Beginning on April 6, 1994, Hutus began a mass slaughtering of the Tutsis in the African country of Rwanda. This mass slaughtering is labeled as genocide, the deliberate obliteration of an ethnic, racial, religious, or political group. The Rwandan genocide lasted 100 days while other countries stood idly by and watched the brutal killings continue. The hatred against the Tutsis began after the RPF invasion in October of 1990. Accusations from editorials and radio broadcasts claimed Tutsis wanted to establish a monarchy with Hutu slaves; other racial libel included all the Tutsis being called cockroaches.
Many years prior to the Rwandan genocide, a similar deliberate extinction occurred. Between 1933 and 1945, members of the Nazi party killed over six million Jews in what is know now as the Holocaust. The genocide started when the Treaty of Versailles caused Germany to pay massive monetary compensations to the other nations. As stated by Sean Sheehan in Why Did the Holocaust Happen? (2011), “Some anti-Semitics saw the harsh terms of the treaty as part of a Jewish conspiracy against the German people. Wealthy Jews in Germany were accused of investing their money in enemy countries instead of joining the German army” (p. 7). Jews were soon accused of plotting world domination and spreading communism to destroy Christian culture. The hatred of the Jewish culture grew when several Jews held government positions in the Weimar era.
Similarities
The Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide did display some similarities when occurring. Both portrayed certain characteristics and conditions for the genocide to occur: a national culture that did not place a high value of human life; a totalitarian society with superior ideology; ...
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...onditions needed to for them to occur. With history to fall back on, it is not clear whether another act of genocide could occur today. The Holocaust showed how international forces can and should intervene in scenarios of this nature; however, international forces stood idly by during the Rwandan genocide. History is very contradicting, and no one can predict the outcomes which lie ahead. One can only hope people stand up for what is right and intervene.
Works Cited
Mare, J. (2011). Genocide watch upgrades afrikaner genocide to stage 6. The Afrikaner Journal. Retrieved November 28, 2011, from
http://afrikanerjournal.wordpress.com/tag/gregory-stanton/
Melvern, L. (2004). Conspiracy to murder: the Rwandan genocide. New York, NY: Verso.
Sheehan, S. (2011). Why did the holocaust happen (1st ed.). New York, NY: Gareth Stevens
Publishing.
As a conclusion, Rwanda and Bosnia genocide was about ethnic conflicts for gaining power or for land, mass murders, area destructions, civilians deaths, hiding evidence and many more. Also genocide has different stages to categories its specification such as classification, symbolisms, discrimination, dehumanization, extermination, preparation and many more. As the end of genocide there were deaths of some ethnic groups too which are hardly found or known as minority groups. We should further inspire and encourage future world people to prevent such a tragedy like the Rwanda and Bosnia and other genocide conflict from ever happening again.
Genocide...genocide happens quite often in the atrocious despicable place called earth; Like in the Holocaust, and in the trail of tears. The Holocaust was a racist act exploiting the Jews. The trail of tears was over the white man wanting more land, not caring about how this effects anyone else. Both events are based on racist bigotry. They are different but they're the same concept….
The United Nations did not prevent that future genocide. Sadly, there are many genocides that occurred after the Holocaust (i.e. the Bosnian genocide) despite the term “never again”. Many countries refuse to intervene and help the people suffering in the genocide for their own selfish reasons. They don't want to send their troops or help with food and necessities because of the possible financial impact to their own country. However, once the people committing the genocide multiply and pose a threat to more countries, the international community must help in order to prevent the genocide from entering their own countries. The world didn't get involve in both the Holocaust and the Bosnian genocide until the German empire and the Serbs in Bosnia, respectively, became very powerful and dangerous to the surrounding areas. The only way to prevent genocide is to destroy it on impact and not wait for six million to perish
The Rwandan genocide occurred due to the extreme divide between two main groups that were prevalent in Rwanda, the Hutu and the Tutsi. When Rwanda was first settled, the term Tutsi was used to describe those people who owned the most livestock. After the Germans lost control over their colonies after World War I, the Belgians took over and the terms Hutu and Tutsi took on a racial role (Desforges). It soon became mandatory to have an identification card that specified whether or not an individual was a Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa (a minority group in Rwanda). The Tutsi soon gained power through the grant of leadership positions by the Belgians. Later on when Rwanda was tying to gain indepe...
Many religious conflicts are built from bigotry; however, only few will forever have an imprint on the world’s history. While some may leave a smear on the world’s past, some – like the homicide of Semitic people – may leave a scar. The Holocaust, closely tied to World War II, was a devastating and systematic persecution of millions of Jews by the Nazi regime and allies. Hitler, an anti-Semitic leader of the Nazis, believed that the Jewish race made the Aryan race impure. The Nazis did all in their power to annihilate the followers of Judaism, while the Jews attempted to rebel, rioted against the government, and united as one. Furthermore, the genocide had many social science factors that caused the opposition between the Jews and Nazis. Both the German economy and the Nuremberg Laws stimulated the Holocaust; nevertheless, a majority of the Nazis’ and Hitler’s actions towards Jews were because of the victims’ ethnicity.
