The Rwandan Genocide And The Civil War

The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass slaughter in Rwanda of the ethnic Tutsi and Hutu peoples. The Rwandan Genocide left 70% of total ethnic Tutsi dead and a total of 20% of the entire country 's population dead. Today, more than twenty years later, Rwanda is a growing society with an ever expanding skyline.

George Santayana once said “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” The Rwanda Genocide is a contemporary representation of the events that occurred during the Armenian Genocide. It is an unforgiving circumstance that even after massacres from the latter and the Holocaust that Genocides still emerge in a world who far too often shuts their door to the idea of intervention. Countries can have an abundance of supplies, unmatchable man-power, and exceptional military equipment, however, with interests in absentia, countries will be reluctant to deploy forces despite exclamations of help. The culmination of the Rwanda Genocide is absolutely an unforgiving portion of history that will be remembered by the victims, the witnesses, and the decision-makers.

The Rwandan genocide occurred during the period of April to July of 1994. This genocide was as a result of the Hutu ethnic majority slaughtering the Tutsi minority. During this period as much as 800,000 Tutsis were killed. The genocide was started by Hutu extremists in the capital of Kigali and the genocide soon spread across the country. Despite all of this there were several survivors of the genocide. Immaculee Ilibagiza is one of those people.

“The sweetly sickening odor of decomposing bodies hung over many parts of Rwanda in July 1994: . . . at Nyarubuye in eastern Rwanda, where the cadaver of a little girl, otherwise intact, had been flattened by passing vehicles to the thinness of cardboard in front of the church steps,” (Deforges 6). The normalcy of horrible images like this one had cast a depressing gloom over Rwanda during the genocide, a time when an extreme divide caused mass killings of Tutsi by the Hutu. Many tactics such as physical assault or hate propaganda are well known and often used during times of war. Sexual assault and rape, however, during times of war is an unspoken secret – it is well known that rape occurs within combat zones and occupied territories, but

One particular case that has been studied recently is the Rwandan Genocide that occurred in 1994. The Rwandan Genocide remains one of the fastest and most brutal cases of genocide in modern history (Temitope and Danjibo 2013). In the years leading up to the genocide there was a civil war between the Government of Rwanda (led by Hutu General Habyarimana) and the Tutsi expat group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, who had been in exile in Uganda (Buhr 2015). Following the cease-fire agreement in 1993, there were signs that the agreement would not hold despite the presence of UN peacekeepers (Buhr 2015). In April 1994 General Habyarimana was assassinated, and violence ensued (Buhr 2015). Tutsis were blamed for the death of Habyarimana, despite a lack of evidence (Buhr 2015). From April to July of 1994 vengeful Hutus slaughtered approximately one million Tutsis (Temitope and Danjibo 2013).

The government began using a traditional justice system called Gracaca, this allows local communities to judge and try any suspects (“Rwanda”). Soon, RPF invaded on October 1st 1990, The government responded by arresting and imprisoning roughly eight thousand to ten thousand victims (“Rwanda”).

In 1994, over the course of 100 days, a genocide in Rwanda took the lives of 800,000 innocent men, women, and children and displaced 2 million more. The genocide was a result of tension that had been building since the Belgium colonization of Rwanda in 1916 between two ethnic group, the Hutus and the Tutsis. When Belgium colonized Rwanda, power was given to the Tutsis (an ethnic group in Rwanda that was 15% of the population) who became the privileged minority, whereas the Hutus (another ethnic group in Rwanda that was 85% of the population) became the working class majority. As the years progressed, the signs of inequality intensified. Tutsis were given priority in terms of education, jobs and power. There was even an identity card system created to differentiate between Hutus and Tutsis. The inequality and unfair treatment came to a boiling point and spilled over into a revolution in Rwanda in 1959. The result was a transition from Tutsi controlled Rwanda to a Hutu elected government. 70% of the Tutsi population was killed and the majority fled to neighbouring countries. For the next 5 years the displaced Tutsis’ made unsuccessful attempts to re-take the country, the result of which was the killing of roughly 10 000 Tutsi 's in Rwanda by the Hutu government as an act of revenge. For the next 30 years a negative peace ensued, but below the surface tensions continued to rise, finally erupting in the spring of 1994 with

