SUMMARY

FPR's (Front Patriotique Rwandais; Rwandan Patriotic Front) violence against civilians can be viewed as taking place in two phases; the first one beginning with the invasion of Rwanda in 1990, and the second with the initiation by the Government of Rwanda of the Rwandan genocide in April 1994.

In the first phase violence against civilians took place in the context of the FPR's war on the Government of Rwanda. War-making tactics employed by the FPR varied between guerrilla warfare and more conventional attacks on government forces, but in both cases the FPR often came upon villages and towns. FPR soldiers are known to have killed civilians in such attacks when engaging in looting, and also to have targeted Hutu members of the political parties that made up the Government of Rwanda.

In the second phase the FPR killed many non-combatants as they moved in from April to July of 1994 to stop the genocide being perpetrated against (primarily) the Tutsi minority. Many civilians thought to have taken part in the genocide were killed, and others were summarily executed when the FPR tried to establish control over the country and the government institutions. In these cases the vast majority of those killed were Hutu. There have also been credible reports stating that as the genocide began FPR summarily executed the families of government officials (of both high and low rank) in the areas they controlled.

Many Hutu civilians were also killed by FPR after having been denounced by other civilians as having taken part in the genocide. Although FPR had no pronounced general policy of killing those who had participated in the genocide there have been several reports of FPR soldiers –whether or not under orders to do so- having killed numerous civilians that were implicated in the genocide of Tutsis and Hutu moderates.

It is hard to point to any general motivation for the killings beyond the wish to establish control over the country through striking at institutions and individuals of government control and what would appear to be a ‘revenge’ motive on behalf of the primarily Tutsi FPR soldiers. FPR denies that any revenge policy was dictated from above, but it has been proven beyond doubt that such killings were perpetrated by FPR soldiers and also make up the bulk of those killed by the group.

FPR took effective control of the government institutions of Rwanda in July 1994 and is thus from this point on viewed as constituting the government side of the conflict. One-sided violence against civilians continued when FPR became the government of Rwanda, but is no longer coded as being carried out by FPR.

FPR first became active as a one-sided actor in UCDP data in 1990, when the one-sided violence resulted in at least 25 civilian deaths. The threshold was reached in December that year when the group killed over 50 civilians in Northern Rwanda.