Causes and Consequences of the Rwandan Genocide Essay

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Rwandan Genocide: Causes and Consequences

A simple mention of the term 'Rwandan genocide' spurs chills in anyone who properly understands world history. The feeling is even more intense among members of the international community and the high-ups of the UN Security Council who, despite getting a heads-up on the possible mass execution of Tutsis by disgruntled Hutu extremists, chose to do nothing to prevent or mitigate the same, leading to the cold-blooded massacre of over 800, 000 civilians within a three-month span - in what is so far one of the most horrifying events of the post cold-war period. The U.S., for instance, chose to steer clear of any involvement, with the then president, Bill Clinton, advising the UN Security Council against deploying additional troops to Rwanda -- a decision he terms as "one of the greatest regrets of his presidency"[footnoteRef:1]. There is no doubt that hundreds of lives would have been saved if the international community had played a more active role; what is not clear, however, is how people could be coerced into harboring so much hatred that they turn against their neighbors, with whom they have lived for years, slaughtering them mercilessly with knives and machetes. This text provides some insight on this by showing that the ethnic tension between the Tutsi and Hutu races was not spontaneous; rather, it grew over time from the colonial period, and was exacerbated by a combination of historical and economic factors. [1: Zack Beauchamp, "Rwanda Genocide -- What Happened, Why it Happened and Why it Still Matters," Vox, Last Modified April 10, 2014, accessed 15 April, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2014/4/10/5590646/rwandan-genocide-anniversary ]

Before embarking on the main discussion, however, it would be prudent to first give a clear definition of the term 'genocide' as used in this text, and a brief background of the genocide in Rwanda.

Genocide Defined

The term 'genocide' is derived from two Greek words; 'genos', which means race and 'cide' which means killing[footnoteRef:2]. It basically refers to any act geared at destroying in whole or in part, a religious, racial, ethnic or national group. It could take several forms including i) forcibly transferring the target group's children to another group; ii) imposing strategies geared at preventing births among members of the target group; iii) inflicting conditions aimed at causing physical destruction to members of the group; and iv) killing members of the target group[footnoteRef:3]. Rwanda's case qualifies as genocide because the extermination plans against Tutsis were made long before April 1994, and predictions of the killings were made years before the actual events occurred[footnoteRef:4]. [2: Arthur Grenke, God, Greed, and Genocide: The Holocaust through the Centuries (Washington, DC: New Academia Press, 2005), 3] [3: BBC News, " Analysis: Defining Genocide," BBC News, Last Modified August 27,2010, accessed April 15, 2015 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-11108059] [4: Helen Hintjens, "Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda," The Journal of Modern African Studies 37, no. 2 (1999): 246]

Background of the Rwandan Genocide

In April 1994, Hutu militiamen affiliated to the ruling National Republican Democratic Movement Party (MRND) initiated a genocide against the Tutsi race, who were also the minority (hardly 10% of the population)[footnoteRef:5]. By June, they had killed almost 800,000 Tutsis, and almost 100,000 Hutus had died following retaliatory attacks. The events leading up to the attack, however, date way back to 1959, when Hutu extremists orchestrated a revolution that not only drove the Tutsi, then the country's rulers, out of power, but also killed 20,000 of their members and drove hundreds others into exile in Uganda[footnoteRef:6]. This group of Tutsis reorganized itself in Uganda, and became the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF). Led by Paul Kagame, the RPF launched a successful invasion into the country in 1990 with the aim of i) pressuring the NRDP regime, then under the leadership of President Juvenal Habyarimana, to democratize and permit the establishment of multiple political parties; and ii) stop the discrimination and deprivation that was being directed at the Tutsi by the ruling regime[footnoteRef:7]. The government put up a campaign against the Kagame-led RPF between 1990 and 1993, and orchestrated a series of killings and small massacres against the minority Tutsi. It was quite easy for the RPF to win the people's support, however, because by then, President Habyarimana had fallen out with most of the citizens, both Hutu and Tutsi, who blamed him for the continued repression and corruption orchestrated by his government. In 1993, the Arusha Accord, which would see NRDP share power with the RPF, was signed[footnoteRef:8].

