Main Causes 1994 Rwanda Genocide

With a total area of 26,338 km2, Rwanda is a landlocked nation in Central Africa, sometimes referred to as the “Land of Thousand Hills.” It is located 1,250 miles East of the Atlantic Ocean, 880 miles West of the Indian Ocean, and 75 miles South of the Equator.

Rwanda shares borders with Tanzania to the East, Burundi to the South, Uganda to the North, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the West.

Genocide is defined as “The intent of a government or others that have power over all the victims stated above to destroy, whole or in part, a Nation, Ethnic, Race, or Religious group.” This definition was established in the 1948 Genocide Convention. “Genocide has led to the great losses of humanity at all times,” according to this agreement on genocide.

People began referring to the twentieth century as “the century of genocide” because of the Holocaust, the genocide against the Armenian people, and the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994.

Even with the Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsi, there are numerous precondition phases to any genocide, including classification, symbolization, discrimination, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, and persecution. These stages are some of the reasons why the victim group is massacred.

Dehumanization: the process by which members of one group are associated with animals, insects, vermin, or diseases, and another group denies the humanity of the other group. At this point, the victim group is demonized through the use of hate speech on hate radio and print media. For instance, politicians in Rwanda used to tell the Hutus to “kill that snakes and cockroaches whether they are adult or kids because they are nothing but the parasites” and to “bush clear” in order to kill the Tutsis. In Rwanda, Tutsis were also referred to as “Inyenzi,” which means cockroaches, and “Inzoka,” which means Snakes. The adoption of these homicidal phrases and beliefs by leaders encouraged the Hutu people to commit mass murder. Newspapers with headlines like “wake them up,” “wake up,” and “Radio television libre des mille collines,” or RTLM, were used to disseminate the hate speech.

Organization: To offer the appearance of governmental responsibility for the genocide, the government always organizes them using outdated tactics, frequently involving militias. In order to exterminate the Tutsi population, the Rwandan government trained young Hutu militias and gave them the moniker “Interahamwe,” which refers to those who band together, purchase weapons, and assemble armies.

The former president of Rwanda, Habyarimana Juvenale, told the Tutsi people who were living in exile in neighboring countries as a result of the civil war in 1959 that Rwanda was overpopulated and that if they wanted to add more water, they had to discard the ones that were already there. The Tutsi people wanted to return to their country. These migrants established the “Rwanda Patriotic Front,” a rebel organization, with the intention of going back to their own nation.

All Rwandan Tutsis were charged with belonging to the Rwandan Patriotic Front, an invading rebel force.

In the ritual of genocidal killing, perpetrators unite as a society around a kind of sacred cause, which is furthered by acting out of character and killing people. The Hutu youth militia that participated in the genocide against the Tutsi was known as “Interahamwe,” which translates to “those who attack together” or “those who fight together.”

In Rwanda, all Tutsis were accused of creating the 1980s economic crisis—which was caused by falling coffee prices—so that they could regain control and domination.

The Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsi affected every aspect of life in the nation; within three months, over a million people were killed, and others fled to neighboring countries or abroad. Property and infrastructure were destroyed, with churches serving as particular sites of slaughter. The perpetrators also raped and infected numerous women and girls with HIV.