ipl-logo

Summary Of Return To Rwanda By Will Ferguson

863 Words4 Pages

Geography Assignment #1
Lucas Gwartz

Both William B Wood’s “Geographic Aspects of Genocide: A Comparison of Bosnia and Rwanda” and Will Ferguson’s “Return to Rwanda” are about the long-term effects that genocides have on society. Ferguson’s “Return to Rwanda” gives a first-hand take of what it was like to live in Rwanda during the 1994 Genocide. The article examines Jean-Claude Munyezamu, a Rwandan Tutsi, returning to his homeland 20 years after fleeing the country so that he could have a better life in Canada. Over the course of 3 months in 1994, around 1 million citizens, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus opposed to genocide, were brutally murdered by the more dominant Rwandan Tribe, The Hutus. There were two tribes in Rwanda: Hutus and …show more content…

The Belgians were one of the many countries that moved into the area. They wanted to start a class system. But they were unsure which tribe they wanted to be ranked higher in society: The Hutus or Tutsis.1 At the end, The Belgians decided to make the Tutsis the higher-ranking tribe in the country because of their lighter skin compared to the Hutus darker skin. This remained the way until the Hutus took over the country in 1960. Tutsis now became second-class citizens to the Hutus. Tutsis were restricted and dehumanized in many ways. Tensions between the two castes were very high. After Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane got shot down, in April 1994, the executions really began. Hutus were basically hunting Tutsis and killing them. It didn’t matter if they were men, women, or even infants; no Tutsis were exempt from the slaughters taking place. Just like the Holocaust, each citizen in Rwanda had a card indicating what tribe they belonged to. The genocide ended 3 months later when the Rwanda Patriotic Front took control of the Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. The article examines how the country has changed so much since the genocide occurred. Jean-Claude starts to remember what life had

Show More
Related
1400 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More
990 Words | 4 Pages

Poisonwood Bible Super Essay In Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, relocating to the Congo has contrasting effects on each character. Facing the grueling elements and the lack of normalcy, these characters both react differently to this change and grow in their own way. Rachel and Leah are two distinctive characters who both exhibit change and growth from their time in the Congo. In addition, as a result of white colonization, the Congo has seen significant changes throughout history.

Read More
1323 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More
2684 Words | 11 Pages

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.

Read More
1244 Words | 5 Pages

When Belgium colonized Rwanda in 1916 they split up the people into two classifications, the Hutu and the Tutsi. While there is little actual difference between them the Tutsi were believed to have a higher social status, better job and political voice. The Hutu was the lower class, labor, farming and low social standing. The Hutu eventually took over Rwanda by force in the early 1960s. “When the Belgians chased the Germans out of the territory in 1916 they discovered that two groups of people shared the land.

Read More
883 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
1140 Words | 5 Pages

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).

Read More
678 Words | 3 Pages

Just under 100 years later, during a 100-day span in 1994, Rwanda's Hutu government killed an estimated 1 million Tutsis, wiping out more than one-third of Rwanda’s population. Continuing into the 2010s, the cruel acts taken upon the civilians compare notably to the acts taken upon the Jews. As stated by Edmund Burke, “Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.” This brilliant quote represents that without proper interpretation, history will forever be in a

Read More
866 Words | 4 Pages

The Rwandan genocide was a mass slaughter of the Tutsi population that lasted 100 days from the 7th of April to the 15th of July in 1994. Although the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda existed at the time, Canada and the international community still failed to help Rwanda as a whole, as individual countries, and by not doing what they could to aid Roméo Dallaire. As an international community as a whole, there was far more that could have been done to help Rwanda through the United Nations and as individual countries. UNAMIR, or United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, was made to keep peace in Rwanda and started a year before the genocide occurred.

Read More
1339 Words | 6 Pages

One cannot fight fire with fire. While massacre reigns in Rwanda and people take betrayal to the extreme, Paul Rusesabagina in his book, An Ordinary Man, proofs how violence is unnecessary while standing against the power of the word. As Rusesabagina states, words are “powerful tools of life”(Rusesabagina, 19). The war between the two different ethnic groups, Hutus and Tutsis, and the death of thousands left a mark Rwanda’s memory; the author says: “It is the darkest bead on our national necklace” (222). Even though a large part of Rwanda’s population is massacred, many are saved by one of Rwanda’s timeless heroes.

Read More
662 Words | 3 Pages

Over 1,000,00 Tutsis and some Hutus were murdered and over two million people fled the country. This genocide ruined the economy, dismantled the government, and drove up incidence rate of communicable diseases. The stage of demographic transition that best describes Rwanda’s current state is the first stage, which entails high fertility and high mortality and can be seen in Figure 1. There are demographic and economic factors that have kept Rwanda in such a volatile state. As seen in

Read More
896 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
656 Words | 3 Pages

Have you ever been picked last in school or treated unfairly? I can tell you that the Tutsis people of Rwanda were. They were killed because they were thought to be different. In 1916 Belgium took over Rwanda from Germany, and they introduced ID cards naming the people by ethnicity. The Belgians thought the Tutsi were a better race, so they gave them better jobs and educational opportunities.

Read More
824 Words | 4 Pages

Rwandans have one mother tongue which is Kinyarwanda, and their national languages are English and French. The Hutu are traditionally farmers, Tutsi are traditionally cattle owning while pygmies are hunters and potters. Rwanda was colonized by Germany and Belgium and got independence in 1962. After the independence primarily Tutsis, had taken refuge in neighboring states to escape the violence which had accompanied the gradual coming into power of the Hutu community. The first President was Gregoire Kayibanda, and he was from the Hutu community, the Tutsis were mad because they replaced the Tutsi monarchy with a republican form of government.

Read More
848 Words | 4 Pages

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

Read More

More about Summary Of Return To Rwanda By Will Ferguson

Related Topics

Open Document