Rwandan Genocide: What History Teaches Us

It was thought to be the Hutu extremist of the inner circle of Habyarimana. The Hutu extremist then seized control and blockaded all ways in and out of Rwanda. The government formed consisted of all who were committed to genocide. Hutu Militia and the Tutsis began to slaughter each other and it seemed the government had no control over the extreme Hutu Militia, even as much as they wanted to… “The next day, President Bill Clinton called on the Rwandan army and the RPF to agree to an immediate cease-fire and declared that it was “time for the leaders of Rwanda to recognize their common bond of humanity and to reject the senseless and criminal violence that continues to plague their country”-a particularly innocuous, and misleading, formulation,” said William Dudley. “Not until June 15 did Clinton agree to use the term, but only because a virtually unanimous Senate Foreign Relations Committee was about to send him a letter demanding that he do so.” In May, the Security Council imposed an arms embargo on all parties to the conflict in Rwanda.

Long before WWI, the Tutsis have been discriminated by the Hutus and on April 6, 1994 all of this and gone to its limits for three months. Over 100 days 800,000 Tutsis were killed along with a vast amount of Hutus. The Hutus have been in an ethnic strife with the Tutsis for ages and their long-term objectives were to simply belittle them as much as possible, even to the point of genocide. Under Habyarimana, his objectives were to eliminate his Tutsi political opposition as well as some extreme Hutus. However, when he was assassinated by the thought to be Hutu extremist, they very quickly called for genocide and executed it. This genocide is relevant to the global society because there is never any reason for killing other humans off the earth, especially for petty variances in religion, race, etc. When something along the lines of this occurs, the global community is most definitely obligated to help fellow human beings.

In conclusion, the perpetrators, or the Hutu, acted out savagely and just inhumane. The reason behind their discrimination is just like all other forms of discrimination. The reason was that the Tutsi were ethnically different form the Hutu and the Hutu felt that they their ethnicity should be the only one, the dominant one above all others. This is very similar to the genocide of WWII in that the Hutu were the Nazis and the Tutsi victims were the Jewish victims. The Tutsis and Jews were killed because of their difference and the Hutu felt the need to display their dominance. Apparently History has not yet taught humanity anything about the obligations the global community and the morality of being a human. This is seen because there is constant, unforgiving strife all over the world.