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President Habyarimana was, however, reluctant to implement the same, and on April 6, 1994, his plane was shot down in an unprecedented move, marking the start of the genocide by Hutu-affiliated groups, which blamed the Tutsi-led RPF for the president's death[footnoteRef:9]. [5: Human Rights Watch, "Lasting Wounds: Consequences of Genocide and War on Rwanda's Children," The Human Rights Watch 15, no. 6 (2003): 5] [6: Ibid ] [7: Human Rights Watch, "Lasting Wounds: Consequences of Genocide and War on Rwanda's Children," 5] [8: Ibid] [9: Ibid]

Factors that Fueled the Genocide

It is evident, from the background presented above, that the genocide was fueled by ethnic hatred between the Hutu and Tutsi races. The underlying causes of this hatred are what this text is interested in because these basically are the underlying causes of the genocide. It categorizes them into two -- historical factors and economic factors

Historical Factors

The start of the Hutu-Tutsi rivalry dates back to the colonial times, when imperialists enacted a number of controversial policies that caused massive splits within the Rwandese society. Rwanda, which was, prior to World War I, a German colony, was placed under Belgian rule in the 1920s after the German Empire had all its colonies snatched. During their rule, the Belgians showed outright favoritism towards Tutsis and used them to exercise their indirect rule over Rwanda[footnoteRef:10]. Since the Tutsi were mainly livestock tenders, and livestock were considered more valuable than crops, the Belgians perceived them as being superior to the Twa and the Hutu majority, who were mainly crop farmers. As a result, they used them (the Tutsis) to oppress the members of the Hutu race[footnoteRef:11]. The imperialists supported the Tutsi monarchy and used it to implement their divide-and-rule strategy. They ensured that all local chief positions were occupied by Tutsis, making them the symbols of colonial rule in the country at the expense of Hutus, who were the majority. This spurred resentment among communities, and particularly between the Hutus and the Tutsis. [10: Hintjens, "Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda," 270] [11: Ibid]

Belgian rulers felt that besides their economic success, the Tutsis were made superior to the Hutus and the Twa by their biological features. They were generally tall, with relatively narrow facial features, characteristic of the ancient Egyptian lineage. The imperialists believed that these features not only distinguished them from the Hutus and the Twa, but also made them different from the rest of the Sub-Saharan African lineages, and justified the fact that they needed to be treated differently from the rest of the population. The preferential treatment accorded to Tutsis by Belgian colonialists overtly inflated their cultural ego while crushing that of the Hutus until they developed a resentful inferiority complex in relation to their Tutsi neighbors.

Aggravating the resentment and bitterness even further was the colonialist's adoption of identity cards that highlighted a person's ethnicity, that is, whether they were Twa, Hutu or Tutsi. This policy created a sub-national identity, unfairly dividing the nation into racial categories, and putting some racial categories in control of others. This only worsened the resentment and bitterness that was already threatening the peaceful co-existence of the Rwandese communities.

Research has shown that prior to the colonial period, members of the two communities lived peacefully together, shared a common language and way of life, and even intermarried. However, with the preferential treatment being accorded to the Tutsi race by the Europeans at the expense of the Hutu and the Twa during the colonial period, resentment developed and continued to grow; eventually culminating in the massacre of the favored Tutsis by people they considered their neighbors.

Economic Factors

The Malthusian theory of population could sufficiently be used to explain the role of economic and socio-economic factors in aggravating the ethnic hatred between Hutus and Tutsis. It postulates that population growth and overpopulation are the main causes of war, poverty, hunger, and environmental degradation[footnoteRef:12]. Rwanda's socioeconomic problems in the years leading up to the genocide can be explained within two contexts -- food insufficiency and land shortages. Rwanda's population grew substantially between the 1970s and 1980s, and with the drought that hit the southern regions of the country in the late years of the 1980s, the food stores proved unable to cater for the high population. The situation was made worse by the fact that the country's coffee production and consequently, exports declined over that period; and this, coupled.....

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