Dbq Essay On Rwanda Genocide

No, the shooting down of President Habyarimana’s plane did not initiate the genocide but rather, the genocide was affected by the deep rooted tensions between two groups who inhabited Rwanda, the Hutu’s and the Tutsi’s. These two groups had gone through a long period of power struggles which will be explored throughout this essay. Showing that the genocide did not occur as a result of one assassination. “It is buried too deep in grudges, under an accumulation of misunderstandings...’ . Although it is argued that the plane crash did indeed initiate the genocide and that the genocide was merely a reaction to the plane crash.

The two groups mentioned above, Hutu and Tutsi, had a strong dislike for one another as it has been described in source

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

Source A explains how the killings started with little planning, other began the killings once they were given orders, the only order really was to kill the Tutsi’s and to not stop. This shows how their retaliation and their orders that they were given were not a build up to get back at the Tutsi’s for past years but rather because their President had been killed and they blamed the Tutsi’s. Source D expands on what source A mentioned how just a couple of hours after the assassination, the massacres began, showing how quickly the crash actually triggered the Hutu’s to begin the genocide. Both source an and H speak about how the Hutu’s communicated through radios in order to discuss which Tutsi’s were to be killed and where those Tutsi’s were. The radio was also used to anger the Hutu’s and result in a sustained genocide, this shows how if the Hutu’s had to of been planning months or more in advance for a genocide the Hutu militia would already know who and where their targets were and wouldn’t need to be given further orders, but instead they needed to communicate with one another and their leaders as there was no real plan set out on who they must kill. Showing how this