My knowledge of Rwanda is limited to what I have seen in the media.
1. I am aware that there are three ethnic groups, the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. I know that the genocide in 1994 involved the Hutu and Tutsi. The genocide lasted 100 days but many lives were lost.
2. The government had an active hand in the genocide, they attempted to control the media so that certain images would not be released. The United Nations eventually stepped in during the genocide to assist Rwandans.
3. Paul Kagame is the current president, he was viewed as a political leader before being elected president. He was previously the Vice-president and minster of defense during the genocide.

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1.) A mass genocide transpired within Rwanda as a result of ethnic contention between the minority Tutsi population and the majority Hutu population.
2.) The genocide that occurred in Rwanda was, by and large, neglected by the international community. Moreover, individuals that I have spoken too about Rwanda have on numerous occasions admitted they turned a blind eye when they heard news about the atrocities that were transpiring within Rwanda.
3.) The media played a significant role with regards to the genocide, (e.g. newspapers, radios, etc.).

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In general:

1) Rwanda was originally a Colonial territory, most notably occupied by Belgium.  For their own interests, the Belgians artificially created a social division between the Hutu and Tutsi people.

2) While there are no extreme ethnic differences between these two groups, Rwanda’s ruling imperial powers attempted to create such differences, placing the Tutsi minority above the Hutu in social strata.

3) The division of social classes and clear favoritism generated friction between the two groups culminating in the events of the 1994 genocide.

I wrote a paper for Professor Daniel Levine in my freshman year regarding UN operations during the genocide.

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1. There are three main ethnic groups – Twa, Hutu and Tutsi. The Hutu group makes up the largest percentage of the population. (PCON 111)
2. The genocide which occurred in Rwanda was largely ignored by the outside world even though the leaders who organized the genocide made no attempts to conceal what was happening. (PCON 111)
3. Human rights organizations continue to see Rwanda’s government and its leaders as a threat to its people’s wellbeing.

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1. Unlike in many contemporary African countries, Rwanda actually has a single language shared by all three “ethnic” groups (Hutu, Tutsi and Twa). There is also a concept of Rwandan collective identity that seems to have predated the current government/era; shared traditions, etc. That notion of Rwandanness has been politicized under the current government, symbolizing relative “peace” for some, and silencing for others.

2. The “1994 genocide” was not an unforeseeable or spontaneous killing spree. More well-off Tutsi families, especially those who had some political clout, began leaving the country back around the time of independence due to targeted bouts of violence. Struggles/disputes between the genocidal regime and the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front), at least partly concerning letting departed families back into the country, were ongoing for years – the RPF was not an army/organization that just swooped in at the last minute to save the day. There was a massive amount of both anti-Tutsi and anti-RPF (because these are very different!) writing and cartoon depiction emerging in the media prior to the genocide itself. At least one small-scale massacre similar to those occurring during the 100 days of genocide in 1994 took place a year earlier, in 1993; in a recent commemoration ceremony this massacre was referred to as a “trial run” for the mass killings that would take place in the summer of 1994.

3. Rwanda is a resource poor, landlocked country in Sub-Saharan Africa that does not have a lot of natural resources to sustain its comparatively large population. This poses geopolitical challenges for the country; a large portion of the current national income is actually derived from international aid money, and Rwandan relationships with surrounding countries are controversial at best. In a recent political/economic move, the country has begun transitioning from French to English as its second national language.

[I know these things from 218, personal research, visiting and family.]

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The majority of my knowledge about Rwanda regards the 1994 genocide and its contextualization, the roles and treatment of women within the country and justice pursuits in the aftermath of the conflict (gacaca, reconciliation).

Specifically, three things I know include:

1) There are THREE ethnic groups in Rwanda- the Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. The Twa is a much smaller population but still participated in the genocide as both perpetrators and victims. A limited, popular perception — brought about by the Rwandan government’s post-genocide policy of national unity and reconciliation, media representations, etc — teaches that that the genocide was waged only between the Hutu and the Tutsi with all Hutus being perpetrators and all Tutsis being victims.