The Holocaust and the Darfur-Sudan Genocide occurred in countries that were similarly susceptible to the influences of corrupt leaders and political organizations, and weakened by economic downfalls. Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazis, convinced the nation of Germany to believe that in order to become a stronger country it needed to kill or misplace all who were not what he believed to be “pure” Germans (Holocaust). In the Darfur-Sudan genocide, Al-Bashir, leader of the National Islamic Front, blamed all the country’s prob...
Something that is common between all of these genocides is the bystander effect. In psychology, the bystander effect “occurs when the presence of others discourages an individual from intervening in an emergency situation” (“Psychology”). From the German and Polish people not intervening in holocaust to the Indonesian gangsters rallying against the communists, without the mass number of psychosomatic people, none of this would have occurred like it
The Holocaust is one of the most infamous genocides in history. “Genocide” is defined as “the deliberate killing of people who belong to a particular racial, political, or cultural group” (“Genocide”). According to Lila Perl, author of Genocide: Stand by or Intervene, “genocide differs from civil and political wars, in which great numbers of both combatants and civilians die, in that genocide has a particular intention” (6). There have been multiple cases of genocide throughout the world, despite people saying “never again.” Genocide is always intentional and, regardless of the fear it causes, it can always be prevented. People simply need to stand up for themselves and their fellow civilians in order for things, as atrocious as genocide, not to happen. During the Holocaust the surrounding countries had not intervened soon enough, hence the outcome was far worse than it could have been.
Genocide is a huge problem in today’s society. While there are laws set down to handle cases where genocide occurs, the idea and premise of genocide and all that it entails is still widely debatable. It’s difficult to put a label and definition on a term that, while it has a long history of existence, is very rare and unknown to the common man. When I say rare, genocide only occurs in very extreme cases and situations, but it doesn’t make it any less of a horrible crime.
Many innocent lives were taken during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Philip Gourevitch’s “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families,” explains why the genocide that occurred in Rwanda should not be written off in history as just another tribal disagreement. This book entails the stories of Gourevitch and the people he interviewed when he went to Rwanda. These stories express what people went through during the genocide, the loss they saw, the mass killings they tried to hide from, and the history of what led to the Rwandan genocide. Rwanda’s colonial past did influence the development of the genocide in Rwanda. The hatred between the Hutus and the Tutsis had been going on for many years before the genocide.
The Rwandan Genocide deals with the massacre of Tutsis from the Hutus over the course of 100 days in 1994 within Rwanda. Almost a million people died after ethnic tension over the years, and finally a plane crash killing political leaders, sent the Hutus into a fit of “revenge” and malice. The genocide inadvertently though, united the people of Rwanda post-genocide because of sorrows, guilt, and forgiveness that all the people could relate to and grow from. The Rwandan Genocide isn't very similar to other genocides history has seen before. Quoted from a 60 Minutes episode featuring a Rwandan survivor, Immaculee Ilibagiza, “It was extremely low-tech. No gas chambers here. Just machetes, spears, and knives. Wielded by Hutus…”. The Hutus also utilized radios to transmit information, like the location of Tutsis to murder, to new tactics etc. This genocide is known as the
The Rwandan Genocide was a terrible event in history caused by a constantly weakening relationship between two groups of people. The country of Rwanda is located in Africa and consists of multiple groups of people. Majority of Rwanda is Hutu, while a smaller amount of people are Tutsis. The genocide started due to multiple events that really stretched the relationship between the two groups to its end. One of the starting factors was at the end of World War 1. Rwanda was a German colony but then was given to Belgium “who favored the minority Tutsis over the Hutus, exacerbated[exacerbating] the tendency of the few to oppress the many”(History.com). This created a feeling of anger towards the Tutsis, because they had much more power then Hutus.
The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 was not only one of the most remarkable tragedies in Rwanda, but is often recalled as one of the most gruesome massacres in all of history. The Rwandan Genocide was an attack on the Tutsi minority from the Hutu majority, the two major ethnic groups of Rwanda. According to the Survivors Fund (SURF), an estimated eight hundred thousand to one million Tutsis, along with some moderate Hutus, were slaughtered over the course of the one hundred day genocide ("Statistics"). The Huffington Post states, "If we follow the U.N. 's estimate, that means that nearly six men, women and children were murdered every minute of every hour of every day," ("5 Staggering Statistics"). Nevertheless, little assistance was provided for the Tutsis during the Rwandan Genocide. The lack of empathy from other nations during the massacre was remarkable. The entire world watched the genocide play out, yet almost all of the observers turned a blind eye and waited for the United Nations to intervene. Although the Tutsis longed for a savior, the U.N. did not intervene until it was far too late.
Percival, Valerie, and Thomas Homer-Dixon. "Getting Rwanda wrong. (genocide in Rwanda)." Saturday Night. v110. n7 (Sept 1995): p47(3). Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. K12 Trial Site. 12 Apr. 2010 .
Personally, when I first heard the term genocide, the first picture that came up to my mind was the picture of the German dictator Hitler. Hitler hated Jews and saw them as the reason behind every disaster in the world. In his biography on Hitler, Schramm wrote that there is a theory explaining the reasons behind Hitler’s hatred towards Jews, he said t...