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History: The Rwandan Genocide

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The Rwandan Genocide “Even for a country with such a turbulent history as Rwanda, the scale and speed of the slaughter left its people reeling” (Rwanda: How the genocide happened). This quote from BBC News perfectly describes the inhumanities that occurred during the 100 day span known as the Rwandan Genocide. The Rwandan Genocide is one of the most recent genocides in history, occurring in 1994 from April to July. This genocide was caused by growing ethnic segregation between two groups that resulted in brutal murderings and a question that is asked to this day: Why didn’t the UN or any other major power step in to help stop these atrocities? The conflicts leading up to the Rwandan Genocide can be traced back to european colonization of …show more content…

According to History’s “The Rwandan Genocide”, “Among the first victims of the genocide were the moderate Hutu Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and her 10 Belgian bodyguards, killed on April 7th.” When her 10 Belgian bodyguards were killed, this caused Belgium to start withdrawing their troops from Rwanda. Hutu extremists used this to their advantage. These extremists in government believed that elimination of the Tutsi would allow them to remain in power. They encouraged everyone to take part in the killing, those who refused were killed. Participants were incentivized by money, food, and land to partake in the killings. In “A Short History of the Rwandan Genocide”, it discusses how the Interahamwe (an anti-Tutsi youth organization established by Hutu extremists) established identification card checking roadblocks that would kill Tutsis on sight. Following this, Hutu extremists killed anyone in office that was Tutsi or a Hutu moderate, and assembled groups to go door to door killing Tutsis (Rosenberg). Many were tortured before being killed. Tutsi women were raped, possibly kept as sex slaves, defiled, tortured, and killed. To escape the slaughtering, many Tutsis seeked refuge in churches, hospitals, schools, and government offices. These places of refuge became sites of mass murderings. One of the worst mass murderings took place at the Nyarubuye Roman Catholic Church, where …show more content…

As former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said in History’s “The Rwandan Genocide”, “The failure of Rwanda is 10 times greater than the failure of Yugoslavia. Because in Yugoslavia the international community was interested, was involved. In Rwanda nobody was interested.” So why did no one step in? According to “A Short History of the Rwandan Genocide”, it is believed that since Hutu moderates were killed in the early stages, countries believed the conflict to be more of a civil war rather than a genocide. Another possible reason is that world powers realized it was a genocide but didn 't want to pay to stop it (Rosenberg). Whatever the reason may be, the world powers should’ve learned from the Holocaust and came together to stop the Rwandan Genocide. By the time major powers started sending help, the genocide had been over for

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In 1994, Rwanda was gripped with murderous fervor as Hutus across the country took up machetes against their Tutsi neighbors in what became 100 days of genocide that left 800,000 dead. Does the history of Rwanda provide any evidence of the implementation of the ten steps of genocide? How did Belgian imperialism influence the relationship between Hutus and Tutsis? What ultimately made the average Hutu decide to murder their Tutsi neighbors? In this paper I will investigate how the ten steps of genocide was used in Rwanda, the effects of imperialism on Rwandan culture and gain insight into why Hutus decided to kill Tutsis through the analysis of the book Machete Season by Jean Hatzfeld.

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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.

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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

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The immense brutality those were faced with during the Holocaust, left most with such deep scarring and trauma, still plays an ongoing role in their lives, even now, 77 years after it has ended. Although the Holocaust has ended, the devastating effects of genocide are still shown and taking place throughout several other parts of the world, the Rwandan genocide being one of them. The Rwandan genocide was a huge massacre of over 800,000 people. During this time, hundreds of thousands of Tutsis (14% of Rwandan population) were being attacked by the Hutus (85% of Rwandan population) as the Hutus felt they were being discriminated against and that the Tutsis were being favored by the Belgian government. This being said, the Hutus decided to take action and rebel against them, causing an exploding massacre across Rwanda.

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When the international community responded indifferently toward the Rwandan genocide, “labeling it an ‘internal conflict’,” as the U.S. Holocaust Museum states, perpetrators could commit those genocidal crimes with little constraint; this directly led to the genocide later in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Adding fuel to [the Congo’s] unstable mix, some one million refugees, mostly the Hutu fearing the… Tutsis, fled into [the Congo]… at the end of the Rwandan genocide” and before the first war of the Congo. Additionally, leaders of that genocide followed, and “Organizing themselves in the fertile grounds of the massive refugee camps in Eastern Congo,... [they] began preying on the local Congolese population and making incursions back into Rwanda” (The U.S. Holocaust Museum 1).

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(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.

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10 Mc Des Forges believes that "[U.S. senior officials] feared [the word genocide] would generate public opinion which would demand some sort of action they did [not] want to act"(Rory Carroll, "US Chose to Ignore Rwandan Genocide)11. But something couldn 't be hidden; "the evil things that they 'd done to many innocent souls" (Immaculée 92). By hiding the reality in the African country from the press and consequently, the people, the government also hid the main reason why it did not

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Myths come from cultures all around the world that are unique to their geographical region and people. However, many of these unique myths, from thousands of miles apart and from different times, have striking similarities. One such case that is interesting to look at are specific deities from Greek and Norse mythology. While Prometheus from Greek mythology gifted fire to mankind, Loki from Norse mythology stole fire, yet they still conduct themselves in similar manners. Their actions pertaining fire had an effect on their people and mankind.

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The problem is that the UN can't help much in certain countries like Rwanda. Otherwise, more people wouldn't have

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(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.

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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

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Level II #1: How does the hunger artist's performance with the impresario differ from that in the circus? At the time the hunger artist and the impresario work together, the jib of the first is to promote the art to draw the audience to see it but also to care for the artist himself while in the circus he was left with his cage on the way to the menagerie, to stand like a road sign and wait for somebody to notice him. The impresario stops the fast after forty days because he wants to keep him alive which is why he doesn't allow him to fast endlessly while in the circus they forget about him, so he manages to fast to death. The impresario's attitude towards the fast is irritating the hunger artist because he doesn't perceive it as art but as

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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.

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The Rwandan genocide was a mass murder of thousands of Tutsi people by the Hutu people, they were viciously killed and scared out of their country, partly due to the rumor that a Tutsi man ordered the death of the Rwandan President. To begin, from April to July 1994, members of the Hutu ethnic group in the East-Central African nation murdered 800,000 men, women, and children from the Tutsi ethnic group. During this period Hutu civilians were forced by military soldier and police officers to kill their neighbors, friends, and family (“10 facts About the Rwandan Genocide-Borgen”). Radio stations encouraged ordinary civilians to take part in the killings (“10 facts About the Rwandan Genocide-Borgen”).

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The genocide was an after affect of the scramble for Africa by European countries who help no regard for the people who already lived their. In the scramble for Africa many European countries raced to make claims on land in Africa that was already lived on by natives, they mistreated the natives and killed and enslaved many of them. This was prevalent in Rwanda when the belgians imperialized the land. The belgians sent the Hutus who were the majority of the population into slavery and lead to mass deaths of their people. But they lead the land through another ethnic group the tutsis who made up about 15% of the population compared to the 85% population of Hutus.

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