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CIAO DATE: 3/5/2007
The Use and Perception of Weapons Before and After Conflict: Evidence from Rwanda
Cécelle Meijer, Philip Verwimp
October 2005
Abstract
The majority of Rwanda’s population considers itself Hutu (more than 80 per cent), whereas a smaller group is referred to as Tutsi (about 15 per cent). The Twa are the smallest minority. In 1994, after four years of civil war, Rwanda descended into genocide. The Tutsi minority was the main target, but Hutu and Twa who were not willing to participate in the killings were also murdered. In fewer than three months, more than 500,000 people were brutally slaughtered.
Images of people wielding machetes at each other remain vivid to this day. Indeed, the machete has become the symbol of the Rwandan tragedy. In addition to this traditional tool, however, a variety of weapons and tools were used to execute the killings.
Recent quantitative research using a large-scale database of victims of genocide in Kibuye province shows that more young male adults with non-farm occupations were killed with firearms than any other group (Verwimp, 2003).1 This data also reveals that firearms, often in combination with grenades, were more frequently used in certain locations and events than in others; in partic- ular, they were used in large-scale massacres in which many Tutsi were killed simultaneously in the same location, such as the Gatwaro football stadium in the city of Kibuye, where thousands of people were killed.
That young Tutsi who were working in the modern sector of the economy had a higher probability of being killed with firearms is linked to factors constraining the behaviour of the perpetrators: they had to save ammunition and thus used firearms only against people who could mount resistance (Melvern, 2004).3 Consequently, the victims of firearms were young to middle-aged men with a respected status in the community. Moreover, the use of firearms and grenades—particularly wherever many Tutsi had gathered—was a cost-efficient approach to mass killings