800,000, and most of those people were from of the Tutsi tribe. It began by the

“In the Rwandan genocide over one million helpless Tutsi were murdered in a span of 100 days” (Briggs). Because of the underlying government and cultural problems in Rwanda, the Hutu led a 100 day massacre against the Tutsi in an attempt to eradicate them. To begin, the word genocide contains many definitions and has been used several times throughout history. The dispute of the Rwandan Hutu and Tutsi occurred long before the events of 1994. There were lots of methods that were taken to eradicate the Tutsi. Furthermore, the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide had many atrocities.

No matter which testimony, each survivor has an amazing story. What they went through was absolutely terrifying. To see family members get killed right in front of your face would be horrifying. Then they somehow had to keep things together while they escaped. Nobody saw coming what was going to happen in April of 1994 to July of 1994, the genocide in Rwanda caused the deaths of almost 1,000,000 Tutsi people and displaced millions more. In addition to the brutal mass killings, systematic rape was also widely used as a weapon of war during the Rwandan genocide. The exact number is unknown, they estimate that between a quarter and a half a million women were had been raped. It was considered another way to destroy the Tutsi ethnic group, through both the emotional pain so the woman could die of sadness and through the

The Rwandan genocide occurred in 1994. The two main ethnic groups in Rwanda at this time were the Hutu and the Tutsi. These two groups had separate ethic identities because of the type of work that they did. The genocide consisted of members of the Hutu group periodically executing members of the lower class Tutsi group. Rwanda was controlled by an extremist Hutu regime who planned to eliminate everyone who opposed its rule. This even included members of the Hutu group.

The Rwandan Genocide took place in April 1994 to July 1994 in the African nation of Rwanda. It was the mass murder of the minority ethnic Tutsi group. The people responsible for the genocide was the majority ethnic Hutu group. The Hutu group murdered about 800,000 people, most of them the Tutsi group.About 500,000 Tutsi women were raped and killed immediately afterwards. The most used weapon for killing in the genocide was the machete. The Hutu militias were sent to kill Tutsis. Even Hutu men killed their Tutsi wives.(“The Rwandan Genocide”, n.d. Para 1) The cause of the Rwandan Genocide was the Belgian colonial rule that put the Tutsi minority group in control over Rwanda, the death of the Hutu president, and the ethnic tension that was already there.

… they could get away with it” (p. 453). Ultimately, the genocide was officially brought on by the shooting down of the Habyarimana President on April 6, 1994 that allowed the radicals (never discovered) to realize they could initiate and get away with anything without being responsible or punished (p. 455-456). “…the terrible success of Hutu Power is making so many ordinary people accomplices in genocide. When the genocide ended little more than 100 days later, between 500,000 to as many as 1,000,000 women, children, and men, the vast majority of them Tutsi, lay dead. Thousands more were raped, tortured and maimed for life. Women and children were not spared. Victims were treated with sadistic cruelty and suffered unimaginable agony. Thousands of moderate Hutu, those who had refused to cooperate with the Hutu Power radicals, had been systematically murdered” (p. 458). This genocide remains prominent for mere fact that not only did it annihilate the Tutsi whom they saw as inferior members of the Rwandan country… but it

Destexhe, Alain. Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century. New York, New York: New York University Press: 1995

Rwanda is a small country located in east-central Africa. It is also known as “The land of a Thousand Hills” because of its landscape. The capital Kigali is located in the centre of the country. Since 1924 Belgium became the administering authority of Rwanda, but in 1962 the country was declared independent. The people in Rwanda were divided in two major groups: the Tutsi and the Hutu. Although the Tutsi’s were in the minority they belonged to the upper class. When the Belgians left Rwanda they then decided to give more power to the Hutu. On April 6, 1994 the presidential plane was shot down and from this day on a 100-day terror of the Hutu against the Tutsi begun in which nearly a million people were killed (White, 2014). These events are