Rwanda Genocide Research Paper
The Hut people made up eighty five percent of the population, the Tutsis made up fourteen, and the ere small group Twa made up the very little amount of one percent. Since the Hut thought that the Tutsis were responsible for killing the President, who was also a part of the Hut tribe, Hut extremist decided that they would destroy the Tutsis and everything they had. This genocide was one Of the most brutal in history approximately 800,000 Tutsis, and Hut were lost. A large part of the Rwanda population was killed during this tragedy and many people were against it.
Sadly, Hut extremist did not care who died. The genocide ended 1 00 days after it started. Rosenberg 1 ) The event that sparked the genocide went back a little further than just the murder of the president. It started in the early sass’s when President Habiliment was first elected. The president was unkind, inconsiderate, and totalitarian. He was a Hut, which pleased the Hut because that meant more opportunity for them. This was government sponsored because the Hut people would never have been able to kill that many people if they did not have the weapons.
The weapons were provided by the government who trusted them, and did not trust the Tutsis people. In the Hut people’s mind this made the Tutsis inferior because they were always excluded. The Tutsis were not allowed to participate in many activities with the government. (Bridget Johnson 1) Another thing that sparked not only the genocide but the tension between the two tribes is where both of them came from. A while ago, around six hundred years ago the Tutsis people came from Ethiopia and invaded the Hut people homes, this at first made the Hut people afraid of them so they made them raise cattle for them.
So successfully and without objecting they were told if they id that they would be granted protection and the Tutsis people would not hurt them. When Rwanda gained their independence from Belgium there was no one in power; this is where the tension between both groups came in because both of them wanted to rule so badly and felt their people most deserving and capable of ruling. The United Nations (UN) is a universal organization with over one hundred and ninety three country members. They are dedicated to keeping the peace. Amnesty International). Although people in the world were aware that this genocide was happening at the time UT no one stepped in to help, not even the united States, who are often involved in the affairs of other countries. There was no incentive, no reward that the UN would have been getting from helping Rwanda. Rwanda was a poor country with no money and especially no oil which was all that seemed important at the time. Since there was no oil that meant that the United States or the United Kingdom were not going to get involved.
Also France was not able to help Rwanda because they say that they did not have enough resources they had enough resources to send for their citizens, and one housing troops that were there to protect Rwanda. The troops got sent back when ten of their members were murdered and tortured. However, the west probably had no motive to help, or save poor Rwanda because if they did they could have especially with the thousand troops that they had sent back. If they did not send they let them stay the genocide would not have lasted that long, and it would have been done about as fast as it started (McGregor 1).
There were some organizations and individuals that stayed during the genocide to help though, the American Red Cross. American Red Cross was able to save around sixty thousand lives despite the fact that the Hut people were still trying to attack even at the hospital. If a few people from the American Red Cross were able to save that many people, imagine what one thousand troops could have done. They could have stopped one of the biggest genocides in history had they intervened. There are some countries though who were afraid to intervene, and that is understandable.
Countries like America, just a few months before the attacks in Rwanda the US sent people to help in Somalia, which ended tragically. UN peacekeepers were ordered and tortured. This was also potentially one of the reasons that the US and UN voted to get all of the peacekeepers out of Rwanda. (Baleful 1) Although the United Nations did not interfere with the genocide, other countries sent for their citizens, so it is not that they did not care about people, its that they did not care about the well-being of poor Rwanda who had no money, or no benefit to them.
On April 9th, 1994 France and Belgium sent for their citizens and left only Rwanda. “The French knew that genocide was in preparation, since they advised our army. They supposedly just did not believe it… ” (Hatfield 1) The word supposedly was put in their because the French were almost certain that the killing and fighting was going to escalate, but they did not care again because Tutsis people could not offer them anything of value, they decided that it was not their fight.
There were though some people that were willing to help, the Belgium troops, but Belgium also called for their troops after ten soldiers were tortured and murdered just for trying to help people. Tutsis women, before they were killed were often sexually assaulted. According to the organization Human Rights Watch/ Africa “Tutsis women were made for sexuality and beauty, for royal courts. That’s how we were educated. People from the north, where there were few Tutsis, wanted to take Tutsis as mistresses because they were forbidden to have them.
Tutsis women were seen as spies because they know how to present themselves to whites and to Hut men, so they became an arm of the RPR. Hut understood the propaganda. It was time for revenge.. The Hut men often raped and pillaged to show their dominance, to ruin the Tutsis men. There were more than just other Hut’s encouraging each other, here were things like gruesome cartoons in the newspaper and the hate radio. The slogan of one of the hate radio stations was “The graves are not yet full”, this encouraged the Hut extremist to continue.
The radio station was run by wealthier extremist, and the president of the militia. (Smith 1) Hut extremist let nothing and no one get in their way during these murders. One man told a journalist covering the genocide “l want to make it clear that from the first gentleman I killed to the last, I was not sorry about a single one. ” The man clearly states that he showed no remorse. There were many mass orders that took place at different times and different areas.
One of the first mass murders was in Gingko on April 9th, In the Palliation Missionary Catholic Church; this was also when it was first known that this was genocide because only the Tutsis people who were in the church were killed. The next was at Nearby Roman Catholic Church on April 16th. The Tutsis people there were killed with guns, and machetes. On April 1 8th around twelve thousand Tutsis were killed at the stadium while they were trying to hide. Then around fifty thousand more, on the same day in Biopsies. On April 29th Around 250,000 people absconded to Tanzania.
