Zaire and Rwanda Essay

Rwanda is a country located in Central Eastern Africa, with an extensive history of colonization, after Belgium attained control in 1924. Belgium’s rule however also marked the beginning of a lengthy ethnic rivalry between the Hutu and the Tutsi people. Belgium favored the Tutsi the minority at 14 percent of the population over the Hutu, the majority at 85 percent, simply because the Tutsis were more resembling of the Europeans. “Colonial policy helped to intensify bipolar differentiation between Tutsi and Hutu, by inscribing “ethnic” identification on identity cards, by relegating the vast majority of Hutu to particularly onerous forms of forced cultivation and corvee, and by actively favoring Tutsi in access to administrative posts, education, and jobs in the modern sector,” (Newbury, 12). Belgium’s control fueled the Hutu’s resentment towards the Tutsis because the Tutsis received superior treatment for decades. Thus, when Rwanda finally acquired independence in 1962, the Hutus fought for control over the government, highlighting the first warning sign of the genocide to come. Many Tutsis were killed afterwards, while many others fled to neighboring countries to escape the violence.

On the day of April 6th 1994, the mass murders sparked a ferocious wave of bloody reprisals as thousands of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered over the next three months, killing almost 10,000 people everyday. Hutu extremists were told to load up on weapons like knives, guns, axes, whatever they could find so they could kill tutsis. They could do whatever they wanted to the Tutsis. The Hutu government said “Spare no one, especially the babies.” The Hutus goal was to kill every Tutsi in Rwanda. As told by Border guards, people have been floating down the river in hundreds everyday for weeks. Many bodies had their hands tied behind their backs. They were either shot, hacked, clubbed, burned, or drowned.

April 7, 1994 marked the beginning of one hundred days of massacre that left over 800,000 thousand dead and Rwanda divided by a scare that to this day they are trying to heal. The source of this internal struggle can be traced back to the segregation and favoritism established by Belgium when they received Rwanda after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1918. At the time the Rwandan population was 14% Tutsi, 1%Twa, and 85% Hutus; the Belgian’s showed preferential treatment to the Tutsi, who were seen as socially elite, by giving them access to higher educations and better employment. This treatment causes the uprising of the Hutus in 1959 overthrowing the Tutsi government forcing many to flee the country, sparking even greater resentment between the two ethic groups. Without the interference and preferential treatment by the Belgian’s this atrocity could have likely been avoided.

Does the Genocide in Rwanda have a singular cause? I do not believe so; the cause of genocide in Rwanda in 1994 was due to years of built up hatred between the Tutsis and the Hutus along with many other occurrences. The Rwandan Genocide is no exception with many variables contributing to the horrific events that took place. According to the documentary Ghosts of Rwanda, in 1994, Rwanda experienced a premeditated, systematic and state sponsored genocide with the aim of exterminating those who were ethnically identifiable as Tutsi. Between 500,000 and 800,000 people were killed in a period of 100 days, with around 77 percent of the population registered as Tutsi being murdered.

Rwanda genocide victims tried to take refuge in places that they thought were places that they could go for safety. Places like schools, hospitals and churches. Hutu followed them, where they were then just as brutally murdered as any other Tutsi member. Nobody was safe. Hutu who didn’t believe in the genocide were also brutally murdered, the idea was to have a race of just Hutu (Rosenberg, 2014). One of the most gruesome events that happened

Imagine living in a nation where constant violence from civil disputes and the influence of a horrific genocide takes place daily and the government is too corrupt to stop it. This is currently occurring in Sudan, where millions of refugees are fleeing the country in hope for a better life in refugee camps in neighboring countries or even being resettled in a more peaceful community. This process for finding safety and later resettling can be connected back to the book Outcasts United where refugees of war assimilated countries resettle into the US in hope for starting a new life. Since Sudan’s civil conflict has specifically targeted the people living in the Darfur region, this kind of persecution can negatively affect the community of the

