Bugesera invasion

The Bugesera invasion, also known as the Bloody Christmas, was a military attack which was conducted against Rwanda by rebels called Inyenzi who aimed to overthrow the government in December 1963. The Inyenzi were a collection of ethnically Tutsi exiles who were affiliated with the Rwandan political party Union Nationale Rwandaise, which had supported Rwanda's deposed Tutsi monarchy. The Inyenzi opposed Rwanda's transformation upon independence from Belgium into a state run by the ethnic Hutu majority through the Parti du Mouvement de l'Emancipation Hutu, an anti-Tutsi political party led by President Grégoire Kayibanda. In late 1963, Inyenzi leaders decided to launch an invasion of Rwanda from their bases in neighbouring countries to overthrow Kayibanda. While an attempted assault in November was stopped by the government of Burundi, early in the morning on 21 December 1963, several hundred Inyenzi crossed the Burundian border and captured the Rwandan military camp in Gako, Bugesera. Bolstered with seized arms and recruited locals, the Iyenzi—numbering between 1,000 and 7,000—marched on the Rwandan capital, Kigali. They were stopped south of the city at Kanzenze Bridge along the Nyabarongo River by multiple units of the Garde Nationale Rwandaise. The GNR routed the rebels with their superior firepower, and in subsequent days repelled further Inyenzi attacks launched from the Republic of the Congo and Uganda.
Shortly after the invasion, the Rwandan regime moved to purge moderate Hutu and leading Tutsi politicians. About 20 opposition leaders from UNAR and the Rassemblement Démocratique du Rwanda were accused of collaborating with the rebels, arrested, and executed in Ruhengeri. Kayibanda assigned ministers in his government to each of the country's ten prefectures—dubbed "emergency regions"—and granted them emergency powers to defend them, including the responsibility of organising Hutu "self-defence" militias. The militias conducted systematic reprisals against Tutsis, with the most intense violence occurring in the prefecture of Gikongoro. Killings lasted into January 1964, with estimates of the death toll reaching as high as 20,000 Tutsi killed. Thousands more fled the country. The massacres provoked international outcry and accusations of genocide, which were denied by the Rwandan government. The invasion and subsequent reprisals left UNAR's domestic bases of support destroyed and resulted in Rwanda becoming a de facto one-party PARMEHUTU state, while the status of the GNR was also improved. Inyenzi attacks persisted for several years but were easily repulsed. There remains disagreement over whether the reprisal killings of Tutsis constituted genocide.

Background

Rwandan Revolution

Following the end of World War I in 1918, the victorious states partitioned the colonies of the defeated German Empire. Belgium was awarded the mandate of Ruanda-Urundi—two conjoined territories in East Africa—under the auspices of the League of Nations. In Ruanda, the Belgian colonial administration undermined the traditional monarchy, promoted Christianity, and centralised governance under their direct rule. As part of this, the Belgians institutionalised a racial hierarchy which favoured the Tutsi ethnic minority at the expense of the Hutu majority. The Belgians supported racial theories which held the Tutsis to be of superior, non-African origin and entrusted them with privileged access to education and administrative positions, while most Hutus were relegated to economic subservience to help Belgian businesses.
Ruanda's population became heavily Christian, and most of its Christians were Catholic. A small Hutu counter-elite began to form after World War II, consisting of persons who had been granted access to education and publications through the Catholic Church. Catholic officials maintained close links with the Hutu elite. The latter began to promote an ideology known as Hutu Power, which challenged Tutsi-minority domination of Ruanda as an exploitation of the majority by foreigners. One of the new leaders of the Hutu elite was Grégoire Kayibanda, a former seminarian who had edited Catholic publications. In October 1959 Kayibanda founded the Parti du Mouvement de l'Emancipation Hutu, a political party which called for the end of Tutsi domination of social life and rejected anti-European hostility and supported gradual democratisation. At around the same time, conservative Tutsi created the Union Nationale Rwandaise, a party which demanded immediate independence under the Tutsi monarchy. Other parties such as the Rassemblement Démocratique du Rwanda, a moderate grouping, were created but failed to gain popular traction. The Belgians began to show favour towards the staunchly Catholic and anticommunist Hutu elite, as the Tutsi elite and UNAR became more aligned with anticolonialism and socialism. Following a period of ethnic unrest in late 1959 and a Belgian military intervention, the colonial administration replaced a substantial amount of Tutsi chiefs with Hutus. In June 1960 the Belgians hosted municipal elections which were overwhelmingly won by PARMEHUTU.
In January 1961 thousands of Ruandan municipal officials gathered in Gitarama and, acting as a constituent assembly, voted to dissolve the monarchy and replace it with a presidential system. The proposed president, Dominique Mbonyumutwa, then requested that Kayibanda form a new government. This arrangement was later altered to give Kayibanda the presidency. In the September 1961 Rwandan parliamentary election, PARMEHUTU won an overwhelming majority of the seats in the Legislative Assembly. Concurrent to the elections was a referendum on the decision to abolish the monarchy; the population voted in favour of abolition. In February 1962 the United Nations brokered a compromise, the New York Accord, in attempt to ensure Rwandan politics remained inclusive. The agreement called for Kayibanda and PARMEHUTU to form a coalition government with UNAR, guaranteeing the latter two ministerial portfolios in the government. The accord split UNAR into an accommodationist faction committed to working through the coalition, and a restorationist faction intent on using armed force to attack the new government. The restorationist faction organized itself as "UNAR extérieure" in exile. On 17 May 1962 Michel Rwagasana, a leader of UNAR's accommodationist faction, declared before the Legislative Assembly that UNAR was committed to working with the Rwandan government. The restorationists were deeply angered by this statement and it resulted in a total fracture in the party between those who remained in Rwanda and those in exile.
Ruanda-Urundi became independent as the two states of Rwanda and Burundi on 1 July 1962. Kayibanda became President of Rwanda. Fearful of majority rule and facing violence, thousands of Tutsis fled to neighbouring countries. Burundi, which retained a Tutsi monarchy, was the most welcoming for the refugees. The UNAR restorationists formed a government-in-exile, with François Rukeba as Prime Minister. They hoped to place King Kigeli V Ndahindurwa back on the throne through force. However, the exiled UNAR elements were deeply divided, fragmented and disorganised. As they were spread across several countries, communication was arduous and slow, making coordinated actions difficult. The party organisation was also weak, and rivalries between different factions hampered the resistance against the Rwandan government: While the UNAR exiles were led by Kigeli and reactionary monarchists, a substantial left-leaning group existed at the basis. In exile, the UNAR's Marxist wing gradually grew more influential. Internal disagreements led to a reforming of the government-in-exile in May 1963 with Michel Kayihura as Prime Minister and Rukeba retained as Minister of Defence. In February 1963 Kayibanda dropped the UNAR ministers from his government.

