Causes Of The Rwandan And Congolese Genocide

Michael Albihn-Boland

Mr. Preston

30 April 2014

Essay word count:1240

Rwandan and Congolese Genocides Essay

Conflict and hatred being a cause of migration.

April 7th 1994 marks the start of on of the worst things ever to happen to human beings, The Rwandan Genocide. It is known that over 800’000 Rwandans were massacred, 800’000 is 20% of the countries population, over 70% of the tutsis were brutally murdered within the 100 day genocide of Rwanda. Both Hutus and tutsis were killed and murdered at the hands of their neighbours machetes. During this compare and contrast essay I will discuss the long and short term causes of both the Rwandan and Congolese Conflicts. I will also discuss how the natives of these two countries were forced to leave their homes and migrate in seek of aid. The genocide was between April 7th and July 15th 1994, therefore it is known as the 100 day war. The genocide or in context the Rwandan Civil War was fought between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Ongoing conflicts began in 1990 between the hutu-led government and the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front). The RPF was created in 1987 by the Tutsi refugee diaspora in Uganda. The first Tutsi refugees fled to Uganda to escape ethnic purges in the beginning of 1959.

Juvénal Habyarimana was the third President of Rwanda, the post he held longer than any other president to date, from 1973 until 1994. On the eve of April 6th 1994, when the President was scheduled to flight into Kigali International Airport, Everything with the flight was going well until when the plane was approaching the Airport it was shot out of the sky. No one knows exactly who it was who shot down the President’s plane. The Hutus automatically assumed it was the Tutsis, and therefore ...

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...Even though it was their land the Africans still had to obey what the Europeans decided was right. A big Similarity was that both tribes the Tutsis and the Hutus were involved in both genocides. A difference between the long and short causes was that Belgium did not want Rwanda’s natural resources like it did with the Congo. Also in Rwanda the Belgians gave control to the Tutsis while in Congo no locals had control. A very important short term cause though is that the Rwandan genocide lasted only 100 days while the Congolese genocide lasted 10 years.

Even now many years after the genocides, In Rwanda the Tutsis still have more control over the country than Hutus. Congo can now supply itself with their rubber instead of having to ship it away. As a whole though, Both countries the DR Congo and Rwanda have regained most of their independence back from Belgium.