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Tension In Rwanda

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Rwanda is a nation built on three major ethnic groups and continuous ethnic tension over the course of history. The main cause of the tension was the strained relationship between the Hutus and the Tutsis, the two major ethnic groups of Rwanda. The hostility between the two groups became strong around the beginning of World War I. The Belgians ruled Rwanda and they preferred the Tutsi minority, causing ethnic tension between the Hutus and the Tutsis from the start. The Hutus took action and led several attacks on the Tutsis, trying to drive a large percentage of the Tutsi population into exile. The attempts were successful enough for the Hutus to gain Rwandan independence in 1962 and governed with a republic instead of a Tutsi-created monarchy. …show more content…

Meanwhile, the exiled Tutsis formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and in 1990 they invaded Rwanda. The hostility between the two groups was put on hold by the creation of the Arusha Accords, an agreement for a transition in government where the RPF has a role. However, the Hutus' loathing for the Tutsis never died and they were looking for any opportunity to seek revenge. The airplane of the president, Cyprien Ntaryamira, a Hutu, flew over the Rwandan capital of Kigali and was shot down. Cyprien Ntaryamira did not survive the crash and the Hutus took this as an opportunity to attack. The first killings marked the start of the Rwandan Genocide and began an hour after the Hutu president's plane got shot down. The mass killings went on for about three months. According to the Survivors Fund (SURF), an estimated eight hundred thousand to one million Tutsis and some moderate Hutus were slaughtered over the course of the one hundred day genocide (Statistics of the Genocide). However, the Rwandan Genocide should have been easy to predict when reflecting on the numerous Tutsi assaults in the

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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.

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The Holocaust and the Genocide of Rwanda both deal with the mass killing of their inferior ethnic. Rwanda is a small country in Central Africa. The population was mainly made up of Hutu, but some were Tutsis. During the colonial period in Rwanda, a mass killing of Tutsis began(Rwanda: A Brief). There was tension between the Tutsis and Hutus (Bower).

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The Rwandan Genocide was an event that resulted from decades of inner conflicts between Rwanda’s two main ethnic groups. This groups are the Hutus and the Tutsis, the conflict started in 1962 when under the Belgian rule the Tutsis were majorly favored than the Hutus. The reasons being that the Tutsis were originally the nation’s landowners, they had a more purified and noble appearance and they were much taller than the Hutus. The Tutsis were benefiting majorly they were granted access to education and economic privileges, while the Hutus were underprivileged and disenfranchised. Belgian rule also introduced 2 key elements these were Christian missionaries and modern weaponry.

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Rwanda gained its independence from Belgium on 1st July 1962. Prior to its this colonisation, there were two ethnicities living in Rwanda, ‘the Hutus’ and ‘the Tutsis’. The Hutus were mainly farmers made up most of the population, the Tutsis made up between 15-18% and were mainly involved with cattle rearing. During the period of European colonisation, Belgium took over Rwanda and, on doing so, succeeded in creating a massive divide among these people. The Belgians introduced a European class system of hierarchy to Rwanda – the Tutsis who were already “prominently in the royalty” (however still peasants) were favored by the Belgians (History of the Genocide in Rwanda).

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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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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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Rwanda is a small african country with many unique things we don’t know about them. First off, the Hutus were known as farmers and the pastoralist called themselves Tutsi. At the beginning of the genocide when the president was killed, Mme Habyarimama, the president’s wife, announced that she wanted to file a lawsuit against the person who was responsible for his death. However, she later forgot. “The 1994 genocide in the central African Republic of Rwanda was the inevitable result of a long history of ethnic tension in an overpopulated and impoverished nation”.

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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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The death of the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarima caused a lot of chaos during the Rwandan genocide. The Hutus thought that the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) killed the Hutu president so they started to slaughter civilians. The Belgian colonists thought that the Tutsi were more superior to the Hutus. There were quite a few causes that started the Rwanda genocide.

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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.

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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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