Who is rwanda genocide

It has never been conclusively determined who the culprits were. Some have blamed Hutu extremists, while others blamed leaders of the RPF. Among the first victims of the genocide were the moderate Hutu Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and 10 Belgian peacekeepers, killed on April 7. This violence created a political vacuum, into which an interim government of extremist Hutu Power leaders from the military high command stepped on April 9. The killing of the Belgium peacekeepers, meanwhile, provoked the withdrawal of Belgium troops.

And the U. The mass killings in Kigali quickly spread from that city to the rest of Rwanda. In the first two weeks, local administrators in central and southern Rwanda, where most Tutsi lived, resisted the genocide. After April 18, national officials removed the resisters and killed several of them. Other opponents then fell silent or actively led the killing. Officials rewarded killers with food, drink, drugs and money.

Government-sponsored radio stations started calling on ordinary Rwandan civilians to murder their neighbors. Within three months, some , people had been slaughtered. Meanwhile, the RPF resumed fighting, and civil war raged alongside the genocide. In response, more than 2 million people, nearly all Hutus, fled Rwanda, crowding into refugee camps in the Congo then called Zaire and other neighboring countries.

After its victory, the RPF established a coalition government similar to that agreed upon at Arusha, with Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu, as president and Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, as vice president and defense minister. As in the case of atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia around the same time, the international community largely remained on the sidelines during the Rwandan genocide.

As reports of the genocide spread, the Security Council voted in mid-May to supply a more robust force, including more than 5, troops. By the time that force arrived in full, however, the genocide had been over for months.

In a separate French intervention approved by the U. As former U. Because in Yugoslavia the international community was interested, was involved.

In Rwanda nobody was interested. They were also the targets of periodic outbreaks of mass violence. Hundreds of thousands of Tutsis fled the country in the s and s. In , a Tutsi rebel force invaded Rwanda from the north. Hard-line Hutu politicians accused Rwandan Tutsis of supporting the rebels. After the war reached a stalemate, Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana signed a peace agreement.

The terms enabled Rwanda to transition to a government in which Hutus and Tutsis would share power. The agreement angered Hutu extremists. In response, they armed Hutu paramilitary forces and waged a vicious propaganda campaign against the Tutsis. On the evening of April 6, , President Habyarimana was killed. A surface-to-air missile shot down his plane as it was landing in Kigali, the Rwandan capital.

Who fired the missile remains in dispute. They also targeted moderate Hutu leaders who might have opposed this program of genocide. Political and other high profile leaders who might have been able to prevent the genocide were killed immediately. Violence spread through the capital and into the rest of the country.

The genocide continued for roughly three months. As the level of violence escalated, groups of Tutsis fled to places that in previous times of turmoil had provided safety: churches, schools, and government buildings.

Many of these refuges became the sites of major massacres. The Rwandan military and Hutu paramilitary forces carried out the massacres using guns and explosives. In addition to mass killings, thousands and thousands of Tutsis and people suspected of being Tutsis were killed in their homes and fields and on the road.

Militias set up roadblocks across the country to prevent the victims from escaping. In cities, towns, and even the tiniest villages, Hutus answered the call of their local leaders to murder their Tutsi neighbors. Entire families were killed at a time, often hacked to death with machetes. Women were systematically and brutally raped. Hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutus participated in the genocide. In addition, the Hutu dominated government began stockpiling weapons, including machetes.

These machetes and other rudimentary weapons would be the tools that carried out the genocide. The channel would be used to incite hatred towards Tutsi by using propaganda and racist ideology, such as the Hutu Ten Commandments. The genocide had begun. To truly understand the Rwandan Genocide, one must move beyond the traditional binary of perpetrators and victims. Rwandans often transcended the categories of victim, perpetrator, bystander and rescuer— acting as a rescuer at one moment and a perpetrator another.

Tutsi victim testimony discusses the importance of rescuers— Hutu men and women who risked their own lives to hide and save Tutsi men, women, and children. Tusti survivors discuss a multitude of survival strategies from playing dead to negotiating and buying their safety. Furthermore, both Hutus and Tutsis were subjected to mass violence, torture, and rape during the genocide. Yet because the victims of the Rwandan Genocide, per the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, were targeted for their ethnic identity solely, the victims of the genocide were Tutsis.

It is important to note, however, that Hutus and some Twa were also victims of non-genocidal violence. For example, both Tutsi and Hutu women were the victims of sexual violence.

Hutu propaganda, such as the Hutu Ten Commandments, portrayed Tutsi women as being sexually available. This appealed to the Hutu desire to create an ethnically Hutu-homogenous state. Rape of Tutsi women was systematic, and after the genocide subsided, an outbreak of HIV swept throughout Rwanda. Yet Hutu women also experienced violence from both their Hutu counterparts and members of the Tutsi-led RPF that was progressing through the country trying to end the genocide.

While genocidal violence was widespread throughout the country, some regions experienced more:. In November , a Hutu uprising killed many Tutsi and caused , to seek refuge outside Rwanda.

These attacks displaced thousands of Rwandans causing great insecurity and fear. This fear was used to construct all Tutsis, regardless of their affiliation with the RPF, as enemies of the state. It was during this time that ethnic stratification was exacerbated and Hutu ideology strengthened and disseminated.

The Arusha Accords was supposed to end the three-year-long civil war, integrate Tutsi exiles into Rwandan society, and democratize the Rwandan government. The warning went unheeded. In addition, the use of Belgian troops for the UN mission violated UN regulations banning colonial powers from providing troops to missions in former colonies.