Essay about Conflict Between the Tutsi and Hutu Classes

Imagine waking up one morning and discovering that your basic human rights had been taken from you based on your religious or ethnic background. You and your family are rounded up, corralled together, and shipped off to a secluded location to be made to work like animals, or slaughtered where you stand. Millions of humans have had this reality in the 20th century. The term genocide is an often debated one. Webster’s dictionary defines genocide as â€Å"The systematic destruction of a racial, ethnic, or religious group.† (Merriam-Webster). Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish legal scholar who escaped Nazi Germany to the United States, coined the word genocide in 1944 (Encyclopedia of Death and Dying). It is derived from the Greek word genos,†¦show more content†¦Between the late 1950’s and the early 1970’s countless rebellions and uprisings resulted in the deaths of thousands of Tutsis and also caused them to flee into neighboring countries. In the mid-1970’s General Juvenal Habyarimana took power over the country, setting up a one-party state. He established the Mouvement Rà ©volutionaire National pour la Dà ©mocratie et le Developpement (MRND) to promote peace and unity throughout Rwanda. In 1990 the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front or RPF invaded Rwanda in protest of the thousands of misplaced Tutsis still living in exile. The Hutus, believing Tutsis were trying to re-enslave them and return to their former power, launched a radio station that spouted anti-Tutsi propaganda. There were more uprisings and killings over the next four years which led talks of a peace treaty signed by President Habyarimana and the RPF leader Paul Kagame. President Habyarimana reluctantly agreed to go to Tanzania to sign the treaty. On the way back from Tanzania on April 6 1994 the plane carrying President Habyarimana and President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi was shot down, killing both men (Encyclopedia of Death). It is not known who was responsible for this but the killings began that very night. Radio transmissions aided the Hutu extremists in their grisly task. Radio Mille Collines, a Hutu station, broadcasted for all Hutus to â€Å"kill the cockroaches† (Encyclopedia of Death andShow MoreRelatedThe Genocide Of The Holocaust1541 Words   |  7 Pagesand Conflict Theories. Rwanda is divided into main two ethnic groups: the Hutu and the Tutsi, with the overwhelming majority being Hutu. Ethnic tensions in Rwanda date back in the late 1800s when The Berlin Conference assigned the territory to Germany. European colonists who traveled to Rwanda displayed typical scientific racism tendencies of the time. Convinced the Tutsi had migrated to Rwanda from Ethiopia and were therefore more Caucasian than the Hutu, they enforced notions that the Tutsi wereRead MoreMovie Analysis : Hotel Rwanda1519 Words   |  7 PagesHollywood hero, rather than the deeply rooted and complex factors at the center of the violence, leading to popular opinion of the Hutu population as barbaric and uncivilized and the Tutsi as innocent liberators. The film is historically accurate with respect to its representation of the physical similarities between both populations, as well as its depiction of the Hutu and Tutsi living in harmony prior to the assassination of the Rwandan president. Despite these accuracies, Hotel Rwanda fails to captureRead MoreThe Genocide Of The Rwandan Genocide Essay1711 Words   |  7 Pagestook place in 1994 and involved members of the Hutu mass killing Tutsi and Tutsi sympathizers who were Hutu. The genocide resulted in the deaths of around 800,000 people, majority Tutsi. 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