The Recent Bloody History of Rwanda, Uganda and Congo

In 2001, Kabila was assassinated, leading to him being replaced by his son Joseph Kabila (ECI). According to the Eastern Congo Initiative, the Congo held its first democratic elections in 2006, with Kabila being elected. At the same time, however, multiple armed groups gained power and began fighting over control of mineral resources in the Eastern Congo, resulting in more civilian lives. To this day they still continue to fight, and despite multiple peace treaties, the violence does not end (ECI).

“Seldom in history has a once-dominant group suffered so terrible a reversal of fortune as the Tutsi of Rwanda”- Robin Hallet. The event that Robin Hallet is referring to is the Rwandan Genocide, the “genocidal mass slaughter” of the Tutsi (the minority group in Rwanda) and a few Hutu (the dominant group in Rwanda) by “members of the Hutu majority,” which resulted in at least 1 million Rwandan deaths. The Rwandan Genocide was indirectly caused by European colonists; severely damaged relations between the two ethnic groups, almost irreparably; and had a destructive effect on the survivors of the genocide.

Although Peter Gourevitch talks thoroughly about the protection of the Tutsi’s from the Rwandan genocide in his novel “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families” the hindrance of the eradication remains unclear from a reader’s discretion. The topics of discussion in Gourevitch’s book are solely focused on the idea of horror and casualties in consequence of the genocide. Although it is extremely important to reflect upon, in perspective, a reader is also curious about how the genocide could have been prevented. The logic of genocide is described as, “the product of order, authoritarianism, decades of modern’ political theorizing” (Gourevitch 1998: 95). In light of this notion, it is practical to wonder if every effort was made to prevent the possible reoccurrences made in the Rwandan blood-bath and what was necessary for prevention despite the reaching arms of help provided from United forces.

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

On April 7, 1994, tragedy began. In the small country of Rwanda, a civil war between

War, a method people use when communication is useless. In Rwanda, an estimation of 800,000 people had died in such a short time. It was called Rwanda genocide. Rwanda is a small country in Africa with a great agriculture economy. It was controlled by Belgium. Belgium likes the Tutsi's family more than the Hutu's. The Hutu's did not like it so they started violence resulted of the migrating of most of the Tutsi. They were becoming less every time. On 1961, Hutus forced Rwanda's Tutsi Prince into dropping and declaring the country as republic. A year later, Belgium finally granted them their independence. In 1990, the Tutsi formed an army named (RPF) to conquer back their land from Uganda. The attacks started on the 7th of April and ended on

The Rwandan genocide was very violent and very cruel. Many people were killed and were raped. This war was not more than where you were born and what family you belong to. In 1918 Belgium took over Rwanda, but in 1933 the Belgians forced the Rwandans into two different categories. The Hutus and the Tutsis. Everything started just because it was easier to know where all the blacks were if they were in separate groups. The Tutsis were the minority; they were the upper class and were aristocratic. The Hutus on the other hand were peasants; they were the poorest of the poor. The Europeans brought the culture of a political ethnic dissidence to Rwanda. They took the original structure and made it very extreme, ethnic cards were given to be worn at all times. The Tutsis were privileged to everything, nice food, a good area to live in, good clothing. The Hutus on the other hand were made into a much oppressed group; they lived in slums and barely had enough food to live off of. Even though the Hutus were the majority they were treated like second class, animals.

It was not until April 6, 1994 that the official genocide begun when the Rwandan president Habyarimana was assassinated and all Tutsis were ordered to be killed, more than 500 000 of them by the end of the genocide in July 1994 (Powell, 2015). The genocide ended and a new government was set up when the RPF captured the capital city, Kigali, but still there remains lingering tension in the region today (Powell, 2015).

