Was Ethnic Hatred Responsible for the Rwandan Genocide of 1994?

...

It would be true to state that the motivation behind the genocide was fear. The Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) consisted of mainly Tutsi refugees in exile as a consequence of Tutsi expulsion in the year 1959 in opposition to the Hutu leadership. In October 1990 the Rwanda Patriotic Front invaded Rwanda, and as a result, the Hutu administration feared another similar invasion and consequently made their ethnic policies more relentless. The Hutu administration viewed the Tutsi living in Rwanda as an internal peril because with of their association with the RPF. It feared that it would lose its power once the Tutsi in the neighboring Burundi and Uganda relocated to Rwanda. The Hutu government, therefore, called for the eradication of the Tutsi through the spread of ethnic fear and the desensitization of individuals to violence (Des Forges, 1999).

In addition to the Hutu government disseminating fear, economic crises contributed significantly to the ethnic division. At the time of the genocide, Rwanda was a sovereign state whose personal affairs were put under severe stress by the 1990 crises. According to Stone (2007), poverty, soil degradation and a series of droughts were the main causes of the economic crises. In addition to the above-stated factors, the decrease the price of coffee one of the major exports of the country significantly reduced the earnings of the state and this consequently intensified the pressure directed to the Hutu government. To counteract this effect, the Rwandan government was forced to ask for a state loan that accumulated to one billion dollars which in return again put the Rwandan government under pressure. The extremist Hutu government was keen to use these crises as part of their propaganda that sought to label the Tutsi as economic exploiters (Anderton and Braurer, 2016). This further promoted ethnic divide.

The genocide could also be attributed to the accumulation of ethnic hatred concerning the civil war. The degree to which the Rwandan genocide was pre-planned and thus a consequence power struggle rather than ethnicity is evidenced by the events that took place before months before the event. The assassination of the then president of Rwanda Juvenal Habyarimana was the main event that heavily propelled the genocide. The same day the president was assassinated, the Hutu militia was actively checking the identities of all passersby. If the passerby happened to be a Tutsi, they were cruelly murdered. This cruel act resulted in a total of approximately 700, 000 Tutsis been murdered. The Hutu administration took advantage of the event and used it to incite the masses. They accused the RDF of assassinating Juvenal citing that the reason for the Tutsi to assassinate the president was because he had resisted signing the Arusha accord.

Although this event prompted the genocide, it was far from being the primary cause. The acuteness of the above-stated events should lead to the assumption that the genocide was planned and even predictable (Melvern, 2006). According to Shelton (2005), the genocide had been premeditated, planned by small groups of governments who used the coercive force of the state to galvanize the genocide and disseminate it across the country. This illuminates to the fact that that the cause of the genocide was not only ancient hatred but was made feasible by the contemporary government policies that rejuvenated the old ethnic tensions.

In conclusion, in the year 1994, Rwanda was launched into the strife of genocides that resulted in the death of at least one million citizens. The victims of the genocide were mainly the opposition members of the extremist Hutu government. Their primary goal for this event was to annihilate the Tutsi who made up only 0.25% of the total population. The term genocide calls for a more precise description. This is because most often than not there is confusion between killing that is instigated by ethnic hatred and the intentional, premeditated attempt to eradicate a particular ethnic group. The Tutsi and Hutu since the pre- independence period have been classified based on class rather than ethnicity. The Rwandan genocide was induced by a blend of political, economic and social factors and not entirely as a result of ethnic hatred. From the above-presented argument, it is clear that the Rwandan genocide resulted from the combination of events. Such events include; colonialism, the propaganda used to incite fear, economic pressures, and the buildup of ethnic hatred in the context of civil war.

References

Adelman, H. (2000). Rwanda revisited: In search for lessons. Journal of Genocide Research, 2(3), 431-444.

Anderton, C. H., & Braurer, J. (Eds.) (2016): Economic Aspects of Genocides, Other Mass Atrocities, and Their Prevention Oxford University Press.

Des Forges, A. (1999): Leave no one to tell the story Human Rights Watch.

Fisanick, C. (2004). The Rwanda Genocide Green haven Publications

Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimension. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Glazer, N., Greeley, A. M., Patterson, O., & Moynihan, D. P. (1974): What Is Ethnicity? Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 16-35.

Kunz, J. L. (1949). The United Nations Convention on Genocide: The American Journal of International Law, 43(4), 738-746.

Mamdani, M. (2001): When victims become killers Princeton: Princeton UP.

Melvern, L. (2006). Conspiracy to murder: The Rwandan genocide. Verso

Prunier, G. (2008): Africa's world war: Congo, the Rwandan genocide, and the making of a continental catastrophe. Oxford University Press

Shelton, D. L. (2005): Encyclopedia of genocide and crimes against humanity. Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity, Dinah L. Shelton, ed, 2013-31.

Stone, L. C. (2007). Rwandan Genocide: Economic Decline and Increased Willingness to Murder Pro Quest

Uvin, Peter: "Prejudice, crisis, and genocide in Rwanda." African Studies Review 40.02 (1997): 91-115.

Yanagizawa-Drott, D. (2014). Propaganda and conflict: Evidence from the Rwandan genocide. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(4), 1947-1994.