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Interethnic Conflict In Rwanda

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The Rwandans have had a long-standing tradition of interethnic conflicts, that reached its peak in 1994 with the Rwandan genocide. To understand the reasons for this genocide, as well as the lasting effects it has had on the interethnic relations of the Rwandans, the background on how these relations began must first be analyzed. It was reported in 1991, three years before the genocide, that there were approximately 7.7 million people living in Rwanda (Longman, 2009). There are three major ethnic groups within this population, and the 1991 census reports of the 7.7 million people, 90% were Hutu, 9% were Tutsi, and 1% were Twa (Longman, 2009). This is important to note, as the largest conflict was between the Hutu and the Tutsi. Most scholars …show more content…

For many years following, the Hutu were able to keep their power through violence and coercion (Longman, 2009). Their most widely used tactic to maintain power was deflection of dissatisfaction onto the Tutsi (Longman, 1995). It was extremely easy for the Hutu to accomplish this, as there were no Tutsi people in important communal positions (Longman, 1995). Additionally, no Hutu had forgotten the past exploitation of their people at the hands of the Tutsi (Longman, 1995). This normalization of violence and hatred to maintain control set a precedent for the genocide of the Tutsi in 1994. The Rwandan genocide was the moment in which the interethnic conflict between the Hutu and the Tutsi came to a boiling point. The Hutu, scared of losing their power and angry about the assassination of the first Hutu president in Burundi, committed genocide against the Tutsi people in Rwanda (Longman, 2009). Following this, the Hutus responsible for carrying out this extreme act of violence fled to Congo, where they continued to attack the Tutsi (Longman, 2009). Presently, 23 years after the genocide, the Rwandan government works not to acknowledge the differences between the Hutu and Tutsi (Mamdani, 2001). There has been a push for a singular community defined by the language of Kinyarwanda (Mamdani, 2001). Despite this, there are still tensions that come into play due to the history behind the relationship between Hutu and

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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.

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History repeats itself, especially when it comes to the topic of genocide. The word “genocide” was created by a lawyer named Raphael Lemkin who combined the Greek word geno-, meaning race or tribe and the word -cide, Latin for killing. There have been a number of genocides that have occurred including, the murder of Jewish and Gypsy populations in 1944, the Rwanda genocide in 1944, and the genocide in Darfur in 2003. Genocide occurs because of propaganda, cultural expectations, and military strategies.

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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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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

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Although the Catholic Church placed a divide between the Hutus and Tutsis there was also an inner divide within the Church between those who supported the genocide and those who did not. In retrospect, all churches should not condone the behaviour that comes attached with a genocide – the church should be a safe place and unfortunately those who fled to the church thinking it was a safe place found it to be the exact opposite (Guardian). In Things Fall Apart, Achebe shares the message that Rwanda was not one – it was divided and that was exactly what the Catholic church was doing; dividing the country. The term “not one family” describes what happened in this case, not only did the Church aid in dividing the nation it also went against all

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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

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