Rwanda, April 7 1994. The day that marks the start of a “massacre” that that will last 100 days and end with a death toll of 1,000,000 people. More famously known as “The Rwandan Genocide”, one of the most horrific and ghastly acts of genocides to have happened in recent history. The Hutus planned to exterminate the Tutsis, one of the minority groups in Rwanda. After the 100 day genocide, July 1994, 70% of the Tutsis have unfortunately been exterminated leaving only 30% of the population left. The tutsis weren 't the only race to have suffered the Hutus fury, the Hutus also managed to kill 30% of the Pygmy Batwa. Today, the Rwandan Genocide can be categorized according to the UN Definition of Genocide, because the Hutu majority government killed …show more content…
In 1973, Major General Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, as well as the sole leader of the Rwandan government for the following 2 decades, created a new political party. The National Revolutionary Movement for Development (NRMD). He was then elected as the president of Rwanda under the new and “more civilised” constitution authorised in the year 1978 and later on re-elected 2 more times while he was still the sole candidate, 1983 and 1988. Conflict started to bubble again soon after 1993. In the year 1990, the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) consisting of Tutsi refugees invaded Rwanda from a neighbouring country Uganda. In 1992, Negotiations were held between by the now elected president of Rwanda Juvenal Habyarimana along with the government and the RPF because of a ceasefire. By August 1993, President Habyarimana signed an agreement in Tanzania. The formation of a shared power government between both the RPF and Hutus. This seems like a good agreement, but the Hutu extremists were outraged by this agreement of power sharing, and conflict soon started to bubble up
They were killed if they were an adult or a child. We also see that women were brutally raped by Hutu guards and they further killed by them. This shows the sick viciousness of the genocide and the attitude towards all the Tutsis. Similarly Source A shows us how the Rwandan Tutsis that were trying to outrun the Hutu Extremists and survive the genocide had to keep moving during the day. It tells us that any little aspect that went wrong could be the end of your life.
Tutsis were restricted and dehumanized in many ways. Tensions between the two castes were very high. After Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane got shot down, in April 1994, the executions really began. Hutus were basically hunting Tutsis and killing them. It didn’t matter if they were men, women, or even infants; no Tutsis were exempt from the slaughters taking place.
In Rwanda, the Hutus believed that they were superior to the Tutsis and began to kill hundreds of thousands of them. In Germany and Poland, the Germans felt that Jews were inferior to them and wanted to kill each and every one of them. In both situations, a specific group of people were being targeted, mainly because others believed that they were better than that group of people. Both genocides caused a substantial amount of people to lose their lives at the hands of others.
It takes a lot to survive. Some say it's the fight-or-flight instinct, and others say it’s selfishness. In the East African state of Rwanda, in 1994, the Hutus killed 800,000 people in about three months. The people they killed were part of an ethnic group called Tutsis. Paul Rusesabagina lived during the mass murders and wrote about the horrors in his book An Ordinary Man.
There was a huge power struggle going on between the Hutu’s and the Tutsi’s. Source B shows how after the long running rule of the Tutsi’s, 1959 came around with the death of the last Tutsi king of this Monarch, resulting in riots and revolts from the Hutu people, killing hundreds of Tutsi people all in order to gain change and gain power. In the 1960’s Rwanda gained its independence and was soon ruled by a Hutu government in 1961. This, with reason, left the Tutsi people feeling very betrayed and angry at the fact that their beloved power had been ripped from them. Therefore, immensely increasing the tension between these groups resulting in further dissatisfaction coming from both groups and a feeling of mutual hate
(document 7) Belgians created the ideas of the Tutsis being the superior race and the Hutus are the inferior race, moreover, the Belgian had ethnic identity cards made to distinguish between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Someone shot the president of Rwanda, Habyarimana ‘s airplane down, this gave an open door to the Hutus to gain control of Rwanda and over the Tutsis. Since there was no president all hell broke loose, Hutu officials corrupted government ran radios and newspapers, they suggested the killing of Tutsis. (Document 8) A group called, Rwandan Patriotic Front founded by Tutsis attacked government forces and defeated radical Hutu in Kigali. More than 3 million migrated to Europe, Canada, the United States, or neighboring countries.
