Rwanda Chapter Summary

Historical Context: The Rwanda Genocide was a genocidal slaughter of the Tutsi’s by the Hutu’s, taking place in 1994. This event was a shock to the world, as 1,000,000 Rwandans were killed within the space of 100 days. The atrocity took place following the Civil War, an on-going conflict that had reached a conclusion in 1993, which many Hutu’s weren’t happy with. As a result, in 1994, Hutu’s within the army, police, Government backed militias and the civilian population turned on the Tutsi’s. This mass slaughter marked a significant disruption to World Order, due to the large number of deaths and the inaction of the world to reinstate peace in Rwanda. Nations who faced criticism for their lack of action include; the US, UK and Belgium, who failed to support the UN peacekeeping troops in Rwanda.

Although the book did not mention the genocide much, it is important background information that sets up the scene Ruxin works in. He was working after a genocide that killed roughly 800,000 people (Rwanda). Let’s just take a moment to realize how many people that is. That’s three times the amount of people that live in Cherokee County (Cherokee). The American Civil War had roughly 620,000 deaths (Who). 800,000 men, women, children who had lives, dreams, hopes, friends, and family just like us: gone. I cannot imagine. The people killed were not the unknown enemy where the killers never saw their face. These were neighbors, friends, family, co-workers. Rwanda was in a time of healing when Ruxin entered the scene. People were mourning deaths,

No matter which testimony, each survivor has an amazing story. What they went through was absolutely terrifying. To see family members get killed right in front of your face would be horrifying. Then they somehow had to keep things together while they escaped. Nobody saw coming what was going to happen in April of 1994 to July of 1994, the genocide in Rwanda caused the deaths of almost 1,000,000 Tutsi people and displaced millions more. In addition to the brutal mass killings, systematic rape was also widely used as a weapon of war during the Rwandan genocide. The exact number is unknown, they estimate that between a quarter and a half a million women were had been raped. It was considered another way to destroy the Tutsi ethnic group, through both the emotional pain so the woman could die of sadness and through the

The genocides of the 20th century which occurred in Rwanda and Germany had striking similarities, something that should have alerted the world to stop them. At the core of these two massacres, patterns existed that outlined how similar thinking and reasoning could lead to something as horrible as these two events. One can see how both groups used their command of knowledge as a way to control the people, how the rest of the world refused to step up to stop the killings, and how the people were thought of as less than humans to provide a just cause for such terrible acts.

Philip Gourevitch successfully exudes the importance of the Rwandan genocide and how it should not be deemed as yet another tribal disagreement in his essay We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families. This essay captivates the reader as it beautifies and provides acceptance to the recently occurred genocide by forging a rather rare and surprising image into the reader’s minds. This essay productively focuses on a sombre tone, while grabbing the readers’ attention primarily through pathos, but as well by logos. Gourevitch focuses on the beauty of things that are not initially reasoned to be initially enhances the readers understanding of the post-genocide situation in Rwanda.

The primary and secondary information gives distinction between both a first hand view and a secondary view of genocide, not only in Rwanda but also in Bosnia. In both cases, thousands of people were slaughtered or brutally beaten including women and children by rebel groups. In “Back to Rwanda”, the first hand telling of how effective the genocide was, showed it was influenced by Bosnia and how the impact was felt not only on a federal government level but on a personal level as well. In both Bosnia and Rwanda, cultural independence played a major role in the attempt and succession of genocide. The populations of both countries, separated into two different minorities, were both willing to be redistributed to surrounding countries and far away villages where they could be safe from a purge like massacre. The Tutsis’ and Hutu’s were the aggressors in Rwanda with the Tutsis in control until the Rwandan President was gunned down in mid day. This event triggered the aggression between both of the groups. In Bosnia the Catholic Croats and Eastern Orthodox Serbs fought against each other after the death of pro- unionized demonstrators. These two main events triggered the beginning of the genocides. Both articles mentioned that the UN did not intervene to stop the genocides but rather end it with bloodshed and that the targets were of multiple races, mainly those who were African American, as well as those of different economic background. Over 100 days, close to 1 million Rwandans and 7000 Bosnians were massacred. Together, Bosnia and Rwanda were in fear of manipulation by the superior race and were in fear of mistrust amongst the nations as well as the possibility of more

