Main Causes Of The 1994 Rwanda Genocide : Rwanda is found in the central Africa and is a land locked country which is known as the land of thousand hills with an area of 26,338kilometers. It lies 75 miles southward of equator, 880 miles west of Indian Ocean and 1,250 miles east of Atlantic Ocean. Rwanda is next to Tanzania in the east, democratic republic of Congo in the west, Uganda in the north and Burundi in the south.
According to the genocide convention of 1948, genocide by definition is an intent to destroy, whole or a part of a nation, ethnic race or religious group or others that have power over all the victims as mentioned above. The genocide convention stated that ‘at all history genocide led to a great loss of humanity’.
The genocide that was against the Armenians, the Holocaust and the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi people in Rwanda occurred in the 20th century. This influenced the people to name the 20th century as ` The century of genocide’. Despite the genocide against the Tutsi within Rwanda, every genocide has pre-condition stages such as symbolization, classification, discrimination, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation and persecution which involves some causes of the massacre against the victim group.
DEHUMANIZATION
This is a condition where one group denies the humanity of the other group, members of it equated with animals, insect and vermin or diseases. At this stage hate propaganda is the way to go and on hate, radios are used to defame the victim group. For example the Tutsi people were termed as`Inyenzi’ meaning cockroaches, Inzoka’ meaning snakes. The Rwandan politicians used to tell the Hutus that `kill the snakes and cockroaches whether adult or kids because they are nothing but parasites’ and in order to kill the Tutsi’s were called `bush clearing’. All the genocide language/ ideologies were used by politicians boosted the engagement of Hutu people in mass killing. The hate propaganda was spread by using newspapers such as Kangura meaning `wake them up’, Kanguka meaning ` wake them’, as well as the public broadcasters such as RTLM [Radio television libre des mille collines].
ORGANISATION
The genocide is always organized by the government through using stale, often using militias to provide deniability of state responsibility in the genocide. The Rwandan government trained the youth Hutu militias and named them ‘‘Interahamwe’‘ which means those who fight or attack together, bought weapons and build armies for eliminating the Tutsi people. The Tutsi people who were in exile within the neighboring countries because of the 1959 civil war wanted to come back in their country but the president by then Habyarimana Juvenale told them that ‘Rwanda is over populated and it’s like a cup full of water, if you want to put more water in, you will have to pour that which is inside’. Those refugees formed rebel group called ‘‘Rwanda patriotic front‘’ with the aim of returning back in their country.
Therefore every Tutsi within Rwanda was accused of being part of the invading rebel army of Rwanda patriotic front. Perpetrators bond together as a community with a kind of sacred cause in the ritual of a genocidal killing, the feeling is intensified through doing something extreme such as the killing of people. In Rwanda every Tutsi was accused of bringing about economic crisis in the 1980s, a crisis that had been brought about by plummeting coffee prices in order for power and dominance to be restored.
All in all the genocide against the Tutsi within Rwanda affected the country in every aspect of life as more than million people were killed within 3 months and others became refugees within the neighboring countries or overseas, properties and infrastructure were destroyed, churches especially became the killing places and many women and girls were raped and infected Aids by the perpetrators.