Many times we ask why nobody did anything to stop such horrific events from happening. Actually, many people said that this would never happen again but this is not the case. Since the Holocaust we have seen several examples of how the general public sometimes refuses to acknowledge the occurrence of events and how the government often has little political will to stop mass murders until it is too late. One example of this that occurred not too long ago is the Rwandan Genocide. In 1994, between half a million to a million Rwandan Tutsi as well as thousands of moderate Hutu, were exterminated in the clearest mass murder case since the Holocaust. The world stood back and observed as the murders took place. Samantha Power, in the book she wrote, A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide1,and her article The Atlantic Monthly, “Bystanders to Genocide: Why the United States Let the Rwandan Tragedy Happen,” Power writes “The story of U.S. policy during the genocide in Rwanda is not a story of willful complicity with evil. U.S. officials did not sit around and conspire to allow genocide to happen. But whatever their convictions about ‘never again,’ many of them did sit around, and they most certainly did allow genocide to happen.”2 Samantha Power's writing shows that the U.S. government knew enough about the genocide through early warnings but nevertheless because they lacked political will to do anything about it they passed up many opportunities to end the rain of terror.3
The United States was unwilling to support the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda(UNAMIR) both militarily or financially. Even when there was a Ghanaian offer to order its troops to remain in Rwanda, as well as other offers made by numerous ...
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... extreme work conditions and workloads given to those imprisoned in Mauthausen. There are many reports of the Nazi regime using this spread of knowledge to their advantage in order to instill fear into the public making them easily submissive. Death camps were the only camps that were kept in secrecy but because Mauthausen was a concentration camp, it was not kept secret from the surrounding population but instead it was used to force the civilians into compliance. Altuough there are tons of American reports of angered soldiers who observed denial fom the Austrian population about the existance or knowledge of the existance of concentration camps, they did not take into account the horrors the Austrians were faced up against as well. In many cases if the Austrians did not keep quiet they would be held accountable and be taken to be work slaves in these camps as well.
As the news reported that Islamic State committed genocide against Christians and other minorities had suffered serious defeats from recent battles against the allied forces, the images of piles of dead bodies shown to the world in Rwanda about a couple decades ago emerge once again and triggers an interesting puzzle: why did the Rwandan Genocide happen in one of the smallest nations in the African Continent? The documentary film, Rwanda-Do Scars Ever Fade?, upon which this film analysis is based provides an answer to the puzzle.
Though the event occurred almost twenty-one years ago, the Rwandan genocide of 1994 has prompted much discussion about what truly caused the deaths of an estimated 800,000 civilians. Scott Straus, a political scientist and author of The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda, makes the claim that it is very difficult to precisely identify what began the genocide in Rwanda for a number of reasons, and also comments that many of the beliefs in regards to the causes and evolution of genocide in Rwanda are incomplete. In his book, Straus focuses on three main aspects: to look closely at the local dynamics of the genocide, to produce an assessment of explanations, and finally to develop a theory that would explain the genocide in Rwanda.
The Darfur case however, revealed that both of these strategies are not effective. Responding to the genocide in Darfur, the US officials declared the label genocide to be occurring. Thereafter, a politically civil-society coalition emerged so as to lobby the administration. The net outcome of these two scenarios however was the same in the absence of effective policies that could halt the genocide. The Rwandan genocide has always acted as the point of reference for similar genocides taking place around the world. Since the 2003 crisis in Darfur, a lot of comparisons have been made to Rwandan genocide. Observers have likened the Darfur genocide to what happened in Rwanda and of course giving it two connotations. First, the violence in the western parts of Sudan has been referred to another Rwanda, by basing their arguments on the nature of the violence. Since whatever was happening in Darfur is similar t...
The physical and mental intent to destroy another being often unveils the darkest side of human nature. In the memoir, “An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography” dedicated to the Rwandan genocide, war hero Paul Rusesabagina states: “A sad truth of human nature is that it is hard to care for people when they are abstractions, hard to care when it is not you or somebody close to you. Unless the world community can stop finding ways to dither in the face of this monstrous threat to humanity those words never again will persist in being one of the most abused phrases in the English language and one of the greatest lies of our time.” The United Nations promised never again would they allow genocide to occur after the Second World War. Unfortunately, less
Since Burundi’s independence in 1962, there have been two instances of genocide: the 1972 mass killings of Hutus by the Tutsi-dominated government, and the 1993 mass killings of the Tutsis by the Hutu populace. Both of these events in Burundi received different levels of attention by the international community and the western media due to a lack of foreign governmental interest, political distraction, and an unwillingness to acknowledge the severity of these atrocities in Burundi. Interestingly, events of genocide occurring at times without these distractions received more foreign attention than those ignored due to these factors. Because of this, much of the western world is unaware of the Burundian genocide and events similar to it.
The Holocaust and the Darfur-Sudan Genocide occurred in countries that were similarly susceptible to the influences of corrupt leaders and political organizations, and weakened by economic downfalls. Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazis, convinced the nation of Germany to believe that in order to become a stronger country it needed to kill or misplace all who were not what he believed to be “pure” Germans (Holocaust). In the Darfur-Sudan genocide, Al-Bashir, leader of the National Islamic Front, blamed all the country’s prob...
