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Why Did Rwanda Genocide Happen

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Although there are many outbreaks around the world, scenes in Africa never seem to reach the news in the United States. Problems continue to take over, resulting in disease, famine and death. The Starvation of Rwanda image does not give a full insight on what is happening in Rwanda; therefore, many people may not be aware of the tragedies that have happened over twenty years ago.
In the BBC’s news “Rwanda: How the genocide happened”, the Genocide itself started in April 1994. Only in a hundred days were about 800,000 people were killed. During this time, the Rwanda war was also in session between the Hutus and Tutsis, who belong in the same ethnic groups (“Rwanda: How the genocide happened”). The Hutus plan was to destroy the entire population of the Tutsis, which is where the killing started between the two (Genocide in Rwanda). Following their plans, there were serious murders that fell upon both nationalities; thrown into the lakes were tons of Tutsi bodies (“Rwanda: How the genocide happened). Daniel, who has been a witness throughout the event, has seen how brutal the killings got. He described it as, “The Kagera has become a river of blood . . . at one point [eighty-seven] bodies …show more content…

In the end, Jehl specifies that “Witnesses have said Tutsis were the victims of the worst violence, much of it carried out systematically by Government troops and Hutu militias, but have been killed in reprisal and in battles with the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the Tutsi-led rebel group that now controls half of Rwanda” (“Officials Told to Avoid Calling Rwanda Killings ‘Genocide’”). Although the genocide had ended, Clinton administrations had told officials not to describe the deaths of the Rwandan’s as a genocide. This did not help in the times of troubled people, since they lashed out at the administrations “hypocrisy”

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In the book “An Ordinary man: An Autobiography” by Paul Rusesabagina, the author faces many bad problems and experiences distasteful moments throughout the whole novel. The author uses quotes the explain the significance of the 1994 Genocide in his own eyes. Near the middle of the story, as Paul explains the harsh treatment and taunting of RTLM against them, he tells us about a teacher who brainwashed her students into hating the “Hutus.” “It always bothers me when I hear Rwanda’s Genocide being described as the product of ‘ancient tribal hatred.’ I think this is a easy way for westerners to dismiss the whole thing as a regrettable but pointless bloodbath that happens to primitive brown people (Rusesabagina Chp.4 Pg.53).”

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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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Samantha Power served as the United Nations Ambassador to the United States from 2013 to 2017, she is an author, diplomat, and an American academic. Through her excerpt, “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide”, Power sets out to inform U.S. citizens, U.S. diplomats, and U.N. officials about the genocide that took place in Rwanda in order to show how this atrocious event could have been put to a halt. Power discusses that the problem with the killing in Rwanda was due to the United States not defining the acts as genocide. The importance of this is because as U.S diplomats did not characterize the slaughtering as genocide, it damp- ened public enthusiasm towards the issue. Power ultimately argues against the US not helping stop

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Tutsis were a group of people forming a minority of the population in Rwanda. As the war begins, the president is assassinated. This assassination is blamed on the Tutsis. In the early stages of the genocide, Paul and his family witness their neighbors getting killed. But Paul keeps peace with his Hutu friends by bribing them with alcohol and money , which kept his family safe.

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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.

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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 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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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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