The author shows how catastrophic the killings were by comparing it to other murders experienced in the past. It is evident that it was difficult to find the Tutsis who were alive unlike the dead. Even though, Rwanda’s killings were less compared to Cambodia’s, the former was genocide because it was planned while the later seemed amateurish. Furthermore, Yugoslavia’s was similar to a riot. Rwanda’s dead also accumulated around three times the Jewish Holocaust rate (Gourevitch, 1995). The article further illustrates how worse it is when one community massively kills fellow men. The perpetrators will soon appear before Rwanda’s Tribunal court for judgment. Overall, the article was informative as it addressed the genocide concept using Rwanda as illustration for better

In the course of a hundred days in 1994, over 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed in the Rwandan genocide. It was the fastest, most efficient killing spree of the twentieth century. My thesis is that the international community utterly failed to prevent and stop this atrocity. I will focus on numerous interconnected aspects that led to international inaction and also on the main actors, Belgium, the United Nations Secretariat, the United States and France, that knew that there was genocide underway in Rwanda - therefore, they had a responsibility to prevent and stop the genocide, but lacked political will. This led to inaction at the level of the Security Council (SC), where member states

Peace talks to settle disputes between the Tutsi and the Hutu set up by the US, France, and Organisation of African Unity had tried to establish a peaceful government between the two groups. That went up in flames fast as the President of the Rwanda was killed as his plane was shot down. The next day the genocide began even with UN peacekeepers in the country. I was astonished to see that the UN peacekeepers just left without taking any military action. The UN was founded after the holocaust in Europe, one of the worst events in human history. Still, rather than the UN intervening and preventing another genocide from occurring they simply left. The UN failed to do one of its most important jobs and it was deeply

Grijalba who, under the orders of Diego Veláquez, who is the Spanish governor of Cuba, Set out on ill-

April to July 1994 is stamped by the “darkest and most brutal tragedy of our time.” During this 100-day mass genocide, the world watched as 800,000 Tutsi men, women, and children were slaughtered at the forefront of history. It is hard to believe that yet another mass genocide was justified by ethnic differences. The conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes of Rwanda was deep seeded in the period long before Rwandan independence. The tension between these two groups can be traced back to the 14th century when the Tutsi arrived in Rwanda and dominated the area as an elite class, oppressing the Hutu population. Although their relations “remained relatively civil,” tensions were heightened with colonialism and Belgian rule of Rwanda following World War I.

The genocide produced many complications in its wake. The most obvious of these problems included: the Tutsi and Hutu living with each other, the government recovering after such devastation, continuing attacks in neighboring countries, prevalence of AIDs, lingering debt, and above all else fear.

Genocide is “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, ethnic, political, or cultural group”. In Rwanda for example, the Hutu-led government embraced a new program that called for the country’s Hutu people to murder anyone that was a Tutsi (Gourevitch, 6). This new policy of one ethnic group (Hutu) that was called upon to murder another ethnic group (Tutsi) occurred during April through June of 1994 and resulted in the genocide of approximately 800,000 innocent people that even included women and children of all ages. In this paper I will first analyze the origins/historical context regarding the discontent amongst the Hutu and Tutsi people as well as the historical context as to why major players in the international

In 1994 a senseless massacre of hatred arose from beneath the cracks of a country in ruins. Two main groups involved were the Hutu and the Tutsi both of which were ethnic tribes of Rwanda. The genocide was caused by political tension This genocide was building up its stages in the 1960s when most of Rwanda’s Tutsi population fled the country because of the Hutu gaining power. But what really erupted the violence was when a plane carrying Habyarimana and Burundi’s president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down over Kigali there were no survivors. The people who shot the plane down were never found but didn’t realize they had just created one on humanity's biggest senseless bloodshed [The Rwandan Genocide].

Chaos in the Congo The country of Rwanda has the highest percentage of women in their parliament in the world. Things haven’t always been as progressive in Rwanda, however. In 1994, Rwanda endured three months of government sponsored mass murders, and racism. Every event of the Genocide, before, during, and what it caused, have affected the history of the 21st century.