Many innocent lives were taken during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Philip Gourevitch’s “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families,” explains why the genocide that occurred in Rwanda should not be written off in history as just another tribal disagreement. This book entails the stories of Gourevitch and the people he interviewed when he went to Rwanda. These stories express what people went through during the genocide, the loss they saw, the mass killings they tried to hide from, and the history of what led to the Rwandan genocide. Rwanda’s colonial past did influence the development of the genocide in Rwanda. The hatred between the Hutus and the Tutsis had been going on for many years before the genocide.
This was a devastating event and it's near impossible just to forget about what happened. If you were to walk into Rwanda right now it would look as so that nothing went on. There’s communities with Hutus and Tutsis in it and living peacefully, even helping each other. The country started to come back together and look identical to what it once had been. The people who were the leaders of this mass genocide now getting convicted or already have been put to justice in the Gacaca courts. In gacaca courts they tried almost everyone. The courts had different levels, meaning if you admitted your guilt and showed remorse for what you did, you would be let free if you prove you have done so can prove the if there was an alternative you would do it then you were let free. there were some countries that helped. Places like Tanzania let the immigrants that fled Rwanda live in there country. However that’s the only countries that did help. After the Holocaust the whole world said never again. Never again will i let a mass killing happen like Hitler and his Nazi soldiers did to the Jews. The question being how did this happen. The claim that the United States made was they simply did not know. America genuinely felt bad, in 1998 President Clinton gave a formal apology which would later be known as the “Clinton apology”. In the apology Clinton tell Rwanda that he knows the U.S and the world did not do enough. The world sat there while Rwanda was in crisis. Lots of countries claim “they didn't know” but I don’t know if I am settled on that answer. So let's say they did know why would they not help. Was it because we did not want to start a war from intervening? Or because it was not our problem? Whatever the reason, we did not help and we owe the biggest of apologies to the people who were affected. The Origins of Conflicts
In the years after the genocide, we as people had questioned our past decisions and our countries decision to stay out of the genocide until it was too late. I too have question my countries decision. Why didn’t the US interfere with the genocide and be the hero my favorite historical anime, Hetalia, made it out to be? I believe not helping the innocent people being murdered in Rwanda was wrong of all the countries of the world but now it is too late to change the past and we can only look to the future. We can look to the future and hope and pray that another genocide never occurs but it’s useless. As long as there are people, there will be hate and as long as there is hate there will be murder.
When the Belgian colonizers entered Rwanda in 1924, they created an ethnic classification between the Hutu and the Tutsi, two tribes who used to live together as one. After independence in 1962, there was a constant power struggle between the two tribes. Former Canadian Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Chrétien described the situation as “tribalism without tribes.” (Destexhe, 1995) There were many signs leading towards genocide, yet the nations in power chose to ignore them. From April 6, 1994 until mid-July, a time spanning approximately of 100 days, 800,000 people were murdered when the Hutu attacked the Tutsi. No foreign aid came to the rescue until it was too late. Ten years after the genocide the United Nations was still involved in Rwanda, cleaning up the mess that was left behind because of man’s sinful nature. Could the Rwandan Genocide have been prevented, or is it simply a fact of life? Even though the international community is monitoring every country and race, such an event as the Rwandan Genocide could occur again because the European colonizers introduced ethnic classification where it did not exist and the nations in power chose to ignore the blatant signs of genocide.
Our world is suffering from many tragedies. The biggest of which is genocide. Approximately nineteen million, seven hundred ten thousand, two hundred people have died in numerous genocides across the world since 1933. And yet, many civilians don’t realize that genocide is still occurring today. It has been addressed many times, but it must be said once more: This mass murder of men, women, children, innocence, and faith is not behind us. It's hard to fathom the sheer number of innocent people that have died from genocide. Countless people across the world are still being slaughtered for their race, religion, and even for living in a place that someone else wants to control.
Various schools of thought exist as to why genocide continues at this deplorable rate and what must be done in order to uphold our promise. There are those who believe it is inaction by the international community which allows for massacres and tragedies to occur - equating apathy or neutrality with complicity to evil. Although other nations may play a part in the solution to genocide, the absolute reliance on others is part of the problem. No one nation or group of nations can be given such a respo...
There have been many genocides in history, but none have had more controversial views than Rwanda or ISIS. The United States government did not intervene in Rwanda or in ISIS to the extent that was needed. The death count kept rising while the US turned their backs to what was happening, and what is happening now. The genocides committed both in Rwanda, and by ISIS, have remarkable similarities and differences in the actions taken by the United States government to contain and prevent any further killings, whether directly or indirectly.
Baldauf, S. (2009). Why the US didn't intervene in the Rwandan genocide. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2009/0407/p06s14-woaf.html [Accessed: 21 Feb 2014].
...s can occur again, is occurring again, and will occur again. Especially in times of transition and uncertainty, there is always the temptation to blame the more vulnerable minorities of conspiracy and to portray them as the cause of misfortune. While the lessons of the Holocaust have not been forgotten, they are often ignored in favor of economic interest. Public opinion demonstrates that Americans in particular do not want to go to war in Kosovo or Rwanda because there is no vested economic imperative to take action, no matter how strong the moral imperative is. Perhaps one day we will have advanced enough as a civilization to see that some causes are worth fighting for, even if it is half a world away, because we are part of humanity. But the danger of perpetuating crimes against humanity is always present, as long as the human heart can hate and discriminate.