipedia: “The camp at Kibeho, which held between 165,000 to 200,000 persons, was one of the more gruesome sights of the genocide, where 4000 to 8000 people were killed. The worst of the killings took place over the weekend of April 22, 1995.”

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibeho

First of all, what happened at Kibeho was not part of what is generally accepted to be THE Rwandan genocide: the mass murder of ethnic Tutsi and politically moderate Hutu in 1994. What happened at Kibeho involved displaced Hutu whose camp was ordered closed by (Tutsi) Rwandan authorities a year AFTER the genocide.

While Rwandan troops did fire on the displaced within the camp, there was resistance to the closure from WITHIN the camp itself by Hutu extremists armed with guns, grenades, machetes and spears. Many innocent victims among the displaced were killed by these extremists, not by Rwandan troops.

Now, about that 8,000 death toll. I know what happened because I spoke to the key individuals involved (and I was there). Among the reporters at Kibeho there was one for a major news agency known in Africa at the time for its proclivity to sensational leads, who was advised by the press spokesperson for a major NGO (also his girlfriend) that aid workers had counted 4,000 bodies but had only toured HALF the Kibeho camp. So the reporter doubled the count, leading to the wire report of “8,000” massacred at Kibeho.

Aside from the flawed methodology, many of what were counted as bodies proved to be burlap bundles discarded by the displaced inside the camp as they attempted to flee. These were barely distinguishable from actual corpses. However, some of the bundles WERE bodies, just not dead ones. I know this because of an incident that took place as aid workers, UN officials and reporters toured Kibeho. One of the touring party stepped on a presumed “corpse.” The “corpse” got up and walked away, to the shock and amusement of the group. Between the discarded bags counted as bodies and the bodies that were still alive, the initial estimate of 8,000 dead was clearly indefensible.

Even the UN commander in Rwanda, in an interview with me (mentioned in the post for 7/5/07) cut the estimate of dead from 4,000 to 2,000 --- DURING the course of our interview. He had mentioned the 4,000 figure when an aide leaned over and whispered in his ear. He then restarted the same sentence but changed 4,000 to 2,000.

A UN military forensic specialist later lowered the number of dead even further --- to several hundred. Rwanda’s government estimated the number of dead as 300 or so.

Human Rights Watch, in its 1995 annual report on Rwanda, mentions the 8,000 death toll but also reduces it to 2,000 and notes the Rwandan lower estimate. It said the following:

"On April 18, the soldiers fired in the air to herd the residents into the center of the Kibeho camp. Thousands of persons panicked and stampeded, causing the deaths of nine persons. In a series of incidents between April 20 and 22, the troops fired directly into the crowd, using machine guns as well as rock-propelled grenades, killing thousands of people.

"On April 23, they chased and shot at unarmed civilians, including children, who were attempting to flee the carnage. During the nights of April 20 and 21, unidentified assailants killed and wounded dozens of camp residents in attacks with machetes. Rwandan authorities cited these attacks and the wounding and death of several RPA soldiers on April 22 as evidence that troops faced a serious threat and were justified in firing. Several hundred troops of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), the U.N. peacekeeping force, were present at Kibeho during the massacre but failed to execute their mandate to protect the displaced.

"On April 23, UNAMIR soldiers assisted RPA soldiers in burying some of the dead, who were estimated by U.N. officers to number 8,000. Other victims were not buried but rather were thrown in latrines or were removed from the camp in trucks for disposal elsewhere. The Rwandan government sharply contested the U.N. figures and announced that fewer than 400 had been killed. Later, U.N. officials lowered the estimate of those killed to about 2,000."

Source: http://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/WR96/Africa-08.htm#P599_141723