Hutu Blame? The Search for the Truth Term Paper

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HUTU Blame?

The Search for the Truth in Rwanda, an argumentative essay

There are those who claim that Belgium is the perpetrator in the extermination methods used in Rwanda however, there are those who claim that the Rwandan government itself may be to blame with ties to a loan from the IMF World Bank. Among all the arguments leveled the most likely perpetrator of these crimes can be traced back to the Roman Catholic Church, who was the entity to first set a seal upon the Hutus and Tutsi people. This paper will explore the many arguments set forth in the Rwandan genocide event as to who is to blame for the atrocities that occurred.

A Brief History of the HUTU & TUTSI of Rwanda:

The genocide, which occurred in Rwanda, has been and still is a hotly debated issue. Over 100 years ago Catholic missionaries created a bogus "pedigree" that created a division between the Hutu and Tutsi of Rwanda. Bitter is a word used to describe the split and this division is blamed on the Roman Catholic Church and Belgian Colonizers. This served the Belgians well and they started on their path of creating an "institution based on this racism against Tutsi people.

The genocide began on approximately April 7, 1994 and went for about 90 days. Rwandans numbering over 1 million were killed and most of them Tutsi people including a few Hutus that held sympathy for the Tutsi. The first thing to look at is the who. Who was helping Rwanda and with what? According to the Work of Eric Toussaint:

"between 1990 and 1994, Rwanda's main arms suppliers were France, Belgium, South Africa, Egypt and China."

Eric Toussaint also tells us that the IMF bank was also helping the Rwandans "loaning them over 49 million dollars at a time when the IMF was preaching austerity to the rest of the world in the beginning of the 1980's" [paraphrased]

Over 100 years ago Catholic missionaries created a bogus "pedigree" that created a division between the Hutu and Tutsi of Rwanda. Bitter is a word used to describe the split and this division is blamed on the Roman Catholic Church and Belgian Colonizers. This served the Belgians well and they started on their path of creating an "institution based on this racism against Tutsi people. There are those who claim that the United States that was involved as is shown in the following excerpt from Rwanda: The Great Genocide Debate.

"while the British and Americans sought to increase their influence in the region by supporting the RPF. which acted as an Anglo-American proxy."

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However others state that the U.S. was firmly planted on the side against France, Belgium and the Hutu government:

On one side was the Rwandan government, its National guard (boosted with weapons from South Africa and Egypt) and the militia (including the infamous Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi). On the other side stood the RPF, Uganda, Britain, the U.S.A., Belgium, the United Nations, the World Bank and most of the Western media.

II. Who is to Blame?

It has become a well-known fact however, that the Hutu and Tutsi people had warred against each other for many years and that the racial hatred was deep:

From the early 1960's the country was a "racist Hutu dictatorship."

For those claiming that it was the government of Rwandan and the French the consideration should be given to this argument with the information that would cause one to reconsider as stated here:

"By 1990 the RPF was preparing to invade Rwanda with the full knowledge and approval of British intelligence. Belgium then terminated its support for Habyarimana and shifted towards the RPF, allowing it to set up office in Brussels. This left France as Habyarimana's sole Western supporter."

Incorrectly assumed was that France was supporting the Hutu government in light of the statement revealing that:

"In Operation Turquoise, the French forces created a safe haven in the south-west of the country, which provided sanctuary not only to fortunate Tutsi but also to many leading Rwandan government and military officials as well as large numbers of soldiers and militia- -- the very Hutu Power militants, in other words, who had organized and carried out the genocide. Not one single person was arrested or handed over for crimes against humanity. All were allowed to escape across the border into then-Zaire, often still armed. Wholly unrepentant, these genocidaires were soon launching murderous excursions back into Rwanda, beginning a cycle that led, quite foreseeably, to the subsequent bloody conflict that still destabilizes Central Africa.

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It has been argued that France pulled out of Rwanda leaving the Hutus to defend themselves.

"The French forces departed Rwanda in December -- signalling the Habyarimana government's complete isolation. A 1000-strong UN force arrived the same month. These troops escorted an RPF battalion into UN premises in Kigali. Rwandan society was completely polarised between government and RPF supporters"

Some individuals blame the annihilation of these people on only the Hutus with the reasoning based on things both historical and as to the facts that surround the genocide. The 'structural adjustments' of the IMF World Bank was the very reason that the Rwandan people, The Hutu and The Tutsi with 85% of their people living well below the line of poverty with over 1/3 of all the children in Rwanda pitifully malnourished.

There are some that argue that this had propelled the people of Rwanda headlong and irrationally to seek a remedy, in fact to do whatever they had to do to survive and keep their families alive but opposing views state that the Hutu group was afraid of losing their power particularly when receving messages that time was limited it is stated that therefore:

Concerned that the Arusha Accords would lead to true power sharing, 'Hutu Power' groups continued to massacre Tutsi civilians. Arusha had the opposite consequences from those intended. In their quest for democracy and ethnic equity, the negotiations persuaded the Akazu that unless it took decisive action, its days in power were numbered. Certain Hutu Power factions found any loss of power unacceptable. The conclusion the Akazu reached led to the planning of all-out extermination of Tutsi and other opponents."

Opponents of that view state that perhaps the Hutu didn't know what was going on, perhaps someone else with a motive had tricked them into doing the killing. In a report on the events in Rwanda it was related that "propaganda" was used as a method of conditioning the Hutus toward accepting and further participating in acts of violence against the Tutsi. Television and radio alike was used for this purpose. In Television was Libre des Mille Collines, a radio television statsion.

"Radio Mille Collines was used to incite hatred, give instructions and justify the killings. More than twenty papers and journals incited hatred toward the Tuttsi. Kangura, one of the leading propaganda papers, suggested that Hutu needed to prepare themselves as the Tutsi were preparing a war that would 'leave no survivors'.

And yet, there is evidence to believe that perhaps the Hutu were involved in the extermination of the Tutsi people. Kangura, a Hutu leader published what he called the "Hutu Ten Commandments. The earliest publishing appears to have been sometime in December 1990. These so-called Hutu Ten Commandments gave as one of the commandments that:

"any Hutu interacting with Tutsi neighbours and friends was a traitor."

The inciting of propaganda went on for quite some time and the violence culminated. The genocide began on the night of April 6, 1994, after the shooting down of a plane carrying the Rwandan and Burundian presidents, who both died in the crash near Kigali.

Interestingly, April 11th, exactly five days following the death of Habyarimana, in just Kigali there had been Tutsi and Hutu killed approximating 20,000.

" By 11 April, five days after Habyarimana's death, 20,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu had already been killed in Kigali alone. From 12 April the focus of killing was on the Tutsi. Large-scale massacres took place in churches, hospitals, schools and village streets. Tutsi were made to dig large graves and were buried alive."

However, considering the percentages and facts quoted by Jeff Maton, 1982:

Tthe wealthiest 10% of the population took in 20% of rural revenues; in 1992, they took in 41%; in 1993, 45%; and by the beginning of 1994, 51% (Maton, Jeff 1994).

The catastrophic social impact of policies dictated by the IMF and World Bank, and the fall in coffee prices on the global market (a fall linked to the policies of the Bretton Woods institutions and the U.S.A.), played a central role in the Rwandan crisis. The massive social discontent was channelled by the Habyarimana regime into implementing its plan for genocide.

"From the early 1960's the country was a "racist Hutu dictatorship." Caplan 1999

"For several years before 1994, the hostility between the Hutu-run government and the Tutsi exiles in the RPF was shaped by foreign powers. The.....

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