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.
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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
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The Holocaust is a topic that is still not forgotten and is used by many people, as a motivation, to try not to repeat history. Many lessons can be taught from learning about the Holocaust, but to Eve Bunting and Fred Gross there is one lesson that could have changed the result of this horrible event. The Terrible Things, by Eve Bunting, and The Child of the Holocaust, by Fred Gross, both portray the same moral meaning in their presentations but use different evidence and word choice to create an overall
Rosenbaum, Alan S. Is The Holocaust Unique?. 3rd ed. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2008. 387. Print.
Botwinick, Rita Steinhardt. A History of the Holocaust. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004.
Former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali once said, "We were not realizing that with just a machete, you can do a genocide." To be candid, nobody anticipated the Rwandan Genocide that occurred in 1994. The genocide in Rwanda was an infamous blood-red blur in modern history where almost a million innocent people were murdered in cold blood. Members of the Tutsi tribe were systematically hacked or beaten to death by members of the Interahamwe, a militia made up of Hutu tribe members. In just 100 days, from April 6, 1994 to mid-July, 20% of Rwanda's population was killed; about 10,000 people a day. Bodies literally were strewn over city streets. Genocide obviously violates almost all articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; however, the article I find most important is Article 3 - the right to life, liberty, and personal security. In just 100 days, one million people were denied the most basic privilege granted to every human – the right to live, simply because they were born to the wrong tribe.
The genocides of the 20th century which occurred in Rwanda and Germany had striking similarities, something that should have alerted the world to stop them. At the core of these two massacres, patterns existed that outlined how similar thinking and reasoning could lead to something as horrible as these two events. One can see how both groups used their command of knowledge as a way to control the people, how the rest of the world refused to step up to stop the killings, and how the people were thought of as less than humans to provide a just cause for such terrible acts.
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.
April 7th 1994 marks the start of on of the worst things ever to happen to human beings, The Rwandan Genocide. It is known that over 800’000 Rwandans were massacred, 800’000 is 20% of the countries population, over 70% of the tutsis were brutally murdered within the 100 day genocide of Rwanda. Both Hutus and tutsis were killed and murdered at the hands of their neighbours machetes. During this compare and contrast essay I will discuss the long and short term causes of both the Rwandan and Congolese Conflicts. I will also discuss how the natives of these two countries were forced to leave their homes and migrate in seek of aid. The genocide was between April 7th and July 15th 1994, therefore it is known as the 100 day war. The genocide or in context the Rwandan Civil War was fought between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Ongoing conflicts began in 1990 between the hutu-led government and the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front). The RPF was created in 1987 by the Tutsi refugee diaspora in Uganda. The first Tutsi refugees fled to Uganda to escape ethnic purges in the beginning of 1959.
Genocide is the “deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.” (Dictionary.com, 2010) In 1924, after World War I, Belgian colonists entered Rwanda and allowed the Tutsi dynasty to remain in power. However, after World War II concepts of right and wrong changed. Since the Belgians had been favouring the Tutsis, this change in ethics caused the Belgians to have compassion on the Hutus and promote the Hutu cause, creating tension. (Thompson, 2007) It was the Belgians who cre...
Levi, Neil, and Michael Rothberg. The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003. Print.
Bressman, Eric (2006). Fighting Indifference: Looking at World Responses to the Holocaust with Elie Wiesel. Columbia University.
Dwork, Deborah, and R. J. Van Pelt. Holocaust: a History. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.
The Holocaust and the Bosnian genocide had many similarities and differences in their course of events. Unfortunately, genocides like the Jewish Holocaust and the Bosnian genocide still continue to happen today. Jews were constantly persecuted before the Holocaust because they were deemed racially inferior. During the 1930’s, the Nazis sent thousands of Jews to concentration camps. Hitler wanted to wipe out all the European Jews in a plan called The “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem” (World History).
The Holocaust and Armenian genocide are similar in the reasons that started them, but they are different in who was involved and how the two genocides were executed. Even though there are differences the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust are very similar in the ways people were convinced to follow the government. Both of these genocides started with a change in government. The “Young Turks” who wanted one religion and one language told people that the Armenians were a threat to their national security and called all of them spies (Beecroft). They started with the intellectuals and the leaders.
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.
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...