What Happened during the Rwandan Genocide?
Growing Tension between the Hutu and the Tutsi
On April 6, 1994 the plane carrying Rwanda's president, a moderate Hutu, back to Kigali from negotiations to end the Civil War was shot down. Within hours Hutu extremist leaders had usurped power, killed the interim prime minister, and set in motion a well-planned "apocalypse" of killing that lasted for 100 days. It is now called the Tutsi Genocide of 1994. While the Rwandan Army occupied itself fighting the invading Tutsi army, militia groups across the country set about their plan to completely diminish the Tutsi population. The reason this started was because the Hutu were told that the they had to share power with the Tutsi's. The Hutu had brought together and trained a civilian force comprised mainly of young men and armed them with machetes, small arms, and plenty of banana beer. Meanwhile, the Hutu media kept up a stream of hate messages that encouraged these young men to exterminate all Tutsi "cockroaches." In Rwanda there are 3 ethnic groups the Hutu which made up 85% of Rwanda population, the Tutsi which made up 14%, and then the Twa which made up 1% of the population and mainly lived in the mountains. The Tutsi and the Hutu had a big hatred for each other because the Tutsi which were the minority of the population were given control of Rwanda and the Hutu had to share that power. The Hutu said because they looked different they probably moved from Ethiopia.
What happened during the Rwanda Genocide (100 Days)
Over the 30 years since Independence, Tutsi had committed atrocities against Hutu but now the response was all out of proportion to all prior violence; in 100 days Hutu militia killed nearly one million people, nearly three quarters of the Tutsi population, and raped as many as a quarter million women. In village after village young men, with support from regional and community leaders, killed and raped with impunity using machetes and traditional club-like weapons. Road blocks were set up every where and everyone was stopped and forced to show the government-issued identification cards (a system inherited from the Belgian colonizers) which stipulated their ethnic group. If the card said that the person was a Tutsi they would be condemned to death, separated by sex, the men and children to be automatically hacked with a machete or shot by one of the leaders who were armed with pistols, while the women would be given over to sexual assault. Hoping to escape, many Tutsi sought safety in churches (Rwanda was then and still is a predominantly Roman Catholic country), believing that a church was a holy place of sanctuary. But they were wrong; the relentless force of young men crazed by blood and beer stormed into the places the Tutsi were hiding and killed them.
The Role Of the UN in Rwanda during the genocide
The United Nations Assistance Mission Rwanda, led by a Canadian general, had been stationed in Rwanda to enforce the peace agreements. They were given a very limited mandate to observe and not to interfere; with these orders the UN "blue berets" were helpless in the face of the killing. Troops from Belgium and France also entered Rwanda, but with the authorization only to evacuate white people. Journalists from many countries, most notably the BBC, also arrived to document and film what was going on. Once all the whites were taken away a reporter said "We heard shots as soon as we left. I felt awful because I knew I couldn't do anything for them." Americans had a free ride out of Rwanda; all they need to show was that blue U.S. passport and they were on a safe ride home while all the Tutsi were left to get slaughtered. Though the UN troops were told to leave, the Canadian general stayed behind with a small group of UN troops from Africa to do what they could to stop the killing. One American person also stayed to fight was an American missionary named Carl Wilkens who stayed because he said "that he felt it was the right thing to do." The Red Cross also stayed to help save people and saved over 85,000 people. The Rwanda Genocide ultimately ended when they invading army of Tutsi expatriates gained the upper hand and took control of the capital city of Kigali. When the defeat of the Hutu regime started to appear inevitable, thousands of Hutu's, both killers and innocent civilians, began fleeing Rwanda to neighboring countries.
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This is a video of the Hutu killing the Tutsi with machete's. This shows how relentless the Hutu were to getting rid of all the Tutsi's.
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The Human Rights Violations of the Rwanda Genocide: In 100 days neighbors killed neighbors, women young and old were subjected to the most invasive form of violation by men, many of whom carried HIV, children were mercilessly killed in places where they once worshiped. Life was taken, families torn apart, bodies were violated by men that had once been trusted, and those who survived were left with disease, unwanted babies, to say nothing of physical and emotional scars to last a lifetime. Ironically, it was not only the Tutsi who suffered, but also those Hutu who attempted to shelter fleeing neighbors, Hutu who stood by and did nothing to stop the atrocities, and finally it was the killers who lost any remnant of humanity they ever had and in the end lost their dignity, freedom and their homes.
Sources:
http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/genocide/genocide_in_rwanda.htm
http://www.history.com/topics/rwandan-genocide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJAuyIRfYIM
https://libcom.org/files/rwanda-genocide.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nbPy78G_7Jo/U0L_WsuAkbI/AAAAAAAAR6w/yPXDwETeOUI/s1600/rwanda2.jpg
http://over1000hills.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/4/9/19495653/1114460_orig.jpg
http://www.digitaljournal.com/img/1/1/3/1/2/7/i/7/1/4/o/rwanda-genocide-bodies.jpg
http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/genocide/genocide_in_rwanda.htm
http://www.history.com/topics/rwandan-genocide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJAuyIRfYIM
https://libcom.org/files/rwanda-genocide.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nbPy78G_7Jo/U0L_WsuAkbI/AAAAAAAAR6w/yPXDwETeOUI/s1600/rwanda2.jpg
http://over1000hills.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/4/9/19495653/1114460_orig.jpg
http://www.digitaljournal.com/img/1/1/3/1/2/7/i/7/1/4/o/rwanda-genocide-bodies.jpg