Essay On Rwanda Genocide

For years, Rwanda has been a hotbed of racial tension. The majority of the Rwandan population is made up of Hutu's, with Tutsi's making up the rest of it. Ever since European colonial powers entered the country and favoured the Tutsi ethnic group over the Hutu by putting Tutsi people in all important positions in society, there has been a decisive political divide between the two groups. This favouring of the Tutsi over the Hutu, and the Hutu subjugation as an ethnic lower class resulted in the civil war and revolution of 1959, where the Hutu overthrew the Tutsi dominated government, and resulted in Rwanda gaining their independence in 1962.

The Hutus are now in the position of power; the Hutu officials began to carry out massive genocides on the Tutsis. According to Document 8 it states, “The Hutu officials who took over the government organized the murders [of Tutsis] nationwide…Meanwhile, when the murders started the RPF [Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front] in Uganda invaded Rwanda again.” This quote demonstrates the back and forth genocide each ethnic group is imposing on each other. The genocide in Rwanda was sparked by the death of the Hutu Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, when his place was shot down. Many Hutus blamed the Rwandan Patriotic Front and instantly started campaigns of slaughter. This also provided additional reasons why the Hutu had hatred against the Tutsis. According to Document 9a it states, “Over the course of the genocide nearly one million people were killed.” This shows how extreme the genocide was and how extensive the genocide

Rwanda is a country located in the middle of the African continent. The two ethnic groups present in the country lived in peace under their monarch until the arrival of Europeans. The Belgians arrival into Rwandan is what split the two ethnic groups of the Tutsi and Hutus, making them identify themselves with ID cards. This caused tension between the two groups as the Belgians favored the ethnic Tutsi, and made them the head of the government. Decade’s later Hutu extremists would take over the government and have revenge on the Tutsi. The new government would send out broadcasts calling on Hutus to kill their friends and neighbors. The Rwandan genocide would become the worst genocide to ever happen in Africa and one of the worst in the world. Today Rwanda’s recovery is surprisingly fast with the help of multiple nations and organizations. Rwanda’s recovery is nothing short of a miracle and is an amazing story of a war between two peoples.

The Hutu started to go door to door killing the Tutsi with machetes, cubs or any hand weapons they could get their hands on to because bullets were to expense for the Hutu to affored, about.com says (“Some of the victims were given the option of paying for a bullet so that they'd have a quicker death”). The reason why the Hutu would know who was a Tutsi was because they would look at their identity card that would have what they were, a Hutu, a Tutsi or a Twa. All the Tutsi men & children were killed as soon as they were found, but some of the women would be kept & tortured before being killed & in many causes they would be raped first then killed adding humiliation to the mix of all things. The killing lasted about 100 days or 4 months averaging about 800,000 Tutsi men & women died. The slaughter stop because the RPF came into play, the RPF or known as the Rwandan Patriotic Front is a trained military made up of Tutsi people that was made some years before. The RPF forced matter into their own hands & went into Rwanda to take over, they came out wining but at the same time the flet like if they “had lost because they have had wished to get here sooner than later” says a Tutsi

With over eight hundred thousand to one million deaths, the Rwandan genocide is undoubtedly one of the most sad and shocking examples of the lack of intervention by not only the US and the UN, but by other countries as well. The ongoing tensions between the Hutu, the largest population in Rwanda, and the Tutsi, the smaller and more elite population is what eventually lead to the Rwandan genocide. The killings began quickly after President Habyarimana 's plane was shot down. After hundreds of thousands of deaths, the US did not intervene in Rwanda because being a landlocked country with no natural resources to benefit the US, there was no economical benefit, and the risk of sending in troops simply outweighed the rewards. The aftermath of the genocide has not only impacted those who lived through it, but it has also impacted future generations as well. At the end of the genocide, the ICTR was formed by the UN to find justice. The Rwandan genocide has shocking similarities between the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide as well. Overall, the Rwandan genocide was a terrible event that escalated far beyond what it should have if there had been intervention from other countries and the UN.

The Hutu had no heart when they brutally killed the large percentage of Tutsi all they cared about was cleaning their country of the “Cockroaches” as they would say.

Propaganda was an elaborate and essential tool used extensively by Hitler and the Nazi's as well as the Hutu's during their terrorizing reign of Germany and throughout Europe and the Hutu's horrific acts of genocide that happened because of a culmination of deep ethnic tensions brewing over a century and intense political corruption. Not only was it used to promote and endorse the party and its leader's extreme racist values but also to mask the horrifying truths of what was to become known as the Holocaust and the Rwanda Genocides.

