Murder is never a good way to solve a problem, especially when a dictator murders people for no reason or for just a rumor or idea. That’s exactly what happened with the Rwandan Genocide. The Hutus slaughtered the Tutsi tribe of East Africa because the Tutsis had most of the leadership roles when the Europeans took control over Rwanda (Rosenburg). And of course, the Hutus didn’t like that at all, so they started to mass slaughter the Tutsi tribe of Rwanda. The Tutsis were just humble cattle herders who were chosen at random to take leadership roles instead of the Hutus (Rosenburg). The Rwandan Genocide was a terrible event in our world history. Throughout the course of 100 days from April 6 to July 16 1994, approximately 800,000 to 1 million Tutsis and some moderate Hutus were massacred in the Rwandan genocide (United Human Rights Council).
However “The Hutu and Tutsi are two peoples who share a common past (Rosenburg). When Rwanda was first settled, the people who lived there raised cattle (Rosenburg). Soon, the people who owned the most cattle were called "Tutsi" and everyone else was called "Hutu." At this time, a person could easily change categories through marriage or cattle acquisition” (Rosenburg). So as you can see the Hutus and Tutsis lived a pretty peaceful life together. Then the Europeans invaded the peaceful tribes of Rwanda and eventually turned the Rwandese against each other. Due to poverty, over half the children who survived stopped their schooling (The Rwandan Genocide). 40,000 survivors are still without shelter, many whose homes were destroyed in the genocide(The Rwandan Genocide). 7 in 10 survivors earn a monthly income of less than 5000 Rwandan Francs (Equivalent to 8 American Dollars)(The Rwandan Genocide...
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...are just on the street.
Works Cited
"Genocide in Rwanda." United Human Rights Council. United Human Rights Council, n.d. Web. 18 Nov 2013. .
Rosenburg, Jennifer. "Rwanda Genocide." About.com 20th century history. About.com, n.d. Web. 18 Nov 2013. .
"Preaching and Teaching Emmanuel Sitaki." Living Faith Fellowship. Living Faith Fellowship, n.d. Web. 18 Nov 2013. .
"The Rwandan Genocide." Genocide Facts. Modern History Project, n.d. Web. 25 Nov 2013. ."The Rwandan Genocide." Genocide Facts. Modern History Project, n.d. Web. 25 Nov 2013. .
The Hutu and the Tutsi have been in conflict with each other for years but after what happened in 1994 I don’t think that anyone will ever forget. In that year Rwandas Presidents plan was shot down and he was killed. In the days following is when the genocide started, because the Hutu believed that it was the Tutsi that shot down the plan and killed the President because he was a Hutu. The United Nations let this go because of the killing of ten of their own and because of their rules of engagement that resulted from the ten Belgian members being killed while trying to protect the Prime Minister. During a short time period of only a few months about 800,000 Tutsi and Hutu moderates were killed by the militia, other groups and even neighbors.
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.
Greenfield, Daniel M. "Crime of Complicity in Genocide: How the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia Got It Wrong, and Why It Matters." The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 98.3 (2008): 921-24. HeinOnline. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.
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 than Hutus. The RPF decided to create a government consisting of a Hutu and a Tutsi holding the highest government positions. As the RPF took control of the government, “some two million Hutus – both civilians and some of those involved in the genocide – then fled across the border into DR Congo.
Africa has been an interesting location of conflicts. From the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea to the revolutionary conflict in Libya and Egypt, one of the greatest conflicts is the Rwandan Genocide. The Rwandan Genocide included two tribes in Rwanda: Tutsis and Hutus. Upon revenge, the Hutus massacred many Tutsis and other Hutus that supported the Tutsis. This gruesome war lasted for a 100 days. Up to this date, there have been many devastating effects on Rwanda and the global community. In addition, many people have not had many acknowledgements for the genocide but from this genocide many lessons have been learned around the world.
"Rwanda Genocide." Global Issues in Context Online Collection. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Global Issues In Context. Web. 12 Apr. 2010.
“Beginning on April 6, 1994, Hutus began slaughtering the Tutsis in the African country of Rwanda. As the brutal killings continued, the world stood idly by and just watched the slaughter. Lasting 100 days, the Rwanda genocide left approximately 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu sympathizers dead” (Rosenberg 1). When Rwanda’s President, Habyrimana, was killed in a plane crash, turmoil and massacres began. A series of events escalated violence until two ethic groups were engaged in bloody battle: The Hutus and the Tutsis. Throughout the Rwandan Genocide, the Tutsis were targeted because the death of President Habyrimana and problems in social and economic life was blamed in them, thus resulting in the 100-day genocide.
"Rwanda, Genocide, Hutu, Tutsi, Mass Execution, Ethnic Cleansing, Massacre, Human Rights, Victim Remembrance, Education, Africa." UN News Center. UN, n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2013.
The main reason the Hutus killed Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide was for economic reasons. The Tutsis began to benefit greatly from killing Tutsis by looting them and gaining things like money, land, and cattle. The looting of Tutsis became a means of income to the Hutus. The Hutus neglected their fields in favor of killing so they could loot for better food and goods. As Jean Baptiste states, “Why dig in the dirt when we were harvesting without working, eating our fill without growing a thing?”(Hatzfeld, 60) The Hutus mind set of being farmers shifts to being killers who can benefit more from that, than from their regular jobs of harvesting. As stated by Adalbert, “…we didn’t care about what we accomplished in the marshes, only about what was important to us for comfort.” (Hatzfeld, 83) This shows how the men became more concerned with looting and profiting from the killing than actually being concerned with killing people. So in a sense, the job of killing became a means for the men to do their more comfortable job of looting. One can begin to enter the Hutu mind set and see how, by killing other people, people they may have a...
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...
When the Rwandan Hutu majority betrayed the Tutsi minority, a destructive mass murdering broke out where neighbor turned on neighbor and teachers killed their students; this was the start of a genocide. In this paper I will tell you about the horrors the people of Rwanda had to face while genocide destroyed their homes, and I will also tell you about the mental trauma they still face today.
...ause the colonial masters believed that they resembled them. It was unethical for the Belgians to interfere with the peaceful coexistence that the two communities had enjoyed in the past. As a result, the Hutus acquired negative misconceptions about the Tutsis’ origin, what they stood for, and what they had done for them in the past. The Hutus expertly planned and organized the Rwandan genocide as a result of such historical distortions created by their country’s colonial masters.
Rwandan Genocide The history of Rwanda is very interesting. Rwanda is located in East Africa, in East Africa people are not treated as equal. Today, eastern Africa is way different from how it is now. Back in the 1996s the Africans faced many problems.
United Human Rights Council. (2014). Genocide in Rwanda. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/genocide/genocide_in_rwanda.htm [Accessed: 21 Feb 2014].
Middleton, John. "Rwanda." Africa: an Encyclopedia for Students. Vol. 3. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2002. Print.