Genocide In Rwanda Genocide

The two ethnic groups that were include in the Rwanda Genocide was the Tutsis and Hutus. The Tutsis were the minority population in Rwanda, but they held all the positions of authority. On the other hand, the Hutu made up around 85% of Rwanda’s population, but held no political power, they were denied higher education and land ownership. The size of the nose and the color of the eyes were the factors that determined whether a person was Hutu or Tutsi. The Tutsis disapprove of the colonial rule of the Belgians and demanded to become more independent. After World War II, the Tutsis felt impatient and that it was time they took matters in their own hands to pursuit their independence. In 1959, the tension and violence between the Tutsis and Hutus were greatly increased.

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

On the day of April 6th 1994, the mass murders sparked a ferocious wave of bloody reprisals as thousands of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered over the next three months, killing almost 10,000 people everyday. Hutu extremists were told to load up on weapons like knives, guns, axes, whatever they could find so they could kill tutsis. They could do whatever they wanted to the Tutsis. The Hutu government said “Spare no one, especially the babies.” The Hutus goal was to kill every Tutsi in Rwanda. As told by Border guards, people have been floating down the river in hundreds everyday for weeks. Many bodies had their hands tied behind their backs. They were either shot, hacked, clubbed, burned, or drowned.

1.In a book called, Survival Against the Odds, where 11 year old Valentina tells her story and there was a quote from Sylvestre Gacumbitsi (the Mayor of her city), "He shouted: "We are the interahamwe. We are about to eliminate every Tutsi so that in the future no-one will even know what a Tutsi looked like. If anyone is hiding in this church by mistake, because really he or she is a Hutu, they should tell me now."

On 6 April 1994, the worlds attention was shifted to the small, nation of Rwanda in africa. In the time following of the assassination of President Habyarimana, the ethnic Hutu majority began a deliberate the hutu extremist were known as R.P.F., carefully planned to eradicate the Tutsi population in any means necessary. When Rwanda gained independence, the Hutu majority took over of the political bodies and held a grudge against the tutsi minority. The Tutsi were for the most part had more money and were better educated. For this reason they were seen as spoiled so the hutus wanted what they had and example of class separation. After the R.P.F. took over the Rwandan government, they placed Tutsis in all the head positions of leadership. Starting in the late nineteen eighties , there were terrible massacres of the Tutsis people. A system of identification cards was put in place in to “ethnicity.” In 1990, a Tutsi majority rebel group, invaded Rwanda from Uganda, bringing more tension. The belgians coined the nickname “inyenzi”, meaning “cockroaches.” Racial slurs, hate media and negative propaganda escalated tensions to the point where political parties were forming militias and practically waiting for something to light the fuse. The flame that lit that fuse, came form the assassination of Rwandan long time favorite president, Juvenal Habyarimana. The identity of the person or persons that shot the rocket that hit his plane as it was landing is a mystery that has never

Damascene said, “The soldiers fired their guns in the air to rally the killers . . . and the killers came running, screeching like animals and waving their machetes”. This shows that the Hutu extremists didn’t care about any Tutsi or even a strategy to kill. They just ruthlessly killed anyone they could with the excuse that they had to act first before the Tutsis attacked them. This is why power of the Hutu soldiers caused the

At the end of World War I, Belgium accepted the League of Nations authorization to govern the Ruanda-Urundi territory. Which later became Rwanda and Burundi. Two separate territories. Prior to Belgian rule, the African native people coexisted amongst each other and lived in peace under the same religion and spoke the same language. That was until the Belgian caused division amongst the people.They divided the people based on physical features. The Belgium announced that the Tutsis were more superior due to their visible features which included those with longer pointier noses, lighter skin, those who were taller, and had more elegance. The Hutus were the opposite. They were; dark, short and strong. They weren’t exactly sophisticated. Government

On April 4, 1994, Hutu President, Juvenal Habyaimana and another Hutu leader, Cyprien Ntaryamira were on an airplane flying back to Rwanda. The plane was shot down and everyone on board was killed. The Hutu people blamed the terrorist attack on the RPF political group. They began to create hit lists for the Hutu militia to kill all of the Tutsi officials. Roadblocks were set up by the Hutu and if Tutsi people tried to pass, their IDs were checked. If they had any form of Tutsi identification, they were killed. The slaughter was just getting started. Neighbors were killing neighbors. Friends were killing friends. Family was killing family. Even religious leaders were killing the Tutsi people. There was thought to be no stop to the slaughter. (BBC)

In between 1930 and 1945, an event took place that changed the world in many ways. The Holocaust was a genocide that consisted of the decimation of one single race, the Jews. This solemn event is very similar (and also quite different) to another event that took place only four thousand miles away. Like the Holocaust, this event is was a genocide and it took place at Rwanda in 1994. This genocide was between the Hutus and Tutsis. These two groups have a long background with each other that consisted of civil wars, switches in power and superiority, and tension. It began when the Europeans put the Tutsis in a superior position because they were the ones that closely resembled them, the Europeans, in physical appearance. It was the death of

