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Causes Of The Rwanda Genocide

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The death of president Habyarimana was not the central cause of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 as there many other factors which led to the genocide. The massacre was a result of a building of tensions between the Hutus and Tutsis, culminating in death of president Habyraimana in April 1994 and the subsequent genocide. Tensions began to build from the time that Rwanda was colonized by Belgium after World War One when the more "white looking" Rwandan people were labelled Tutsis and the others Hutus or Twa. During this time lasting from 1945 to 1959 the Hutus were discriminated against while the Tutsis received unfair privileges. The relationship between the two groups further worsened when the Hutu citizens of Burundi …show more content…

Source one shows that Rwanda was initially colonized by Germany in 1884 when Africa was divided into fifty countries,by fourteen colonial powers. Germany ran a very efficient country where the entire population shared the same belief system.[1]The people of Rwanda were united as one group and Germany did not interfere too much with the country, but rather had agents at the courts in Rwanda to advise the local chiefs. The Germans also had cash taxes rather than agricultural taxes in order to help the economy and encourage the growth of coffee beans. However after World War One, Rwanda was given to Belgium who divided the country into three groups: the Hutus, Tutsi and Twa. [1]The colonists believed that the Tutsi were a superior group because they were more "white" looking '.[1] The Hutus were therefore persecuted until 1959 when the Hutus overthrew the Tutsi government. However source nine depicts that before this time, the Hutus were forced to pay the Tutsis in order to work on their land and were treated as second class citizens. In addition 'any peasants who opposed the evolving order were treated with unmitigated harshness '. [9] The Tutsis and Belgium colonists did not tolerate any opposition to their system of rule and Tutsi nobles would often kill any opposition that challenged this system. If these Hutus were not killed, their property was …show more content…

There were many reasons for the genocide in Rwanda. The colonization of Rwanda by Belgium and the initial mistreatment of the Hutus, initiated the conflict between the two cultures. The resentment between the Hutus and Twa was then further reinforced by the Burundi killings of 1972 and the Rwandan Civil War of 1990 at which point anti-Tutsi media propaganda campaigns were launched to strike fear and hatred into the hearts of Hutus towards the Tutsis for killing the Hutus in Burundi and because of the RPF 's attempt to overthrow the Hutu government. Moreover, the French military assistance provided the Hutu government with the necessary equipment to perform the genocide and the UN and other countries failed to come to the assistance of the suffering Tutsis between 7 April 1994 and mid July of that same

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C. Introduction The Rwandan genocide lasted three months and in those three months it is said that 1 million Tutsis were killed. The Holocaust lasted 4 years and 6 million Jews were killed. Bearing this in mind it would be expected that The Rwandan genocide should be extremely well known because of the loss of lives, impact and brutality of the event and the similarities it holds with The Holocaust. The fact is that the Rwandan Genocide is not very well known and is not thought to be in the same category as The Holocaust, where in fact it is.

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Before the Europeans entered, the chieftaincy system was such that both Hutus and Tutsis ruled the land. The Belgians, however, simplified the chieftaincy system, reducing its numbers and concentrating power in the hands of the Tutsi. Further, the Belgians oversaw a land reform process in which grazing areas traditionally under the control of the Hutus were seized and given to the Tutsis. In the 1930s, the Belgians introduced large-scale projects in health, education, and agriculture, but mainly for the use and implementation by the Tutsi. As a result, Tutsi supremacy remained, even though these measures did industrialize Rwanda.

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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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Belgian occupied Africa in 1994 favouring the Tutsis over the Hutus giving them more privileges . Both of these groups developed a sense of nationalism, feeling victimized by one another, this sense of nationalism led to Ultranationalism among these groups causing tension among the groups. Extreme forms of Hutu nationalism fueled by propaganda led to a 100-day bloodbath in which caused mass casualties between these groups. Stirred feeling of nationalism in hopes of a better future increased tensions between these two groups leading to genocide. Ultranationalistic leaders used pride and devotion on one’s country as justification for the actions and racist

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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.

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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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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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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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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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Rwanda has a history of deep rooted conflict which originates back to when it was once a colony of Germany. Once it became a colony of Belgium after world war one this conflict also came with it, The conflict that exists is thus of two ethnic tribal groups the; Hutus and the Tutsis and their strong hatred of one another. Rwandans myths seems to indicate that Hutu and Tutsi identities did exist before the colonization but the hatred of two predominate ethnic tribal groups of one another only came into existence after colonization. This conflict between them has nothing to with religion, race or language it is to do with territory and the ownership of Rwanda. It is because of the colonies exploitation and classification of the Rwandan people into“an ethnic group” that the conflict seemed to come to a head.

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