Rwandan genocide ap world history definition

Rwandan Genocide



On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Habyarimana and Burundi’s president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down over the capital city of Kigali, leaving no survivors. (It has never been conclusively determined who the culprits were. Some have blamed Hutu extremists, while others blamed leaders of the RPF.)



Within an hour of the plane crash, the Presidential Guard, together with members of the Rwandan armed forces (FAR) and Hutu militia groups known as the Interahamwe (“Those Who Attack Together”) and Impuzamugambi (“Those Who Have the Same Goal”), set up roadblocks and barricades and began slaughtering Tutsis and moderate Hutus with impunity.



Among the first victims of the genocide were the moderate Hutu Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and 10 Belgian peacekeepers, killed on April 7. This violence created a political vacuum, into which an interim government of extremist Hutu Power leaders from the military high command stepped on April 9. The killing of the Belgian peacekeepers, meanwhile, provoked the withdrawal of Belgian troops. And the U.N. directed that peacekeepers only defend themselves thereafter.


Slaughter Spreads Across Rwanda


The mass killings


The eruption of violence that Rwanda experienced beginning on the evening of April 6, 1994, continues to haunt the central African nation 30 years on – it has also changed the country’s gender dynamics.

The genocide resulted in hundreds of thousands of men being killed, with many more fleeing the country or being incarcerated. It left a previously male-centered society with hundreds of thousands of female-headed households. Of course, women were also subjected to the violence itself, with many killed and between 250,000 and 500,000 raped in the three months of genocide.

The scale of violence and disruption to Rwandan society created a need to systematically restructure the country. This was achieved, in part, by setting a quota for 30% of Parliament to be made up of women.

In the years since the genocide, Rwanda has been touted as one of the most gender egalitariancountries in the world, with women making up 61.3% of the nation’s parliament today. Likewise, after the genocide, the nation restructured many of its laws to be more equitable, allowing women to own and inherit land and open bank accounts. Legislation was also put in place to prohibit workplace gender discriminat



     The debate is over. Where once a historian's mere suggestion that the Holocaust might be compared to other episodes of mass murder incurred accusations of relativazation, indeed launching an extensive and at times vicious
Historikerstreit
, the academic discipline of Holocaust Studies now embraces the study of genocide in a comparative context.
1
The Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has named its journal
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
; history departments that once taught semester-long courses on the Holocaust instead now teach, often as a component of their general education curriculum, semester-long courses on genocide
2
; and works on comparative genocide have proliferated.
3
The past insistence that viewing the Holocaust in a comparative context led to apologetics, that comparison itself degraded the meaning of the Holocaust, has faded, historians having recognized limits on claims that the Holocaust is unique. Comparison forms part of the historian's toolbox, and in the field of Genocide Studies, comparisons of some genocides (or some aspects of same) hold up, while others do not. It is

What is Genocide?


The Genocide against the Tutsi refers to the mass murder of up to one million people, primarily Tutsi , between 7 April 1994 and 15 July 1994. The genocide was carried out by extremist Hutu  army officers using military forces in Rwanda, with widespread collaboration  and assistance from civilians, the local police, and the institutions of government.


Historic tension


At the time of the genocide, there were three primary ethnic groups in Rwanda: the Tutsi (15%) and the Hutu (84%), the Twa (1%). Historically, the Tutsi formed the ruling class in Rwanda, with a Tutsi King ruling within a feudal system .

In 1884 Rwanda and Burundi became part of Germany’s colonial empire as a result of the Berlin Conference . In 1897, the German forces agreed an alliance with the Rwandan Tutsi King, and ruled the country through the Tutsi monarchy. Following the First World War, under a League of Nations mandate, Rwanda came under control of Belgium, who continued to support the monarchy and maintain Tutsi rule.

In the early 1930s, Belgium forces introduced compulsory identification cards, which further segregated the population according to three ethnicities: Tutsi, Hutu a