(Learned this from writing my PCON senior thesis)

2) The Hutu, Tutsi and Twa are/have been more than “ethnic” groups – their identities have changed and evolved throughout history ranging from social to political groups, and often manipulated for the self-interest of the government.

(Learned this from writing my PCON senior thesis)

3) The United States, under President Bill Clinton, failed to intervene in the Rwandan genocide. Clinton did not publicly term the conflict “genocide,” because that word is married to an obligation to act and the US did not want to act.

(Learned this in high school history class/my Colgate first year seminar called Confronting the Past: Historical Injustice and Reconciliation)

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Ethnicity and ethnic division was used by political elites to advance their agendas in the genocide. People killed in opportunistic ways and killed others for fear of being reported by their neighbors for not participating in the killings.
-PCON 218

The international community did very little to stop the genocide or to even acknowledge its existence as it was occurring.
-PCON 218

Groups were given alcohol and drugs in order to prepare them to go on killing sprees and killing by machete was one of the most common ways that victims were massacred.

-PCON 218 reading

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1) Many blame the UN [peacekeeping troops] for having the ability to save lives and even prevent the genocide from happening. However, I have learned that the time it would have taken for UN to deploy troops and supplies and “save” Rwandans would have been 2 weeks — by then half of those killed would have already been dead. (learned from Alan Kuperman (2001), The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda)

2) People often forget the third “ethnic” group in Rwanda – Twa (understood from general readings/literature, visit to country)

3) The Constitutional Revision of 2003 outlaws any mentioning of race, ethnicity, or other discriminatory/divisive label, for fear of inciting genocide ideology. As a result, the identities “Hutu,” “Tutsi,” and “Twa” have been banned from public discourse, only to be expressed under government-imposed sanctions (learned from thesis research — Desrosiers, Thomson, Freedman et al., NYTimes, Constitutional Revision, amongst others)

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1. I know that Kagame is the President of Rwanda and has been praised by world leaders for the way that he has improved Rwanda, but recently people are beginning to question him and they believe that his government has been involved in violent acts toward the opposition. Kagame is a Tutsi and took over as President shortly after the end of the genocide. I learned this information through reading different news articles, mainly NYT.

2. I also know that there are two ethnic groups in Rwanda, the Hutus and Tutsis. Each group has battled the other to gain power in the government, but there is no trust between these two groups. This, I also learned from reading articles from NYT and other news sources in the past.

3. Lastly, during the genocide, hundreds of thousands of people were killed over the course of 100 days. This was caused by years of violence and killings that culminated in genocide after the killing of the then president. Although mainly Tutsis were killed, some Hutus were also killed. I believe that I have learned this information over the years just through hearing scholars discuss the genocide and reading short descriptions of it.

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1. Rwanda is a (relatively) small nation situated within central Africa, bordering the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I believe.   (I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when I learned this, though I suppose during 7th grade  World Studies when memorizing continental maps).

2. There exist two ethnic groups, the Tutsi and the Hutu, and the tensions between such served as the impetus for the genocide in 1994.  The current president is Kagame, and is praised for the country’s post-conflict transformation, which appears as a model for other African nations.  (Speaking candidly, the very first I heard of the Rwandan Genocide was through the hype surrounding the movie, Hotel Rwanda, as I do not remember learning much about the atrocity in past history classes.  The above knowledge is cemented by media articles [NYT, BBC, etc], and prior PCON courses).

3. During the Rwandan Genocide, the French president at the time was actively complicit, and supported the regime.  In intervention, the stationed French soldiers allowed perpetrators to escape to the DRC . The reason why this is important to consider now is in relation to the political turmoil that currently exists in Mali.  Just this week France enacted military intervention, which is leading scholars to recall the last time the country intervened in Africa… the Rwandan Genocide.  Hence, questioning how the foreign intervention in Mali will unfold. (Recently, I have had to read up on the situation in Mali for another course, using scholarly articles and news sources.  Thought that this relationship to the current state of affairs in Africa was interesting).

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