Throughout history the region of Africa, presently known as Rwanda has seen a major rivalry and political instability. From the early 14th century to the 20th century the Hutu’s and the Tutsi’s were foraged into the perfect ingredients for a ticking time bomb. The political structures set up along the way by the earliest settlers and the German and Belgian colonists ultimately lead to a divide and hatred between the two groups. This hatred built up and eventually caused a massive genocide. This genocide could have been prevented if the political structures didn’t bring on favoritism and political divide.
Background:
The nation of Rwanda started out separated into three different ethnic groups. These groups were the Hutu, the Tutsi, and the Twa. The Hutu made up roughly eighty five percent of the population, while the Tutsi made up fourteen percent and the Twa only made up less than one percent. The Twa are believed to be the earliest settlers in Rwanda. People who were part of the Twa mostly lived in the forests and survived on methods of hunting and gathering.
As time passed the Hutu began to move into Rwanda. Their origin is unknown, but it is believed that they migrated into Rwanda/ Burundi area around the 5th to 11th century. They were a clan that survived off of agriculture. Each Hutu clan a king called the Bahinza. The Hutu believed that the Bahinza could cause rain and protect their crops and cattle.
Early Hutu and Tutsi relationship:
The Tutsi started to migrate to Rwanda in the early 14th century. It wasn’t one massive movement, but slowly and peacefully, the Tutsi started to take over Rwanda. The Tutsi had many advantages over the Hutu. They owned a lot more cattle than the Hutu and they had superior combat skills. ...
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... favored one over the other, but they never really gave the two groups a reason to believe they were different. Germany taxed them both the same, which led the Hutu to believe that they were both equal because they had to pay the same amount of money and they both answered to the same ruler.
The Belgians were the most at fault for the mess in Rwanda. They divided the two groups up to the point where they were giving them ID cards so that you could tell if somebody was legally Hutu or Tutsi. To make matters worse they favored the Tutsis for most of the time and gave them a lot of advantages, then right before they left they decided that they wanted to take those things away from the Tutsi and make the two groups equal.
There was one last hope for peace when Belgium officially left, but extremists in both groups who did not like the idea of equality shattered it.
Tutsi – A group of people in Rwanda that initially started as the cattle raising people of the old tribes. The Tutsi ruled over the Hutu for the majority of the time, until 1962 where the Hutu revolted. Then in 1994 the president of Rwanda’s plane was shot down, which sparked a massive violent out brake of Hutus killing Tutsis. In the film “Hotel Rwanda”, the Tutsi were the refugees in the hotel, trying to hide from the murdering Hutus.
Can genocide ever be stopped? For decades the UN (United Nations) has tried to abolish all kinds of genocide; unfortunately, we do not believe in equality as a species, and this perfect utopia seems impossible in our day and age. In 1994, during the genocide in Rwanda (one of the bloodiest genocides of all time) the United Nations tried to make a stand and stop this massacre once and for all. Grievously, the UN’s mission terminated due to the lack of resources; the UN military was forced to watch while the genocide continued(Document A). Genocide has been occurring for decades, anything from clans like the KKK to the extermination of Jews during WW2. Genocides happened to a multitude of minorities, ironically, no one has made a considerable stand to stop them. Generally speaking, the abolishing of genocide seems unattainable in our modern day due to 3 reasons: Lack of media attention, Human innate stubbornness, and abominable people.
It was said that the genocide had deemed the name of Hutu Power, this meant that they were plan and simply killing off people and as many as possible. All this started in Rwanda’ Capitol Kigali and spread outwardly from there, as the Hutu traveled they killed the Tutsi. The Hutu had set up road blocks and checked ID’s and killed Tutsi, t...
The Rwandan genocide occurred due to the extreme divide between two main groups that were prevalent in Rwanda, the Hutu and the Tutsi. When Rwanda was first settled, the term Tutsi was used to describe those people who owned the most livestock. After the Germans lost control over their colonies after World War I, the Belgians took over and the terms Hutu and Tutsi took on a racial role (Desforges). It soon became mandatory to have an identification card that specified whether or not an individual was a Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa (a minority group in Rwanda). The Tutsi soon gained power through the grant of leadership positions by the Belgians. Later on when Rwanda was tying to gain indepe...
(Countries at Risk). The genocide in Rwanda began when the tension between the Hutus tribe and the Tutsis tribe steadily increased. After the European country, Belgium, colonized Rwanda, they gave more power to
Before Rwanda had been colonized, the Tutsis and Hutus lived coexistent lifestyles, they were unconnected indigenous groups that survived together without dislike towards each other. Some Tutsis and Hutus were local chiefs within Rwanda, and during this time there was no judgment or conflicts between the groups. After World War I, Belgium had claimed Rwanda as a colony and acknowledged the Tutsis as the natural born leaders of the country. All of the light skinned Tutsis were given Identity cards in order to distinguish them from the “low class” Hutus. At this time, racial pressures arose as the Hutus were beginning to be mistreated.
