I Watched The Movie Hotel Rwanda

When Belgium brought in colonialism they also brought in the Catholic Church. This irritated the Tutsi and they started to get agitated against Belgium authority. The Tutsi felt that Rwanda was just fine and there didn’t need to be anything changed. The negative response towards the new colonial economy and the Catholic Church that the Belgians brought in will end up coming back at the Tutsi. The Belgians saw this negative attitude and because of this attitude from the Tutsi the Belgians switched there support toward the Hutu. Since the Tutsi did not treat the Hutu with much respect in the past years the Hutu could take advantage of this support from the Belgians and payback the Tutsi’s for how they treated them in past years.

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

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

At its roots, the Rwandan genocide was caused by colonization. Belgium had imperialized the nation after WWI and ruled through its kings, selecting the Tutsis ethnic group to lead. The decision to give the Tutsis power was based off the fact that they were more “white looking” with their lighter skin and long noses, which, in the eyes of the European string-pullers, meant they were better suited to ruling. It was also speculated that the Tutsis could be the descendants of a lost Christian tribe, and thus belonged to the “superior” bloodline. When the Belgian colonists settled in 1916, they assigned race cards to distinguish the Hutu from the Tutsis. Despite being the minority, comprising only 15% of the population, the Tutsis held most of the wealth. Tension between the two groups rose, with animosity becoming rampant. In 1962, Rwanda was granted independence from Belgium, and the Hutu regained

During the 100 days of the brutal massacre known as the Rwandan Genocide, between 800,000 to a million people were tragically murdered. Tutsis were not the only ones being killed. Hutus were also being killed for various reasons. If people thought they felt regretful for what they were doing to the Tutsi, they would be killed. If the Hutus tried to help the Tutsi in anyway they were killed. Many of the Hutus were killed if they opposed the killing campaign and the forces directing it.

The Tutsi tribe was historically seen as the ruling class of Rwanda while Hutu were considered farmer folk. Following World War I the Belgians were authoritarian rulers in the region, fueling further disputes between the Hutu

They were more peaceful and worked hard. In the nineteenth century europe colonized africa and divided it up into pieces, Germany got Rwanda, but after the world war , they couldn’t keep keep it and gave it to the Belgians, they made great contact with the tutsis. In 1933 Belgium issued ethnic identification cards to them to see who were tutsi and who were the hutu. The belgians made sure that more jobs and education went to the tutsis rather than the hutu. Then democracy came and Belgium went to the Hutu’s side, later Rwanda got its independence from the belgians, but there was still war between the tutsi and the hutu, they killed and killed each other, until the tutsi started fleeing into bordering countries. Near the 1990’s the tutsi were getting a bit “home sick” so they gathered a rebel army named the “RPF” they came to Rwanda to try to sort things out. But the hutu heard of this and started making speeches, “the tutsi will make you into slaves, and take over your family”, “The tutsi are coming”. And made the tutsi look like bad people who the hutu feared. The two countries, (where the tutsi where and where the hutu where, Rwanda). They tried to sort things out but the hutu were dying of fear. On April, 4th, 1994, the tutsi attacked and killed the president. Then the next one hundred days of genocide will begin to eliminate all hutu. This didn’t shock the bordering countries as much because they knew the hutu, and the tutsi will never get

Later that night, the massacre truly took place. The Hutus decided what the country needed was not constant retaliations from the Tutsis, but an ethnic cleansing.Soldiers and militia sent messages throughout the country via radio, to carry out a wave of killings. They vigorously slaughtered almost an entire generation of Tutsis. Raped Tutsi women, and murdered the Tutsi children as they refuse to allow next generation Tutsis to reborn.While innocent people were being executed by machetes and guns, neither the Belgian soldiers, the British nor the UN interfered. When they realized the rebels were getting out of control they evacuated all the foreigners out of the country and abandoned the Africans. It wasn’t until the very end, 100 days later after almost a million people were manslaughtered, did the Belgian soldiers came and rescue certain Africans Tutsis and Hutus. In July 1994 the holocaust ended as the Tutsi rebels drove away the Hutu maniacs.

