Genocide by Attrition 41 social, political, and economic “monopoly, which is held by one race, the Tutsi.”88 Two years later, the first major anti-Tutsi massacres occurred as part of the “Hutu Uprising.” Repeated outbursts of mass violence against Tutsi followed in 1963, 1973, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, and, of course, 1994.89 These outbreaks of violence served several purposes that reinforced one another over time. First, Hutu elites, who had consolidated political power at nearly all levels of government following the 1962 elections, directly benefited from the violence, providing an incentive to exploit anti-Tutsi feelings again and again when it served their strategic interests.90 Second, popular perceptions that Tutsi—increasingly and dehumanizingly labelled as inyenzi, or cockroaches, in official discourse— represented an existential security threat to Hutu became widely entrenched.91 Third, the resulting polarization framed the only solution to the “racial problem” in zero-sum terms, meaning “through a ‘victory’ of one group at the expense of the other.”92 These factors marginalized moderates on both sides of the “racial” divide.93 Consequently, compromise and power-sharing came to be seen as impossible—an ideological position that the Belgian colonial authorities and, later, the U.N. failed to combat despite the warning signs.94 The problematic identification requirements, which identified all Banyarwanda as either “Hutu” or “Tutsi,” remained in place for decades, even after the 1993 Arusha Accords included provisions to remove them as part of the agreement to end armed conflict in the Great Lakes Region.95 The ethnic-based identification documents also allowed Hutu perpetrators to carry out mass targeted killings during the 1994 genocide. For example, Hutu militias constructed barricades in urban areas and demanded travelers to show their national identification cards before letting people pass.96 One survivor explained, “I was obliged to chew my identity card when I reached a roadblock so that killers do not identify my ethnic group and kill me.”97 Other eyewitness accounts indicate that Tutsi were “generally killed on the spot.”98 Similarly, people traveling without their identification card were usually regarded as Tutsi by default and massacred as such.99 One eyewitness to the killings described how soldiers collected the identification cards from their victims as a record of kills: Soldiers had orders to take identity cards from those whom they killed. Captain Ildéphonse Nizeyimana regularly received these cards from his men as they reported on the progress of the killings. They often appeared at his house shortly after a volley of gunfire was heard and handed the cards to the captain with the report, ‘Mission Accomplished.’ In the captain’s absence, his wife received the cards.100 88 Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, pp. 43-44. 89 Deborah Mayersen, “‘Deep Cleavages that Divide’: The Origins and Development of Ethnic Violence in Rwanda,” Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2012, pp. 8, 13. 90 Id. at pp. 7-13. 91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid. 94 Id. at p. 5. 95 Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu, ICTR, Case No. ICTR-96-4-T, Judgement (Trial), September 2, 1998, para. 83. 96 Jean de la Croix Tabaro, “The Passport to Death: Story of Rwanda’s Notorious ID,” KTPress, July 13, 2015, https://www. ktpress.rw/2015/07/the-passport-to-death-story-of-rwandas-notorious-id/. The situation for people in Rwanda’s rural areas was different since neighbors generally knew one another’s ethnic identity. Hollie Nyseth Brehem, “Subnational Determinants of Killing in Rwanda,” Criminology, Vol. 55, No. 1, 2017, pp. 5-31. 97 Tabaro, “The Passport to Death: Story of Rwanda’s Notorious ID,” KTPress. 98 Ibid. 99 Longman, “Identity Cards, Ethnic Self-Perception, and Genocide in Rwanda,” p. 351. 100 Human Rights Watch, Leave None to Tell the Story, p. 92, fn. 60. See also, Magnarella, “Explaining Rwanda’s 1994 Genocide,” Human Rights & Human Welfare, p. 27; Guichaoua, From War to Genocide, pp. 214-215.