The wholesale killings of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutu population in Rwanda and of Rwandan Hutu refugees, Burundian Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutu citizens in DRC on the basis of their membership to Hutu ethnic group and without regard to their age, gender or nationality by the Rwandan Patriotic Army and its Congolese ally, the Alliance des forces démocratiques pour la libération du Congo-Zaïre (AFDL) rebel group are a crime of Genocide, according to Article 2 of the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Background
From October 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) waged war against the then Rwandan government. From the North of the country southward and into DRC, Hutu civilians suffered RPF mass atrocities in its seized areas ...
1. The acts committed on Hutu people
The attacks and killings on Hutu people by RPA and AFDL correspond to three prohibited acts under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ...
2. Hutu ethnic group as the targeted group
The systematic use of barriers by the AFDL/APR/FAB enabled them to identify people of Hutu origin by their name or village of origin and thus to eliminate them ...
3. Intent to destroy Hutu ethnic group
APR and AFDL intended to eliminate all the Hutu as the massacre of all men, women, children, the elderly and the sick from the Hutu communities, and only from these communities ...
Two separate reports by the United Nations, in 1997 and 1998, examined whether or not crimes of genocide had been committed against civilian Hutu population and Hutu refugees, and concluded that, according to Article of the 1948 Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide has been committed.
(Report from the joint mission tasked with investigating allegations of massacre and other violations of human rights in eastern Zaire (currently the DRC) from September 1996 (A/51/942), par. 80, and the Report of the Investigative Team of the Secretary General on serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in the DRC (S/1998/581))
3.1 Women and Children
Many women have undergone butchering, belly cutting and mutilation of their genitals or breasts. Pregnant women were targeted, Objects such as sharp metals pushed into the vagina ...
4. Identity of perpetrators
The identities of Kinyarwanda and Kiswahili-speaking ADFL and Rwandan troops have been intentionally hidden by the RPF and ADFL in order to protect those responsible for war crimes ...