Rwanda was split up between two ethnic groups, the Hutu and Tutsi. For six hundred years the two groups shared the business of farming, their language, culture, and nationality. About ninety percent were Hutu, most Hutu are farmers who raise crops, cattle, and grow coffee. Five percent of the people are Tutsi, they work in businesses or government agencies (The World Book Encyclopedia). There have been many intermarriages between the groups. You could change what you were labeled as by marriage. A wedge was driven between them when European colonists moved in. Belgians chose Tutsis to be intermediaries between the governor and governed because they were tall and more aristocratic in appearance in the eyes of the Europeans. This thoughtless
…show more content…
Some Tutsi began behaving like aristocrats, and treating the Hutu like they were peasants (Peace Pledge Union Information). The genocide was not a simple matter of mutual hatred between tribes erupting into irrational violence. The killings were planned in advance by a clique close to the President himself (Fisanick). In the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 more than five hundred thousand people died within one hundred days. The key event that started the genocide, although not the only reason, was the assassination of the president of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana. He was returning from a summit in Tanzania when a missile shot his plane out of the sky over the capital city of Rwanda, Kigali, all on board were killed in the crash. The Hutu extremists took over the government within twenty-four hours of the assassination, blamed the Tutsi, and began the slaughter on April 6, 1994. A Hutu extremist anti-Tutsi youth organization set up road blocks, they checked identification cards as people were trying to leave Rwanda and killed everyone who were Tutsi. Most were tortured before they were killed, and they …show more content…
At first it was not hard to find Hutu men who admitted that they were involved with the genocide. Everyone was surprised when the government declared the arrests of genocide suspects. Nearly a million suspects were already in prison awaiting trial. Many more were meant to be arrested, the most wanted were known to be among the returning refugees, still eager to support the Hutu cause. (Peace Pledge Union
Some Tutsi began behaving like aristocrats, and treating the Hutu like they were peasants (Peace Pledge Union Information). The genocide was not a simple matter of mutual hatred between tribes erupting into irrational violence. The killings were planned in advance by a clique close to the President himself (Fisanick). In the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 more than five hundred thousand people died within one hundred days. The key event that started the genocide, although not the only reason, was the assassination of the president of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana. He was returning from a summit in Tanzania when a missile shot his plane out of the sky over the capital city of Rwanda, Kigali, all on board were killed in the crash. The Hutu extremists took over the government within twenty-four hours of the assassination, blamed the Tutsi, and began the slaughter on April 6, 1994. A Hutu extremist anti-Tutsi youth organization set up road blocks, they checked identification cards as people were trying to leave Rwanda and killed everyone who were Tutsi. Most were tortured before they were killed, and they …show more content…
At first it was not hard to find Hutu men who admitted that they were involved with the genocide. Everyone was surprised when the government declared the arrests of genocide suspects. Nearly a million suspects were already in prison awaiting trial. Many more were meant to be arrested, the most wanted were known to be among the returning refugees, still eager to support the Hutu cause. (Peace Pledge Union