Rpf In Rwanda

Genocides happen when ethnic divisions become apparent. Many times, these ethnic divisions were due to colonization from people of different race. These cases are especially true in Africa when Europeans colonized their territory, with clear racial divisions between them (Gavin). These genocides go on because of nations acting on ignorance and refusing to help out the nations in turmoil, allowing the genocides to continue, without wasting their own resources. These nations purposefully ignoring the slaughter of people cause the nations to also be guilty of the genocide underway (“The Heart”). The genocide occurred in Rwanda in Central Africa during 1994. The decades of Tutsi oppression of Hutus and the assassination of President Habyarimana in 1994 led to the genocide in Rwanda.

On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Habyarimana and Burundi’s president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down over Kigali their were no survivors. They did not know who shot the plane down but they are blaming Hutu extremists and the leaders of the RPF. An hour after the plane went down the Rwandan armed forces and the Hutu militia groups had started setting up roadblocks and barricades, and started killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus. the first victims of the genocide were the moderate Hutu Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and her 10 Belgian bodyguards, with that happening it started more conflict and interim government of extremist Hutu Power leaders from the military high command had stepped in on april 9. The killing in Rwanda had spreaded to the rest of the country, up to 800,000 or more had been slaughtered within 3 months.

In 1990, Civil War broke out in Rwanda which heightened the animosity between the Tutsi and the Hutu tribes. The war began when Rwandan exiles composed a group called the Rwandan Patriotic Front. The group then launched an attack against Rwanda from their home base located in Uganda. The Rwandan Patriotic Front, better known as the RPF, blamed the government for not addressing the Tutsi refugee problem. All Tutsis in the country were characterized as accomplices of the of the RPF and all Hutu members of the parties were deemed as traitors.

In 1959 a series of Hutu riots occurred killing around 20,000 Tutsis. After 38 years of being under Belgian control, Rwanda gained independence in 1962. After this, the fighting between Hutus and Tutsi continued to become more and more prevalent. In July of 1973, the president of Rwanda Gregoire Kayibanda was overthrown by juvenile, Juvénal Habyarimana who declared himself president. At the time hundreds of thousands Rwandan refugees were living in primarily neighboring countries. These countries were poor and did not have enough resources for the refugees. As president, Habyarimana would not let these refugees back into Rwanda. The refugees formed the Rwanda Patriotic

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

Hearing about genocide was nothing new to many people, but because of the new upbringing of the internet and availability of news broadcasts, the entire world was able to see it for the first time. It was always well known that the Rwandan population is very one-sided. The majority of the people living there are Sunni Muslims or "Hutus" whereas the minority consists of Shia Muslims, or "Tutsi". According to Sarah Hymowitz and Amelia Parker, Tutsi are said to be of higher class because they are more white, and the Hutus are common people of middle class. Although the distrust and hatred between the two groups of people was always slightly present, nobody had any clue about what would be the outcome. Following the establishment of the Hutu led government in 1961, the oppression of the Tutsi followed not far behind. Although many Tutsi fled in fear of imprisonment into neighboring Uganda, those of the Tutsi who were still in Rwanda (probably due to family or marriage ties) were seen as lesser beings by the new Hutu Government. At the time, and for two decades it seemed like the situation was under control. When the Rwandan Patiotic front (RPF) was formed in 1985, tensions escalated. The RPF was a group of Tutsi exiles who demanded that they be granted the right to return to their homeland and end the long period of discrimination against the Tutsi. The RPF rebels invaded Rwanda in October 1990, re-igniting Tutsi hatred throughout Rwanda. It was this act of Tutsi aggression,

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 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

