Posted by 2courtneyb on December 5, 2009 at 8:30pm
Within a span of 100 days 800,000 people from Rwanda were killed. Most of the people that died were Tutsis. Also most of the people that were doing the killing were Hutu. The killing of the 80,000 people started because their President Juvenal Habyarimana died because his he was on a plane and it got shot down on April 6, 1994. There’s a French judge says that he blames a guy named Paul Kagame. He was the leader of the Tutsi rebel group. Paul Kagame says that he has nothing to do with it and it was the Hutu group who should be blamed for this. The violence in Rwanda lasted three months. The president’s death was not the only reason for the genocide.In Rwanda there have always been problems about if there are more Hutus or Tutsis. The disagreements between the two groups have just gotten worse. Hutus and Tutsis groups have a lot in common. They speak the same language, are in the same areas, and have the same traditions. People who are Tutsis are usually tall and thin but people who are Hutus don’t always have those characteristics.Tutsis were considered to be better than the Hutus. This made the Tutsis people get better jobs and have a better education. This upset the Hutus people and they started riots. Because of the riots 20,000 people died. So then Hutu took their place.The Tutsis people that fled the country to escape conflict wanted to be back on their land. They decided to make the Rwandan Patriotic Front. They wanted to cause a downfall for Habyarimana. They also wanted to be guaranteed their homeland. In 1993 there was finally a peace accord that was signed between the president and the RPF.After Habyarimana’s plane got shot down leaders were murdered and the killing of Tutsis and Hutus began. Within a couple of hours recruits were set out all over the country. There was a group of militia that was put together that had around 30,000 people in it. If they helped the fight they would get food and even some of the land of the people they killed.In July the RPF caught the Kigali. Also the government collapsed. It soon became obvious that the RPF had won there were around 2 million Hutus that fled to Zaire. Bizimangu was named president. A while after he became president they fell and Bizimugu was put in prison. Then Kagame became the president. The killing in Rwanda was over but the Hutu militias DR Congo killed up to 5 million deaths. The government is now run by a Tutsis.To me this sounds like the Holocaust all over again. They are alike because it is killing of a bunch of people and it is because the other people are a different ethnicity. I really don’t get why they can’t just get along then they wouldn’t have to go through all this.
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