Rwanda Genocide

Rwanda is a country in Africa surrounded by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, and Burundi. In Rwanda in 1994, the Hutu tribe made up about 85% of the population, the Tutsis 14%, and the Twa 1%. At the time, the country had many economic, social, and political problems.

Very extreme Hutus believed, similar to the Nazi’s views during the Holocaust, that the root of most of their problems came from the minority tribe, the Tutsis. During those times there were many economic issues, the country was going the way of many other African countries by losing lots of money. The extremists claimed that all of the problems were all caused by the Tutsis.(Genocide in Rwanda)

Discrimination against the Tutsis was not a new thing, it had been going on for years but up until the 1990’s, it was not so widespread. There were some violent actions but they were small and not on the same scale as the genocide. In the 1990s, the Tutsis were not well represented in the government so they pressured the president, Juvenal Habyarimana to integrate them into parts of the government. Right around the time he was going to sign the agreement, on April 6, 1994, an extremist Hutu group of trained killers called the Interahamwe shot down his plane. This caused an outbreak of violence and war. With that event, the extreme Hutus started to carry out their plans of extermination. (Freeman, 24)

After the President’s death, the Hutus blamed the Tutsis for the assassination. This allowed the Hutu people to feel justified in doing what they planned to do. This in fact was not true, the Interahamwe, a Hutu military group, actually were the ones responsible for his death. (Freeman, 25)

The extremists took control of the government and began a tyrannic...

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... guilt that remained there. A very similar thing also occurred to the Tutsis. For the Tutsis, the places where they remembered killings remained untouched. Many of the Rwandan people, are still scared of each other. (Jean Hatzfeld, Refugee Crisis)

The country of Rwanda has been drastically changed by the genocide that took place here and the survivors live with the scars, both mental and physical, forever.

Works Cited

Freeman, Charles. Crisis in Rwanda. Austin, TX: Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 1999. 1-40. Print.

Hatzfeld, Jean. "The Refugee Crisis." RwandanStories. The R. E. Ross Trust, n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.

"Rwanda, Genocide, Hutu, Tutsi, Mass Execution, Ethnic Cleansing, Massacre, Human Rights, Victim Remembrance, Education, Africa." UN News Center. UN, n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.

"United Human Rights Council." United Human Rights Council. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2014.