Inyenzi and GNR

Early UNAR Tutsi insurgent activity was confined to acts of terrorism against specific individuals and families. As more Tutsi refugees fled Rwanda, UNAR's exile ranks grew, and more systematic attempts were made to raise bands of combatants to launch raids on targeted areas. Violence in Rwanda dramatically increased as Tutsis fled en masse in early 1960; the first acts of violence were retaliatory attacks by Tutsis against Hutu officials who had mistreated them, but by early 1962 planned raids had become predominant. These were intended to inflict maximum damage to the Hutu-dominated administration and were generally conducted without consideration for government reprisals on local Tutsis. By 1963, about 60,000 Tutsi refugees were living in the Republic of the Congo, 48,000 in Uganda, 25,000 in Burundi, and 16,000 in Tanganyika. As the insurgents were known to attack at night, they were called Inyenzi, meaning "cockroaches". It is unknown whether the rebels themselves or officials of the Kayibanda regime coined the term. While later used in a derogatory sense against Tutsis generally, most contemporary sources refer to the exile rebels with the term in a non-pejorative fashion. Alternatively, the rebels called themselves Inkotanyi. As a result of the rivalries among the UNAR exile leadership and their geographic division, the insurgents were never able to adopt a cohesive strategy or unified command structure. The People's Republic of China also provided the guerillas with training opportunities and financial support. The Tutsi rebels reportedly also enlisted some defectors of the Armée Nationale Congolaise, and were known to cooperate with Lumumbist factions in the Congo in the hopes of achieving future assistance against the Rwandan government. However, the Congolese, Ugandan, and Tanganyikan governments were opposed to the radicalisation of the refugees, and tried to curb Inyenzi activity on their soil. In February and March 1962 Inyenzi conducted two raids in the prefecture of Biumba, killing several Hutu policemen and civil servants. From 26 to 27 March the Hutu population of the prefecture retaliated by killing 1,000–2,000 Tutsi civilians, burning their homes, and looting their property.
PARMEHUTU leaders had an exaggerated fear of the Inyenzi, believing they could count on the support of 10,000 exile recruits and forge links with domestic Tutsis. In reality, the UNAR exiles were factionalised and may have possible only numbered several hundred rebels. To counter the threat, the Rwandan government fielded a 1,000-strong Garde Nationale Rwandaise, a force which was relatively poorly equipped and preoccupied with guarding Kigali and border outposts. Approximately 50 Belgian officers and subalterns aided it as coopérants techniques militaires. Despite the military's weaknesses, researcher Simone Paulmichl argued that the even more poorly armed and less organised Inyenzi had no realistic chance of defeating the GNR by 1963. According to researchers Tom Cooper and Adrien Fontanellaz, the GNR proved fairly effective in repelling Inyenzi attacks in the period leading up to the Bugesera invasion.