Throughout the 1600s to the mid 1990s, the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda, and the Hutu tribe of Rwanda have always been arch enemies. Although the Hutus have had a prolonged hate for the Tutsi tribe, this hate was not physically expressed, until 1994. From April to July of 1994, over 80,000 Tutsi people were murdered and tortured for their African heritage. The Rwanda genocide is considered to be one of the worst massacres the world has ever seen since the Holocaust. This paper will touch a few things that occurred after the massacre, and will also answer the questions of why this massacre started, what occurred during this genocide. The Rwandan genocide was a massacre based off of discrimination and hatred for a specific tribal group. This

On the 7th of April 1994, Rwanda experienced the first signs of genocide when the Hutu's used radio signals to send out. hate messages such as “cockroaches”, and “rats”, towards Tutsis.1 Hutus started to send radio signals throughout Rwanda because a day earlier, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyairmana’s private plane was shot down. Since Habyairmana was a Hutu and the perpetrators of his death were unknown, this allowed the Hutus to blame this horrific crime on the Tutsis. After 100 days of Habyairmana’s death, almost one million Tutsis were killed.2 The mass killings in Rwanda were known as the Rwandan genocide. The blame for the Rwandan genocide should not only be placed upon the Hutus, but the Belgian colonists should be blamed for the genocide; due to their acts of colonizing Rwanda in 1918 to improve imperialism, which caused the death of more than one million Tutsis.3

During 1959, the Hutus removed the Tutsi monarchy and thousands of Tutsis escaped to bordering countries. A large group of Tutsi exiles created a rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. The RPF(abbreviated) came into Rwanda to start a war which ended in a peace agreement in 1993. Following the civil war in Rwanda between the Tutsis and the Hutus, the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down near the Kigali, which also was carrying two Hutus. The Hutus blamed the RPF and began to slaughter them all immediately. It was complete devastation, people killing their friends, neighbors, and even husbands/wives who had Tutsi ID cards. The main points or central issues of the Rwandan Genocide were shown through the actions of the perpetrators, victims, upstanders, and the bystanders. Perpetrators(Hutus) were brainwashed to believe what they were doing was just

After they had gained control of Rwanda, colonizers sought to clearly draw the line between ethnic groups that co-existed in the country; the Hutu and Tutsi. As Reader discussed on page 621, European colonizers issued identification cards to distinguish between the two groups; however, it was a difficult task considering the many “generations of intermarriage, migration and changes in occupation and economic standing...” Understanding the outright labeling of each ethnic group, Reader’s knowledge allows individuals to better understand the chapter called “A Neighborhood Genocide” in Machete Season. In this chapter, Hatzfeld claims that “the government had been recording the ethnic background of all its citizens…since 1931” (Hatzfeld, J). From this knowledge alone, it is easy to see how the murderers knew the “identity” of their neighbors, their friends and co-workers, seen in both the text

Propaganda for the Rwanda Genocide began when the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) invaded Rwanda in 1990. Thus, the Hutu Power Movement began. A group of government officers and officials began a magazine called “Kangura”, which spread anti-Tutsi propaganda. The Hutu Ten Commandments, which were published in the Kangura, was an example of racist guidelines for the Hutus if they ever came into contact with a Tutsi. By 1990, the Rwandan army began arming its civilians with swords and clubs under the pretense of self defense. These weapons became the main tools used in the genocide. After the ceasefire between the Rwanda government and the RPF in 1992, Hutu extremists in the Rwandan government and the army began to plot against the President in fear of allowing the Tutsis to participate in governmental issues. The extremists began a new radios station named “Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLMC), which broadcasted racist propaganda against Tutsis. Hutu extremist leaders also staged or reported false events to convince the Hutu population that the Tutsis were accomplices of the RPF. (Propaganda and Practice) The Holocaust, on the other hand, utilized many more ways of propaganda.

According to the book Peacemaking in Rwanda, Hutus and Tutsis had prior hate towards one another due to “wealth, military prowess, family, and control over a precious commodity, or occupation of a prestigious social position.” (Jones, pg. 18) This meant at any time my children that Tutsis could become Hutus and Hutus could become Tutsis. Due to this my children, I come before to tell you never to hate your very own people. Clan lineage in Rwanda was were, power and status placed a role in the leading of the people as that determined who was a high authority amongst the different yet similar clans. While clan lineage played a role in who would lead the different clans, Rwanda before World War I was colonized by Germans. Sadly my kids, after World War I colonization moved on to the Belgium and this is was the day, when I saw my life flash before my eyes. The once peaceful Rwanda had changed within a day. When the Belgium came into power they “imposed on the contrary an intellectual and administrative simplification that equated “Tutsi’s” with “ruling class”.”(Jones, pg. 19) Throughout the Belgium ruling, Tutsis were the chosen ones to do all of the administrative work for the League of Nations Mandate. Due to this Belgium’s required for Tutsis to carry around cards that specifically showed and