Rwanda Genocide - Research Paper Example

? Rwanda Genocide Violence and wars happened in the of history of the earth and human civilization. They occur due to many factors like poverty, political disputes, cultural wars, group conflicts, scarcity of resources and many more. The reasons for those occurrences may differ but they all boil down into further hatred and hardships. Many efforts are being done by various groups, sectors and organizations to prevent any violence to occur as to provide peaceful liberties to people and guard their rights. Though efforts are done, those harms do still happen in controlled settings. Mutual understanding among nations and people may have reduced the occurrences of conflicts and violence. Conflicts and violence may occur anytime and anywhere which means people must be aware of their surroundings at all time. Nobody knows when it may happen though there are some ways that people especially the government agencies can predict the occurrences of violence through patterns they get from the data of past events. One of the nations that experienced a significant violence and conflict is Rwanda. That country is located in the eastern part of Africa near Tanzania and Congo. The topography of the land of Rwanda is composed of mountains and valleys. Rwanda then has the highest peak at 4,324 meters which is the top of a volcano called Mount Karisimbi (King 2007, p. 7). The people then that live the mountains and valleys are generally called Rwandans and composed of the ethnic groups Pygmy, Hamitic and Bantu. The population overall of the Rwandans is approximately 11 million and the size of population is attributed to high mortality rate. Many die because of diseases because of poor sanitation and major diseases like the dreaded Autoimmune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS. They are mostly poor as only 19 percent of them are in the urban areas. They also lack potable water to cater the needs of everyone. In terms of religion, Rwandans are mostly Christians with majority of them are Catholic. When it comes to basic education, most of them know how to read and write by 15 years old and above (Streissguth 2007, p. 36). The government of Rwanda then became a parliament recently and its laws are patterned after France and Belgium. The constitution of Rwanda was then ratified in 2003. The said constitution pledges to protect the rights of the Rwandans, to provide peace among groups there and to prevent political party formations based on culture and race. The government then is divided into judicial, legislative and executive just like in the government form seen in Europe and USA. The people allowed to vote must be at least 18 years old. Once the election is finished, the president then has been decided and he is the one responsible to appoint the prime minister and the cabinet who will assist him in leading the country (King 2007, p. 43). Before the government of Rwanda has been patterned after the Western nations, the country started as a land roamed by Pygmy group called Twa but the said ethnic group is only one percent of the current population. It was known in the past that Twa had interactions and interrelationships with the other ethnic groups like Tutsi and Hutu. The two groups were very similar in traditions but they are differentiated for their source of livelihood as Tutsi are cattle growers while Hutu are crop growers. It was then in 1933 when Belgian people controlled Rwanda and commanded the Rwandans to wear identification cards to clearly separate them by races (Kalayjian and Paloutzian 2009, p. 73). Probably that decision of the Belgians had bred further conflicts and violence among the ethnic groups which became prevalent since the independence of Rwanda. Rwanda became occupied by Germany before. When the First World War came, Belgium took over Rwanda as the Belgians snatched it from the Germans. After the war, it became a joint-state with Burundi which was also a colony of Belgium. It was then under the custody of United Nations which also played a big role in giving those nations their independence by 1960 (Kalayjian and Paloutzian 2009, p. 209). Before letting the Rwanda have its independence, Belgium assumed the overwhelming rule of Tutsi but later the Belgians allowed Hutu to also have leadership positions. With the competition for power, civil war arose driving Tutsi away which led to the government handled by Hutu when Rwanda became an independent nation (King 2007, p. 23). The civil war sprouted in the midst of having an independent nation and fight for the share of power between the exiled Tutsi and the prevailing Hutu. The war led to genocide that stroke upon the Tutsi and some Hutu-supporting-Tutsi as the government is dominated by Hutu. Within more than three months, more than half a million Rwandans were killed. The massive killings were also sparked by the assassination done upon the third president of Rwanda Juvenal Habyarimana (Kalayjian and Paloutzian 2009, p. 180). It was all because of the rebels known as Rwandan Patriotic Front that camped at the northern portion of Rwanda. Both the government and the rebels had their back-ups from the outside forces like France and its former African colonies for the Rwandan government