The Main Factors That Influenced The Rwandan Genocide

In chapter two of the order of genocide, the author, Scott Straus, evaluates the course of commentary on the Rwandan genocide, by exploring already existing literature by other authors that tries to elucidate the reasons that led to genocide in the first place.

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.

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

“When you start to see another human being as less than you, it 's a danger.”-Immaculee Ilibagiza. In 1994, a mass genocide broke out in Rwanda, a small country in Africa. The genocide occurred between the two ethnic groups where the Hutus were targeting the tutsis. The Rwandan genocide, ranking in the top five largest genocides in the world, was caused because of the resentment the hutus had towards the tutsis and was even more instigated by media and outsiders causing differences between the two parties. This quote is trying to provide an insight on what happened in rwanda and why. The local and international media played a significant role in the rwandan genocide of 1994; however racial hatred intensified from European colonists and the

The Rwandan Genocide was one of the most violent genocides in the history of the world and was intricately planned and implemented by the ethnic group called the Hutu in an attempt to eliminate another, the Tutsis. Though the genocide lasted only one hundred days, the number of deaths is estimated to be approximately 800,000. In the wake of the genocide, mass chaos plagued the country of Rwanda, deepening the divide between the groups Hutu and Tutsi. Although it can be said the genocide was caused only by the animosity between the groups in an effort for revenge, several causes led to the genocide—including social, economic, political and historical factors that had been a result of past interactions. The Rwandan Genocide was caused by

The tensions that led up to the genocide came into being after Belgium colonized Rwanda and had divided the people into two groups: the Hutus & the Tutsis. Although the Hutus held the majority, the Tutsis had the power because the Belgians had favoured the Tutsis. As a result, this caused a lot of resentments among the Hutus. Once Rwanda had gained independence and Belgium had left, the Hutus claimed control over the nation. As depicted in the movie, the genocide began with the murder of President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu. The Hutu extremists blamed the Tutsi rebels for shooting down the president’s plane and killing everyone else on board. Although this was never confirmed, the Hutus began to slaughter thousand of Tutsi civilians, as a

Historians do not lie when they say, “History always repeats itself”. Sadly for Rwanda, history did repeat itself with the Rwanda Genocide. Instead of one leader controlling the actions of a powerful military force, Rwanda was a complete chaotic mess, with mass killings of their own people. As Hintjens says it was “one of the highest casualty rates of any population in history from non-natural causes.” Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and The Order of Genocide both discuss and write about the pre genocide, social friction, prime factors of the genocide, and the reasoning of killings from both sides.

The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the act of genocide as killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately imposing conditions intended to bring about the physical destruction of, imposing measures intended to prevent births within, and forcibly transferring children away from any ethnic, national, racial or religious group . Per Alain Destexhe, the three genocides that were committed to the greatest degree during the 20th century were the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, and the Rwandan Genocide – and it is on the latter that I will focus on in this paper . I will compare the historical analysis of the Rwandan Genocide laid out in Destexhe’s work, Rwanda and Genocide

The Rwandan Genocide, triggered by the murder of Rwandan President Habyarimana on April 9, 1994, was the fastest, if not most barbarous bloodbath in human history, and was carried out with little to no intervention or aid force from any of the many capable Western governments, such as the United States. Though these administration 's may claim that they were unable to intervene due to lack of warning signs and insufficient information; those statements are false. The United States government refused to intervene in the Rwandan genocide due to its economic disinterest, political indifference, and pure African prejudice, completely ignoring the obvious signs of the genocide.

On April 7th, 1994, one of the worst crimes against humanity was unleashed in Rwanda and in the following hundred days, almost one million Tutsi and moderate Hutus were heinously slaughtered. Scott Strauss, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, describes the horrors that occurred, revealing that "Over three months, government forces with militia and civilian assistance massacred at least 800,000 people in one of the worst human rights violations of the 1900’s” (Strauss 5). During the genocide, the majority of the Tutsi population were killed by the hands of the Hutus. Sadly, the Western world stood by, ignoring the atrocities being inflicted on defenseless people. The Rwandan genocide was an unimaginable event that took place in a third

As a theory, categorization played a large role in the genocide and war. Without these groups the war would never have occurred because the people would be united by the idea that they were all Rwandans and not different.

Genocide is “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, ethnic, political, or cultural group”. In Rwanda for example, the Hutu-led government embraced a new program that called for the country’s Hutu people to murder anyone that was a Tutsi (Gourevitch, 6). This new policy of one ethnic group (Hutu) that was called upon to murder another ethnic group (Tutsi) occurred during April through June of 1994 and resulted in the genocide of approximately 800,000 innocent people that even included women and children of all ages. In this paper I will first analyze the origins/historical context regarding the discontent amongst the Hutu and Tutsi people as well as the historical context as to why major players in the international

The absence within the literature of the central pillars and their composed themes creates problems when trying to address current and future contention between the international community and Rwanda. By relying largely on the genocide guilt card, issues important to Rwanda are sometimes either overlooked or plainly forgotten. The result is miscommunication and misunderstandings that complicate a delicate situation. For example is the previously mentioned debate on term limits for President Kagame. Despite the thesis not discussing the third term debate except for the mention in Chapter Two, it is an important event that will help continue the trend of how Rwanda views the actions and decisions by international actors.

One horrific, though often overlooked, genocide took place in Rwanda, Africa from April to July 1994. The tiny, landlocked country saw mass killings and state-sponsored hatred of the Tutsi people by the Hutu. Rwanda was divided into three major clans—the Tutsi, which made up about 15% of the population and were the paler group favored by the English and Belgian colonists, and therefore were originally chosen to rule the country after the European takeover. This greatly angered the Hutus, about 84% of the population, (the Twa, the third group, were only 1% of Rwandans, didn't have much to do with the genocide), so they were eventually given the ability to gain professional political positions as well, a right that had been taken away with the

Genocide is that large numbers of people were killed because of their ethnicity. However, a different level conflict is a central element led to genocide. “By 1994, Tutsi in Rwanda, much like Jews in Nazi Germany, were 'socially dead' people, whose murder was as acceptable as it became common”(). Between April and June 1994, an estimated more than 800,000 Tutsi were killed in the space of 100 days. Ethnicity causes of genocide in Rwanda is nothing new. There have been always been disagreements between the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis, but the hatred between them, since the colonial period. “The Nazis had seen the conflict as a racial war” (Cole and Symes, p. 100). This shows German Jews during the holocaust. Approximately 6 million Jews