Stop The Rwanda Genocide

2030 Words9 Pages

During the 20th century, approximately 174 million people have been killed by the government only and mostly by the communist governments (Dominic & Abimbola, 39). The figures are quite shocking. This clearly depicts that governments exploits the innocent people and incite them to stand against their brothers and sisters. The same story happened in Rwanda in 1994. According to the UN reports, 75% of the Tutsi population was exterminated in the genocide. It was the President Habyarimania’s government, who planned this genocide, a long time before to retain their political power. The magnitude of the genocide was so intense that on the very first day 30,000 people were massacred in Kigali only, a rate five times faster than the Holocaust. To …show more content…

Yes! they showed their presence, but for name sake only. In spite of stopping this carnage, the whole world, turned a blind eye toward Rwanda 's horrors. Despite the powerful military strength and resources, western world is condemned for their catastrophic failure; it didn’t fail to prevent but later failed to stop or even to slow down the genocide. Although the United Nation has sent around a shoddily equipped troops of around 2500 soldiers from different countries under the command of Canadian Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire to maintain law and order in Rwanda, but they failed to stop this genocide due to insufficient support and the power from the international community. In the movie, Lt. Gen. Dallaire role is played by Col Oliver. When Gloria, a foreign journalist asked Col. Oliver that whether the UN intervene to stop the bloodshed? He replies, “Unfortunately, we 're here as peacekeepers not peacemakers, we can 't take an aggressive role”. The international community intervened only and only to rescue their citizens only. Towards the end of the movie there is a scene, when French forces arrived to evacuate people from the hotel. All the refuges were hopeful and happy. But soon their happiness turned to sadness, when they came to know that French forces are there to evacuate only foreigners leaving them behind hopeless. Col. Oliver expresses his …show more content…

International failure to stop the Rwandan genocide is a matter of shame for the western world and the rest of the world need to learn lessons from this slaughter. It is pertinent to mention that genocide is the result of a systematic development, culminating in the crime of crimes which implies that it is possible to prevent genocide by finding its causes. Prevention is better than cure always. It is best to detect the roots of genocide early on or before it even begins. The world should adopt the political re-socialization to replace nationalistic attitudes and value systems with more international and humanitarian based ethos (Krugar 103). The best solution to prevent the genocide is to identify and spotlight the countries in danger of genocidal violence and the population should be educated about the abuses of ethnic identity and ethnic cleansing. Moreover, the international community could prevent the genocide by various methods such as negotiations, mediation, coercive methods like defaulters and sanctions, use of high technology like the signal jamming of radio stations. In addition to this, international communities need to break their silence and resolve indifferences and to implement the ‘political will’ strictly; they should be committed towards the principles of power sharing, consensus building, post conflict recovery and timely action. President Bill Clinton admits, about the Rwanda genocide failure, that it was one of “the greatest regrets of [his]

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