Rwanda was a German colony but then was given to Belgium “who favored the minority Tutsis over the Hutus, exacerbated[exacerbating] the tendency of the few to oppress the many”(History.com). This created a feeling of anger towards the Tutsis, because they had much more power than Hutus. The RPF decided to create a government consisting of a Hutu and a Tutsi holding the highest government positions. As the RPF took control of the government, “some two million Hutus – both civilians and some of those involved in the genocide – then fled across the border into DR Congo.
To find the cause of the Rwandan genocide, many people had tried to follow the path of history from the colonialism of Rwanda to the Rwandan genocide. Belgium wanted to expand just like other powerful nations like Great Britain, Spain, and France due to the lack of space and resources provided to each nation in Europe. After the great discovery of Vasco de Gamma, many European ventured towards Africa to colonize territories. After the Berlin Conference of 1884, Belgium had colonized the territory of Rwanda. After colonization, they left the Tutsis in charge as opposed to Hutus because of the fact that the Belgians thought Tutsis had a Caucasian ancestry. After the Rwandan independence, power was given to the Hutus. After the power was given to the Hutus, the Hutus took revenge on the Tutsis which resulted in some killings. In the movie, Hotel Rwanda, President Habyarimana was killed. The killing was blamed on the Tutsis which caused the enraged Hutus to start the Rwandan Genocide. Although the initial cause of the genocide could be Belgian Imperialism, in the movie it was actually the killing...
Before the Europeans came and settled Rwandan, Hutu could easily change to Tutsi through marriage or by gaining cattle and Tutsi could change to Hutu by lost of cattle. It wasn’t until Belgium took control after Germany lost most of it’s colonies during World War One (and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles) that the names took on a racial role. They (the Belgians) required everyone to have an identity card that labeled them Tutsi, Hutu, or Twa- the small group of hunter-gathers who made up 1% of Rwanda’s population. The Belgians and German both thought the Tutsi minority had more European characteristics, such as lighter skin and a taller build, and gave the Tutsi all the roles of responsibility. This angered the Hutu.
...ause the colonial masters believed that they resembled them. It was unethical for the Belgians to interfere with the peaceful coexistence that the two communities had enjoyed in the past. As a result, the Hutus acquired negative misconceptions about the Tutsis’ origin, what they stood for, and what they had done for them in the past. The Hutus expertly planned and organized the Rwandan genocide as a result of such historical distortions created by their country’s colonial masters.
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.
The Hutu’s saw Rwanda as their country and nobody else’s. They had a list of commandments written and for Hutu’s. It was strictly for the justification of the killing of the Tutsi’s. Many Tutsi’s were murdered and the ones that could get away fled to Uganda. Some Tutsi’s revolted and created a guerilla army in pure ressentiment. Hutu’s model was they were catholic and just and the Tutsi’s were communist and they must be exterminated. In one of the scenes in In the Name of God it shows a moment where a Hutu revolt is listening to the Hutu primarily radio show and the radio host is speaking on how Tutsi people are forbidden and they are cockroaches and they need to be exterminated. In the documentary In the Name of God it is a great representation of what occurred in 1994 in Rwanda, and the experiences of the Hutu and Tutsi people. It also shows what led to the disaster of the genocide was that the Christian Democratic International would not negotiate with sharing their power with RPF (guerilla army) or exile
Tutsi and Hutus are very similar thus categorizing then as different was a very crucial misunderstanding between them when Belgians recognized Tutsis as being the top tribe to rule Rwanda. Hutus gained control of Rwanda after independence with this giving them the power to undermine Tutsis as continued to believe that Hutus took their places in secondary and higher teaching institutions as well as employment and private sector. Hutu believed that by forbidding Tutsis to educate themselves and actively play in government or military they would marginalize them minimizing their participation in society. Who was the better race? There is a long history of the differences they had to grow up with however, one day this “difference“ becam...
In 1994 many people were murdered . From April to July of 1994, members of the Hutu ethnic majority in the east central African nation of Rwanda murdered as many as 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority .About 85% of the population was Hutu, the rest were Tutsi along with a small number of Twa. The Tutsis were favored and felt superior to the Hutu and Twa. This caused much tension and jealousy between the two groups.The greater half of Rwanda, known as the Hutu, are a big part of the social issues that took place in 1994 as they overthrew the Tutsi power. The Hutu were located in both Rwanda and Burundi and while they wanted to gain power in both countries, the Hutu of Rwanda forcefully took over the Tutsi ruler. The Rwandan Hutu were in command until 1994 when they were invaded by the Tutsi. Tutsi are people who live in Rwanda. The Tutsi people had dominance over the Hutu in
The most difficult subject to put into a movie, (which was best told by Spielberg) is the ability to reenact tragedies of an actual event. The 2004 documentary Imaginary Witness, the 2004 Hotel Rwanda, and the readings of An Overview of Hollywood Cinema’s treatment of the Holocaust and Imagining Fields of Witnessing for Rwanda and the Balkans prove that films do not document the Holocaust or the genocide in Rwanda accurately. Because of this, the biggest question is why? Why hasn’t American gotten it right. One thing that both horrific crimes had in common was that the film industry did not give accurate depictions of the events’ tragedy.