Everyone was getting killed, only a few survived. Laura was the only one in London because everyone else had died. A lot of people died in South Africa. I just wanted to cry because there were so many people who died, fathers, mothers, uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers. It makes me want to tear up and just save everyone. Dogs ate the dead bodies after someone found on the ground to die afterwards. Also, the bodies all over the place.

I am leaving my country because of the persecution in Rwanda against the Tutsis. In the country, they are being slaughtered without reason. I am leaving because I am afraid of the Hutu because they want more control and power over all of Rwanda and are killing people to do so. I am afraid of them because they are killing people who are Tutsis like me. They are doing this because during colonial times under the Belgian rule. The Tutsi aristocracy or elite was distinguished from Tutsi commoners, and wealthy Hutu were often indistinguishable from upper-class Tutsi. If I were to return there is no telling what torture I might be put thru I would be killed, tortured, sold, or have all my rights stripped away in an instant. It would be easy to tell if I were to return. They may overhear my family talking about my arrival, might see me and ask for ID, one of my friends or neighbors may rat me out to be spared. The people being persecuted are indeed just like me. Rwandan. Even if your half Hutu your still a target, as well as Hutus against the killings of the Tutsis.

The world’s history has been tainted by many instances of violence targeted at specific groups of people due to either their ethnicity or beliefs. This paper will discuss the characteristics of the Rwanda Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust. The Rwanda Genocide targeted the Tutsis because of their ethnicity, while the Holocaust targeted the Jews because of their ethnicity and religion.

Genocide is a powerful word. International law requires intervention if something is deemed genocide. There is no doubt that the Holocaust is the most famous and most studied case of genocide, although there have been numerous throughout history. One of the more recent is the Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 people were killed (United Human Rights). The two have several similarities and differences in their origins, exterminations and aftermath.

At the start of the 1994 Rwandan genocide 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed, during this conflict. Many of the surviving Rwandans who were lucky to escape the conflict poured over the border into the neighboring eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Shortly after the tragic genocide a new Tutsi government was formed and established in Rwanda, more than two million Hutus sought to seek refuge in eastern Congo. According to sources and The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that only 7% of the refugees who fled to eastern Congo were actual perpetrators of the genocide. These people are often referred to as Interhamwe or FDLR the Federation for the Liberation of Rwanda.

The Belgians also decreed that Tutsis should be the only ones in power and thus removed Hutus from positions of power and excluded them from higher education (Arraras). “By assuring the Tutsis’ monopoly of power the Belgians set the stage for future conflict in Rwanda” (Arraras). The Tutsis were enjoying their status as being superior to the Hutus but all that changed in 1959 with the Hutu revolution and so in 1960 and 1961 the Hutus won the elections. Since then, ethnic tensions had always been brewing between the Hutus and the Tutsis. However the tensions escalated when Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down above Kigali airport on April 6, 1994. I consider this to be a form of political violence because someone or a group that opposed this President which represented only the political interests as well as the viability of the Hutus had to be killed in order for another group possibly the Tutsis to fill the vacuum of power left by the Hutu president. The Hutus blamed the assassination of their president on the Tutsis and in turn sparked an all out massacre waged on to the Tutsi people.

Human rights are known as “inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled to simply because he or she is a human being”. These rights are known to be universal and are the same to everyone living on earth. These rights are said to exist in both national and international law. The Universal Declaration of Human rights, which is supported by fifty countries across the globe, attests to this definition and backs up the idea that all people are equal and have the right to pursue happiness no matter who they are, where they are from, their skin color, age, or sex, etc. If these countries believe these things to be true, why was there not a mass intervention when

Beginning April of 2004, the Rwandan Hutu started mass murders of Tutsi. This genocide is believed to have spawned from the civil war that was taking place at that time. This civil war was based on issues over power and resentment between the Tutsi and the Hutu. (Rwanda, 2008) Eventually the war escalated to the point where the Hutu began genocide of the Tutsi and anybody who opposed the ideas of the Hutu. The killing of the Tutsis became so common—in a very short amount of time—that it was practically acceptable amongst the Rwandans. (Hintjens, 1999) This was a very brutal and gruesome genocide. In just five weeks, approximately half a million Tutsi and innocent civilians had been murdered. (Hintjens, 1999) This is an astounding number of people, especially because the Hutu murdered the Tutsi at knife point—usually with a machete. (Snow, 2008)