What led to the genocide in Rwanda?

What led to the genocide in Rwanda?

What led to the genocide in Rwanda?

The genocide in Rwanda was caused by: Over 800,000 people, largely from the Tusti minority, died as a result of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi and members of the Hutu ethnic majority of Rwanda. The massacre occurred between April 7 and July 15, 1994.

The Rwandan genocide of 1994 began in Kigal, the capital city, and spread to other parts of the country with startling speed and brutality. Local authorities and the Hutu power government encouraged Rwandan citizens to take up arms against their neighbors.

The following factors led to the genocide in Rwanda:

Ethnic Tensions in Rwanda

In the early tens of the century, Rwanda, a small nation with a predominately agricultural economy, had one of the highest population densities in Africa. Roughly 85% of the population was Hutu, with the remainder being Tutsi and a tiny Twa population, who were the original inhabitants of the country and are a pygmy group.

After World War I, Rwanda and its neighbor Burundi were mandated by the League of Nations to become trusteeships of Belgium, having previously been a part of German East Africa from 1897 to 1918. The Hutus were not given as much preference as the minority Tutsi during the Belgian colonial era in Rwanda. Even before Rwanda attained independence, throughout this time, the tendency of the few to oppress the many was intensified, leaving a legacy of tension that burst into bloodshed.

Up to 330,000 Tutsis were forced to leave the country due to a Hutu revolution in 1959, leaving them an even smaller minority. Early in 1961, the Hutus had proclaimed Rwanda a republic and drove the Tutsi Monarch into exile. The colonial overlords of Rwanda, Belgium, formally awarded Rwanda independence in July 1962, following a United Nations referendum held in that same year.

Ethnic violence persisted after independence, and in 1733, a military force placed moderate Hutu Major General Juvenal Habyarimana in charge. Habyarimana established The National Revolutionary Movement for Development (NRMD), a new political party, while serving as the only head of state in Rwanda for the following 20 years. He was elected president in 178 under a newly passed constitution, and he was re-elected in 183 and 188 as the only contender.

When the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), which was primarily made up of Tutsi refugees, entered Rwanda in 1990, Habyarimana detained hundreds of Tutsi citizens on suspicion of working with the RPF.

Government agents killed hundreds of Tutsis during atrocities that took place between 1990 and 1993. 12 A cease-fire in the fighting paved the way for talks between the RPF and the Rwandan government led by Habyarimana in 1992.

The RPF was to be a part of the transition government that Habyarimana signed in Arusha, Tanzania, on August 13. The Hutu extremists were incensed by this power sharing agreement and responded by acting quickly and horribly to stop it.

The Genocide in Rwanda Commences

Nobody survived the April 6, 1994, jet crash that killed Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the president of Burundi at the time, over Kigali, the capital of Rwanda; the perpetrators have never been found. Some placed the blame on the RPF commanders, while others accused the Hutu extremists.

Within an hour of the plane crash, the Rwandan armed forces (FAR), the Presidential Guards, and Hutu Miltia groups known as the Impuzamugambi (those who share a goal) and Interahamwe (those who attack together) set up roadblocks and barricades and started killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus with impunity.

The genocide claimed the lives of 10 Belgian peacekeepers and the moderate Hutu prime minister, Agatha Uwilingiyimana, on April 7. The violence left a political void that was filled on April 9 by an interim government led by extremist Hutu Power leaders from the military high command.

The UN ordered that the peacekeepers only defend themselves after the Belgian soldiers were killed, which prompted Belgium to withdraw its forces.

The high murder rate in Rwanda

The mass murders swiftly expanded from Kigali City to the rest of Rwanda. During the first two weeks of the genocide, the Tutsi-populated regions of central and southern Rwanda had local administrations that opposed the killings. After April 18, these officials removed the resisters and executed the majority of them.

Other opponents either stopped speaking or were assassinated, and the national leaders gave food, beverages, drugs, and cash to the murderers as rewards. Additionally, government-sponsored radio stations began encouraging common Rwandan citizens to kill their neighbors; in just three months, almost 800,000 people had been killed.

After the genocide, the RPF recommenced its fighting and a civil war broke out alongside it. By early July, the RPF had taken control of most of the nation, including Kigali. This was in response to the nearly 2 million Hutus who had fled Rwanda and were crammed into camps for refugees in the Congo and other nearby nations like Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania.

Following the RPF’s triumph, a coalition administration akin to the one decided upon at Arusha was established, led by the Hutu Pasteur Bizimungu as president and the Tutsi Paul Kagame as vice president and defense minister.

The NRMD’s Habyarimana party, which was instrumental in planning the genocide, was banned, and in 2003 a new constitution was drafted that did away with any mention of ethnicity. This was followed by the election of Kagame to a ten-year term as president of Rwanda and the nation’s first-ever legislative elections.

Global Reaction to the Genocide

As will be seen below, the international community did little to stop the massacre in Rwanda.

Most of the United Nations peacekeeping operations (UNAMIR), which were established the previous fall to support the governmental transition under the Arusha accord, were withdrawn on April 14 as a result of a resolution by the UN Security Council.

As news of the genocide spread, the Security Council decided in mid-May to send more than 5,000 troops in order to provide a more formidable force. The genocide had been over for months by the time the entire force arrived.

In a different French intervention authorized by the United Nations, French forces arrived in Rwanda from Zaire in late June. However, because to the RPF’s swift progress, they restricted their presence to a humanitarian zone established in the country’s southwest. Tens of thousands of Tutsi lives were spared as a result, but some of the genocide’s planners—who had been French supporters under the Habyarimana regime—also benefited from the escape.

Many well-known members of the international community bemoaned the outside world’s overall ignorance of the situation and its inaction in trying to stop the crimes from occurring in the wake of the Rwandan genocide.

General Boutrous Boutrous, a UN Secretary, stated in an interview with PBS’s Frontline that “the failure of Rwanda is ten times greater than the failure of Yugoslavia because in Yugoslavia the international community was interested, was involved.” Nobody showed interest in Rwanda.



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