The continent of Africa has been continually engaged in civil, tribal and cross national conflicts from colonial independence up until present day. What historians regard as the most ‘efficient genocide’ in history, occurred in a mere 100 days in the small central African country of Rwanda. The Hutus and the Tutsis, two ethnic groups within Rwanda, have been at continual unrest for the past half a century. During the 100 day massacre of 1994, a murder occurred every two seconds; resulting in 18% of the Tutsi population being killed. A decade after the war, in 2004, the film Hotel Rwanda was released. The film followed the story of a Hutu man; Paul Rusesabagina as he housed over 1200 Tutsi refugees in his hotel. The Hotel De Milles

Before Rwanda was colonized it was solely ruled by Tutsi leaders. This did not change even during colonialism. In 1884 the Berlin conference assigned the region of rwanda to germany and germany just decided to rule through the monarchy of Rwanda. Which at the time was ruled by the Tutsi Kingdom. In 1889 Rwanda officially became a part of a colony of German East Africa(Rwanda). After the sudden defeat of Germany in World War I the League of Nations Mandate of 1919 appointed Belgium to administer Rwanda and Burundi. They later decided on the name of Rwanda and burundi to be Rwanda- Urundi(Rwanda). The Belgians only wanted the tutsis to lead Rwanda because they felt like they were more superior in a sense. The belgians believed that the Tutsi

The Rwandan genocide occurred in 1994 between the two prevalent ethnic groups in Rwanda, the Hutu and the Tutsi. Hotel Rwanda documents the plight of Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager, who opens his hotel as a shelter for the Tutsi people during the Rwandan genocide, saving thousands of lives in the processes. Through bribes Rusesabagina was able to keep thousands of Tutsi people from death. Like many other African states, Rwanda was colonized by a European superpower, Belgium. Therefore, many Rwandans blame Belgium for the division in the country because Belgium considered Tutsi to be more elegant; as a result Hutus were oppressed. After Rwanda

As a pastoral nation, Rwanda’s agrarian economy was dependent on the harvesting and exporting of crops such as rice, coffee, and maize to the West. Unfortunately, the West was not dependent on Rwanda, as these products were also imported from Brazil, Columbia, and other larger African countries. Prior to the control of other Western powers, the country was at peace, but all this changed after Rwanda came under control of Germany and Belgium. Unfortunately, Germans and Belgians could not appreciate the complexities of the subtle relations present in Rwanda before colonization and therefore established a strict racial system. The Europeans segregated the native Rwandan population into three racial classifications: the Hutu (84%), the Tutsi (15%), and the remaining 1% the Twa (. Tutsi, the more Caucasian looking in skin tone and body structure, were assumed to be the most intelligent and diplomatic thus receiving all high ranking positions in government and society. While the Hutu, the majority of approximately 90%, lived in poverty, were forced into servile farmer positions, and denied access to land ownership, education, and Christianity. Belgian colonists soon issued ethnic identity cards which formalized an imposed condition of racial inferiority that had not exist beforehand. This imposed racial system would later be one of the leading, if not most significant, causes for the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Belgium soon

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.

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)

Prior to colonial era, Rwanda had larger population of Hutus compared to Tutsis and Twa. Rwanda as a country was divided into three ethnic groups i.e. Hutu (approximately about 85%), Tutsi (14%) and Twa (1%) (United Nations). Although, Tutsis were the minorities, they belonged to the higher strata compared to the other ethnic groups; Tutsis were privileged and had power and control over the Hutus and Twas. “Hutus were formerly bound to their Tutsi patrons via client ship” (Sinema, 2012). When Rwanda was colonized by Germany followed by Belgium, they favored Tutsis as they represented the upper class prior to the colonization. These created a social system like feudal system where there was a power difference between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Tutsis were considered as lord and the Hutus on the other hand, were considered as peasants. As a consequence, this created an ethic tension between the Hutus and the Tutsis and created a system more like apartheid. Nonetheless, they managed to co exist in Rwanda until they were decolonized. Although there is no social distinction between the Hutus and the Tutsis, the conflict between these tribes increased tremendously after the independence from Belgian that led to mass murder and ethnic cleansing of the Tutsi by the Hutu.