It Wasn’t War it Was Genocide in Rwanda Essay -- Essays Papers

It Wasn’t War it Was Genocide in Rwanda Never ending battles have occurred over the past sixty years in Rwanda due to their atrocious economy. It has been the Tutsi and the Hutu, two out of the three ethnic groups in Rwanda, that have been battling for the government spot. As the years went on, the fighting kept getting more brutal. This brutality ended up being an all out massacre in Rwanda from the Hutu. It has been argued whether if the killings were an act of genocide or an act of war. But what are exactly genocide and war, and which one relates to the conflict in Rwanda? Because of the way the Hutu went through with there harsh brutality towards the Tutsi provides enough evidence to prove that the Hutus actions were an act of genocide. Rwanda is a densely populated small landlocked country in Africa. In this small country reside three ethnic groups the Hutu, the Tutsi, and the Twa. The Hutu account for 85 percent of the population, the Tutsi make up 14 percent, and the Twa only make up about 1 percent. The Tutsi, even though they only make up 14 percent of the populations, have ruled Rwanda for years, which has stirred up many emotions from the Hutu being that they have the numbers while the Tutsi still has the power. Then there is the Twa who have no political effect in Rwanda. Before 1950 the Tutsi and the Hutu lived very similar lives growing cattle and cultivating their land. They even intermarried and shared the same language. Everything was great until a new type of economic system came into play, colonialism. There was always a little rivalry between the Hutu and the Tutsi but this rivalry substantially grew when colonialism came into the economic system in Rwanda. Not to say that Rwanda w... ...me against the rules of war, and since the actions of the Hutu was nothing less than atrocious the incident in Rwanda in 1994 was nothing less than a pure act of genocide. Works Cited - Destexhe, Alain. The Crime of Genocide. New York, NY: New York University Press, 1995. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/rwanda/reports/dsetexhe.html. - Kampfner, John. â€Å"The Journalist as God.† New Statesman. Jan. 26, 2004. Vol. 133 Issue 4672, p. 22, 2p - Lorey, David E. ed., and Beezley, William H. ed. Genocide, Collective Violence, and Popular Memory. Wilmington, DE: Scholary Resources Inc., 2002 - Robinson, Luke. â€Å"The Tragedy of Rwanda.† Monthly Review Dec. 2003. vol. 55 issue 7, pg. 52, 9p - Shaw, Martin. War & Genocide. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2003