Genocide Of either Holocaust or the Rawnda - Essay Example

(Kagame and his RPF were said to be the ones who ended the genocide) Later on, Kagame is elected as President and has ruled the country since March of 2000. Gourevitch recently wrote that Kagame “has come to be recognized by his adversaries and his admirers alike, as one of the most formidable political figures of our age” (cjr.org). A detailed report from the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) regarding the events in the run-up and during the April to July of 1994 provided the scale of the genocide in a straightforward lead: “Between April and June of 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the space of 100 days” (news.bbc.co.uk). The genocide all started from the assassination of Habyarimana and other officials when the airplane they had boarded “was shot down above Kigali airport on 6 April 1994” (new.bbc.co.uk). By Kagame’s account, dissident Hutus were behind the killing of Habyarimana just to give excuse for Hutus and state forces to purge the Tutsis out of Rwanda; but a French judge has blamed Kagame.

It is clear that several factors had phenomenally laid the groundwork for the horrible genocide to happen. Aside from the shooting down of Habyarimana’s plane, cases of violence–specifically between Hutus and Tutsis which are the two races in Rwanda–replete the torrid history of Rwanda. “Ethnic tension in Rwanda is nothing new. There have been always disagreements between the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis” (news.bbc.co.uk). Way back in 1916, Belgian colonists considered the Tutsis as superior.

Tutsis stood tall and had had “enjoyed better jobs and educational opportunities” (news.bbc.co.uk) than the Hutus. It is the Hutus’ ethnic hatred towards the Tutsis which added more fuel in burning genocide. In the midst of the Rwandan genocide was Paul Rusesabagina, 56. A hotel manager of the Millie Collines, a luxury hotel in capital Kigali, Rusesabagina has saved many Tutsis from the armed Hutus. His actions transformed him into being an “unlikely hero” (nationalgeograophic.com).

His story was filmed and premiered in Hollywood on the December of 2004 as Hotel Rwanda. Hotel Rwanda has revealed the daily struggles of Rusesabagina just to keep many Tutsis safe in the luxury hotel. It revealed the corrupted and disordered local politics in Rwanda. It has also shown the cowed response of the United Nations’ peacekeeping force in handling the situation. It has also revealed many impoverished families who mired in hunger and poverty. Ultimately, it is a success story on the part of Rusesabagina that despite of all the intimidations he’s been through, he successfully saved his neighbors and loved ones from the genocide.

The UN is pretty straightforward in its campaign against genocide. Under the UN Agreements on Human Rights, it is stipulated that the convention bans “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group” (hrweb.org). It also declared that “genocide itself, conspiracy or incitement to commit genocide, attempts to commit or complicity in the commission of genocide all to be illegal” (hrweb.org). It is clear that the true intent of the convention is to straighten the fact that genocide is illegal thus deserves