(Government of Canada, 2014) The peacekeeping force helped with mine clearing, refugee settlement and delivering supplies. By april 1994, the Hutus went on a killing massacre against the Tutsi that resulted in over 500,000 deaths. ‘I know there is a God because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him.
Over the course of 100 days more than 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered by the Hutu majority, and in Sudan/Darfur over 300,000 indigenous people have been murdered by the Arabs. Both Sudan and Rwanda were colonized by foreign countries, Britain and Belgium. Many Europeans countries scrambled for a part of Africa to colonized. This sudden nationalism to colonized this new continent lead to the Conference of Berlin where these countries cut Africa into pieces to colonized. In these newly formed African colonies, Europeans had favored a particular ethnic group exacerbating much of the tension already in these colonies, more specifically Sudan and Rwanda.
Terry George aims no less than to demonstrate the Rwandese reality through the extremely violent and cruel scenes in the movie, he manages to convince the audience that really, over 800,000 people were in fact killed in no more than 100 days and more than 2 million refugees had to seek shelter elsewhere in the world (1). To begin with, it is important to understand the root causes of the conflict between Tutsis and Hutus to in turn understand the genocide demonstrated in the movie. Rwanda was
The death of the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana whose plane was shot down above the Kigali airport in April 6 1994 was the last straw. A French judge blamed the current Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, at the time the leader of a Tutsi rebel group (“How the Genocide Happened-BBC News”). The rebel group wanted to overthrow Habyarimana and return to their homeland. After months of fighting they finally signed a peace treaty but it did little to stop the arguments between the two cultures (“How the Genocide Happened-BBC News”). Then when the plane was shot down the genocide
The Rwandan genocide vs. the Holocaust “Genocide is an attempt to exterminate a people, not to alter their behavior.” Jack Schwartz. Genocide is mass murder, it happens in all parts of the world. A common known genocide is the Holocaust. Where a group known as the“Nazis” (lead by Hitler) murdered more than six million people (many were Jewish).
When the Rwanda genocide began in 1994, its population stood at more that 7 people. Roughly 85% of the population was Hutu, 14% Tutsi, and 1% Twa (un.org). The decades following Rwanda’s independence from Belgium in 1962 saw growing ethnic tensions and periodic violent attacks and reprisals between Rwanda’s Hutu majority and its Tutsi minority. On April 6, 1994, the deaths of the Presidents of Burundi and Rwanda in a plane crash caused by a rocket attack, ignited several weeks of intense and systematic massacres.
This made large divides between the two cultures and later many civil conflicts between the groups. In 1994 when the president 's plane was shot down the government and Hutu militants blamed the Tutsis, radio broadcasts across the country encourages Hutus to take revenge and kill the Tutsis, in the end an estimated 800000 to 1 million people died. The globalization of Belgians colony and the scramble for africa through that part of the world into a blood conflict of cultures and terrorist/militant groups that still rages on
In fact, Rwanda has a long history of politicization of land: those who held political power often intervened and appropriated land for their own purposes” Thus struggle for power by both ethnic groups is what we ultimately see on the outside as to why this conflict occurred, however it is in fact because those who owned the land had the power that we know that this issue was more of a territorial one. This conflict turned into such violent one as the Hutus believed that the only way to gain ownership of the land and of the power was to exterminate the Tutsi. Land belonging to Tutsi was distributed to Hutu after they were killed or exiled. It is because of the twos deep rooted hatred and resentment of one and other that the violence escalated to such a horrific
Rwanda and 100 Days of Bloodbath: Lessons for Nigeria By: Adeyinka Abdulfatai TOMORI Sometime in the night of 6 April 1994, an incredible incident happened in Rwanda; the plane flying both the Rwandan President, Juvénal Habyarimana, who was from the majority Hutu and his Hutu president of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali, the two presidents died as well as every other person on the plane. Responsibility for the attack was disputed, with both the RPF and Hutu extremists being blamed. This assassination set off a violent reaction, resulting in the Hutus ' conducting mass killings of Tutsis and pro-peace Hutus, who were portrayed as "traitors" and "collaborationists".