while the rebels were supported by Uganda (Melvern 2000, p. 24). The differences in beliefs and ideologies set the battlefield further into more violence as the dominating Hutu thought that Tutsi would like to overthrow them and turn them into slaves. In response to Hutu beliefs, those men from that ethnic group dared to prevent the overthrowing with full effort. Both the north and the south of Rwanda then experienced discrimination, violence and abuse as both parties include the civilians in their wars as long as those civilians belong to Tutsi and Hutu. The violence was then temporarily stopped by a cease-fire declared by Habyarimana before his assassination by implementing the five protocols under the agreement done in Arusha, Tanzania (Pavlakis 2008, p. 4). The whole agreement was called Arusha Accords that dared to end the civil war and disputes between the Rwandan government and Rwandant Patriotic Front. The agreement in Arusha produced a transitional government that might have led to more equal opportunities not just for Tutsi and Hutu but also Twa. Five political parties were also included in supporting the peace efforts (King 2007, p. 28). The streak of killings was ended when the rebels took over Kigali overthrowing the government of Hutu and ceasefire was renounced. About two million Hutus became very scared as their once dominating race was overthrown. They escaped the possible danger by going to Congo. Some of the escaped Hutus were directly involved in the violence and killings in the civil war. The renewed government was put into place led by Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu. He was then charged for alleged violence against various ethnics that put him into jail. He was replaced by Paul Kagame as the head of the state (BBC News 2008). The mass killings had ended but the armed conflict still occurred in smaller scales as Hutu militias from Congo had small wars that even killed millions of people. The Tutsi-dominated Rwanda government dared to conquer Congo to exterminated the remaining armed Hutus and at the same time some Tutsis in Congo became rebels to protect themselves from possible surge of genocide. The genocide would have been avoided if the lawmakers from the Western countries had considered the masterminds of the Hutus as men with logic who took advantage of power by making use of ethnic discrimination as an excuse. In addition, the prevailing government during that time was very dependent on the assistance from foreign countries which means if the donors had told the prevailing party in Rwanda that the assistance will stop once the killings do not stop as soon as possible (The Economist 2004). The genocide also could have been prevented if hatred and discrimination had been extinguished before it transformed into a national hatred. The killings of civilians should also be stopped especially towards the other ethnic group and rival parties. The criminals especially the killers of Tutsi were unpunished since the victims were from the opposing ethnic group. At the same time, the concerns of the world toward human rights were just short and often forgotten as the very cause of the violence was not provided with solution (Human Rights Watch 2004). A good way to stop a probable genocide from happening is to be aware of its precursors. Warnings can be seen to signal the interventions for preventing such a man-made disaster. It can be seen in assassinations of important people in the society, heavy ideals on speeches and exaggerated entries on editorials. It is difficult to detect genocides easily but by having early-warning methods may make the whole process faster and easier to recognize. It was then learned by people around the world that any person may have the insurmountable evil in him waiting to be unleashed like the genocide that created a collection of fractured skulls (The Economist 2004). For Lyndon LaRouoche, Jr., a peace advocate, the best way to settle disputes and prevent any genocide from happening again is by creating peace through development. In the case of Rwanda and its neighboring countries, a canal known as Transaqua may help people there to have fresh water system that may be used for irrigated agriculture and provide livelihood to the locality (Friesecke 2004). Work Cited BBC News. Rwanda: How the genocide happened. BBC World News. 18 December 2008. Web. 13 May 2012. . Friesecke, Uwe. Can We Learn the Lessons From the Genocide in Rwanda? Executive Intelligence Review. 7 May 2004. Web. 13 May 2012. . Human Rights Watch. Rwanda: Lessons Learned Ten Years after the Genocide. Human Rights Watch. 29 Mar. 2004. Web. 13 May 2012. . Kalayjian, Ani and Raymond F. Paloutzian. Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Psychological Pathways to Conflict Tranformation and Peace Building. USA: Springer, 2009. Print. King, David. Rwanda. USA: Marshall Cavendish, 2007. Print. Melvern, Linda. A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide. USA: Palgrave, 2000. Print. Pavlakis, Christoforos. The Role of the “Hate Media” in Rwanda's Genocide. Germany: GRIN Verlag, 2008. Print. The Economist. Rwanda, Remembered: Ten Years after Rwanda’s Genocide, what has the World Learned? The Economist. 25 Mar. 2004. Web. 13 May 2012. . Read More