The genocide had seen the country drawn down two lines: Hutu and Tutsi. And by 1995, the new ruling power, the Tutsi-based Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), who wanted to close down the refugee camps like Kibeho who held displaced Hutu’s. Among them were Hutu militia who feared reprisal for their crimes if they went back to their own villages. In the early staged of 1995 Kibeho was the largest Rwandan Refugee camp containing between 80,000 to 100,000 people. On April 22nd desperate to close down the camp, the RPF has opened fire. Over the course of the day the RPF unleashed machine gun fire and rocket propelled grenades on the captive refugees. Official numbers say just 300-odd people were killed in Kibeho, but Australian personnel counted at least 4000, some say

Rwanda, a small country in the middle of Africa bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo was controlled by the German after they arrive in 1890. But after the World War 1, Belgium gained control of Rwanda (Hymowitz & Parker, n.d.). Few years after the Belgium colonizes controlled the country, In order to strengthen the Belgian and German control, the Belgian colonists divided Rwanda’s unified population into distinct groups. Not to mention that the Hutu were about 85% of the population, the Tutsis were 14%, and the rest were Twa. The Hutus and Tutsis were not aware about the results of this classification in the future. Actually, not too far from that date the Belgian colonization put one group above the

During the beginning of July in 1994, they recaptured Kigali, which ended the genocide and liberated all of the remaining Tutsis and moderate Hutus. However, it also created 2 million Hutu refugees, which only made UN presence even more of a necessity. UNAMIR was extended and became more useful, so it continued to deal with the crisis until March 1996, after having been completely useless during the genocide. The rest of the world also decided that it was a tragedy and labeled it a genocide, just as soon as the killing had

Rwanda has almost always been somewhat of a melting pot, much like other African nations. People of various ethnicities, occupations, and social classes lived in the country without much more trouble than the surrounding nations. Even so, much like other nations, Rwanda still had underlying issues beneath the surface that still had to be faced. Beginning on April 9th, 1994, the genocide had begun, leading to a systematic killing of over 800,000 Rwandans. For what reason were these people killed to begin with? Each of these people were killed for being either Tutsi, an upper-classed ethnic group in the nation, or for refusing to partake in the barbaric bloodletting. After the confrontations between the “upper class” Tutsi and the

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

Genocide movie analysis Hotel Rwanda and Hitler were in about the same time period with World War II going on: 1940’s. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is about a boy who lives in a Nazi family becomes friends with a boy of the same age in a concentration camp. Hotel Rwanda is a movie about a person named Paul and how he helped out the side that he should have been fighting. Hitler’s events took place in Europe and Hotel Rwanda was in Africa. Both of these movies are trying to illuminate that human differences don’t matter.

When most people hear the word genocide, they automatically think about the Holocaust and Hitler. But what people don’t know is that there have been many other genocides in the past and that there are genocides happening still today. One of these was the Rwandan genocide. Rwanda consisted of three different religions, the Hutu, the Tutsi, and the Twa. The Hutu are the majority and are about 85% of the population. The Tutsis are the second largest in Rwanda which is about 14% of them Tutsi. Finally, this leaves the Twa at about 1% of the population.

Centuries ago the Tutsis had taken over the land sacred to the Hutus living there, and they had exploited their new resources, limiting them enough for the opposing clan to spark controversy between the two tribes. A political rivalry still existed centuries later, when a plane carrying the president of ….. Was shot down. That had been the last straw for the Hutus, who had been waiting for the perfect chance to lash out with nothing to hold them back. The government had turned on its citizens, and the Rwandan Genocide had

With this conceded class distinction came the fight for reigning ability, and amidst this power vacuum, Rwandans fell victim to conflicting groups and crime, the eventual building blocks that lead to the massacre of 800,000 civilians. The origins of this ethnic loathing and in turn ethnic genocide can be secured to European colonialism, where those who arrived to colonize and yield the wealth of western knowledge, instead carried racist beliefs. Through this haunting event in history, when foreign governments unfittingly place their ideologies in unknown territory, revealed is how uninvited nations can destabilize a state by stimulating ethnic warfare, causing it to collapse and crumble through conflict.