On April 6th, 1994, President Habyarimana was flying back to Rwanda when his plane was shot down and he was killed. Hutu extremists accused the RPF of this action, using it as an excuse to launch the genocide. Within hours of the plane crash, Hutu extremists quickly began exterminating the Tutsis and moderate Hutus. In the meantime, the Interahamwe set up road blocks to identify Tutsis, assembled killing squads armed with machetes, and instructed them to hunt down and kill all Tutsi and moderate Hutus. To spread the word, the Interahamwe set up radio stations broadcasting messages to kill all Tutsi “cockroaches”, a term the Hutus used in reference to the Tutsis. According to René Lemarchand, a French-American political scientist, "An estimated 20,000 people were killed in Kigali and its environs in the three weeks following the crash" (Lemarchand 2). The speed and extent of the massacre were unprecedented and the killings in Rwanda rapidly expanded from the capital, Kigali, to the rest of the country. Lemarchand continues, “For weeks and months, hundreds and thousands of Tutsi civilians (and Hutu civilians who looked like Tutsi), men, women and children, were shot, speared, clubbed or hacked to pieces in their homes, church compounds and courtyards” (Lemarchand 7). The Interahamwe and brainwashed Rwandan civilians, hunted down and brutally hacked to death their Tutsi neighbors

Before long, the massacre has started as war crept up on the Tutsi’s and the Hutu’s. “Rwanda: How the genocide happened” states the start of the genocide was triggered by the death of the Rwanda President Juvenal Habyarimana, who’s plane had been shot down. The Rwandan’s were most certain the shot was from the President’s guard (Sullivan), but the act was pointed to President Paul Kagme, leader of the “Tutsi Rebel group” (“Rwanda: How the genocide happened”). Beforehand, Habyarimana signed a peace record with a rebel group of Tutsi, for his people had thought it was to share his power with Tutsis. Slaughter had taken place less than thirty minutes afterwards (Sullivan). Recruits were being sent throughout the continent to begin the massive

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.

The Rwandan president, Habyarimana and the president of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, are killed when the president’s plane is shot down near Kigali Airport, on April 6th, 1994. That night on the 6th of April, 1994, the genocide begins. Hutu people take to the streets with guns and machetes. The Hutus set up roadblocks and stopped anyone that looked Tutsi or suspected of helping Tutsi people to hide. On April 7th, 1994 the Rwandan Armed Forces set up roadblocks and went house to house to kill any Tutsis found. Thousands of people die on the first, while the U.N. just stands by and watches the slaughter go on. On April 8th, 1994 the U.N. cuts its forces from 2,500 to 250 after ten U.N. soldiers were disarmed and tortured and shot or hacked to death by machetes, trying to protect the Prime Minister. As the slaughter continues the U.N. sends 6,800 soldiers to Rwanda to protect the civilians, on May 17th, 1994, they were meant to be the peacekeepers. The slaughter continues until July 15th, 1994, in the 100 days that the genocide lasted 800,000-1,000,000 Tutsis and Hutus

The Rwandan genocide is one of the darkest moments in human history. What sparked the violence against the Tutsi was an airplane crash that carried the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. A carefully organized genocide carried on for more than 100 days and killed about 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates (Rwanda genocide: 100 days of slaughter 2014). In just a few hours, Hutu rebels took over the streets of Kigali and eliminated Rwanda’s leadership successfully within a day. Hutu extremists took advantage of the political vacuum created and thus took control of the country. Detailed lists of Tutsi targets were prepared with names, addresses and license plates. Rwandans were soon murdering their neighbors and people were encouraged to kill those on the lists.

During 1959 , the Hutu rebelled against the Tutsi’s elite and stated up the primary republic , and results in killing more than twenty thousand Tutsi . The level of violence that Hutu revolutionaries applied obviously showed the animosity that was created toward all Tutsi , not just toward the elite . As Rwanda gained independence , the Tutsi refugees that escaped in the previous years , started armed retaliates which in turn provoked further Hutu hostility against Tutsi civilians who were not members of the elite nor the refugees that participated in the violent attacks . In 1973 , Rwanda witnessed another political overthrow , it was Juvenal Habyarimana and his Hutu regime ( The MRND ) that overwhelmed the Hutu elites of the first republic

Living in fear, fear of dying, fearing your family or neighbors turning on you, fear that your government is crumbling at this very moment, there was so much to fear. The Rwandan genocide didn’t last long, but it will never be forgotten. There are two ethnic groups in Rwanda, the Hutus and the Tutsis. In fact, “ about 85% of Rwandans are Hutus but the Tutsi minority has long dominated the country” ( Rwanda genocide: 100 Days of Slaughter). Years before the genocide the Hutus overthrew the Tutsi and thousands of Tutsi fled to countries neighboring Rwanda. There, they formed rebel groups, the Rwanda Patriotic Front or RPF was then created and would be known by many.