Proceeding from Kant’s philosophical perspective, humans are moral agents due to their ability to rationalize, reason and be autonomous. In order to make the claim that the international community is morally unjustified in their lack of action regarding the Rwandan genocide is because humanitarian intervention can be regarded as a perfect duty when approached from a Kantian perspective. This ideology is challenging for many critics because if this is a perfect duty then comes the question of who is to claim such responsibility. When arguing from a deontological viewpoint the “duty applies to the universal moral community as such and therefore is everybody’s responsibility. Because this duty concerns the international community as a whole, it should be discharged by that community by institutionalizing its responsibility” (Bagnoli 3). While not all critics agree that such crimes against humanity can be regarded as a perfect duty, in which “an international agency would best…protect the moral concerns of the whole community of rational beings” (Bagnoli 20), even the classification of an imperfect duty can still call for the moral obligation of a nation. In such a case the responsibility and duty to act is directed on the nations that are able to respond at a reasonable rate and with the highest efficiency (Pattison 264). At the time the genocide began in Rwanda, many nations already had citizens in Rwanda attempting to keep the peace, however the outbreak of the conflict

It all started because Congo is filled with resources that envied other countries or even the other African states. The Rwanda genocide was the starting of the war in 1994. In this genocide, Hutu-power groups led mass killings of Tutsis and pro-peace Hutus by murdering 800,000 people in 100 days.

The frequency of war crimes and genocide in Rwanda was portended by the commencement of the Civil War. Madsen (21) explains that, more than 1200 Bagogwe people, a group of the North-western Rwanda related to the Tutsis were massacred by Armed Forces of Rwanda while “irregular Hutus” slaughtered Tutsis all through the northern and southern regions of Rwanda. The complicity of the RPF in the repeated violation of Interntional Law was replete in their actions during the Civil War. Thousands of civillians were the targets of brutal attacks. Rusesabinga(22) in an account of one of the attacks on a prison states that:

In 1994, as the international community watched, more than 800,000 Rwandans, were massacred by Hutu militia and government forces over a period of just 100 days. The killings began the day after a plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. The presidents were returning home from peace talks  aimed at strengthening a fragile peace agreement and ending the conflict between the largely ethnic Hutu-dominated government and the largely Tutsi rebel army. The crash re-ignited the war. Retreating government forces joined ethnic Hutu militia in inciting civilians to kill ethnic Tutsis. They alleged that civilians were helping the Tutsi rebels and used this to justify the

Taking the Rwandan genocide at its surface would make one think that it was a result of spontaneous “tribal” fighting between Hutu and Tutsi elements. But every serious observer of Rwanda has recognized that the genocide resulted from active planning of high state officials. The tragedy represents an extreme form of Rwandan Hutu nationalism in the hands of the fanatical state leaders. To put matters in perspective, it is clear that both nationalisms survived in Rwanda due to the actions of elite representatives of each community. Another point to note is the correlation of the uncertainty over the control of the state with nationalism. While the Rwandan state was firmly under the control of the colonial authorities, aided by the Tutsi chiefs,

“Politics is referred to a influencing the actions and policies of any type of a government or even keeping the government’s power under the person who is influencing” (Merriam). The Genocide that had occurred in two african countries Rwanda and Darfur were caused because of two important factors which were Politics and Culture. Therefore, In this essay I would strongly like to address the role that the Politics had played during the genocides which were in Rwanda and Darfur.

The recent arrest of General Karenzi Karake is part of the international community trying to grasp its understandings of Rwanda’s bloody history. On the night of April 6, 1994, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana assassination while flying back to Rwanda by unknown fighters triggered the last genocide of the twentieth century. The Rwandan Genocide or also named the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsis, ravaged the entire country as neighbours killed neighbours. Genocide perpetrators claimed that the massacres were required in order to protect the nation from the invading Tutsi-dominated Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), which Rwanda had been fighting since 1990. It was the belief that the RPF wished to reestablish dominance over the majority Hutu population such as during the Belgium colonial period (1922-1962). The international community decided within the first few days to remove its presence with the removal of its citizens and the downgrading of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). The world looked away as in around one hundred days; over one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were butchered by the genocide forces. The massacres only ceased when the RPF’s military wing, the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA) fully invaded the country and expelled the genocide forces into eastern Zaire or know named the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). As expected, the genocide cannot be as easily defined as it composes various elements that all play a role in the history of