Rwanda Genocide

Rwanda Genocide

Prologue: In the Shadow of Silence

The hills of Rwanda are green again and children chase goats along paths that once ran red. A woman sings as she sows cassava, her voice soft, trembling with memory. Beneath her feet lie bones of husbands, neighbors and children she once taught to read. In Rwanda, the past is never buried deep.

It was here, in the folds of these rolling hills, that humanity collapsed into horror and it was not just machetes that killed. It was radio waves, the colonial pens that drew lines between kin and crazy bureaucrats who counted Tutsis and Hutus like cattle. It was indifference, louder than any scream.

The genocide that unfolded in Rwanda in 1994 is not just a story of death but of betrayal, of a world that looked, knew and turned away.

I. Seeds of Hatred: Colonial Calculations

Rwanda, before colonialism, was a centralized kingdom. Tutsi kings ruled while Hutus farmed and although socio-economic class was fluid, identities were shaped by cattle, land and allegiance not race or tribe. But then came the Europeans as always, first were the Germans and then the Belgians.

Colonial administrators, influenced by eugenics and racist anthropology, declared Tutsis to be inherently superior "more European in bearing" while branding Hutus as primitive. Identity cards were issued, tribal distinctions were rigidified and power was centralized in Tutsi elites to serve colonial interests. When winds of independence stirred in the 1950s, Belgium flipped the power dynamic, backing Hutu leaders and inflaming resentment.

The incendiary was lit.

II. A Nation Divided, a Catastrophe Foretold

Though Rwanda gained independence in 1962, it did not gain peace. In the decades that followed, waves of ethnic violence erupted. Tutsi communities were targeted, massacres occurred and thousands fled into exile. The Hutu-led government fostered a culture of ethnic paranoia.

In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), composed largely of Tutsi exiles, invaded from Uganda. The government responded with propaganda. Extremist Hutu media began referring to Tutsis as "inyenzi" or cockroaches.

In the years leading up to 1994, extremist factions, particularly the Akazu, a circle close to President Juvénal Habyarimana, secretly trained militias known as the Interahamwe and stockpiled weapons.

Then, on April 6, 1994, Habyarimana's plane was shot down. It was the long-awaited signal.

Within hours, roadblocks were erected. Radio RTLM broadcast names and addresses. Machetes were swung and so the genocide had begun.

III. A Hundred Days of Hell

Over 100 days, between 800,000 and 1,000,000 people were slaughtered. Tutsis were hunted door to door, entire families were wiped out, women were raped and mutilated, children were hurled against walls. Churches turned into death traps as priests betrayed their flocks. The killing was intimate, often neighbor against neighbor and the international community did almost nothing.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), led by Canadian General Roméo Dallaire, begged for reinforcements. He had intelligence of the impending genocide before it began but the U.N. ignored him. The U.S., still stung by its experience in Somalia, refused to use the word "genocide" for weeks. France supported the genocidal Tutsi regime even as the killing reached its peak, supplying arms and training.

When the genocide finally ended in July 1994, it was not due to foreign intervention but because the RPF, under Paul Kagame, captured Kigali and ended the slaughter. Although by then, Rwanda was a grave.

IV. Beyond the Silence: Memory and Reckoning

The aftermath was staggering. The killers fled to Congo, where they would later destabilize the region and spark wider wars. Rwanda itself faced the near-impossible task of justice and reconciliation. The Gacaca courts, based on traditional community justice, were introduced to process hundreds of thousands of genocide cases. Prisons overflowed as survivors lived beside perpetrators. The government banned ethnic identification and new national narratives were built. Kagame, now president, has been praised for economic revival but criticized for authoritarian rule.

Still, Rwanda has chosen remembrance. Memorials stand across the country: piles of bones, skulls still bearing machete marks. Names etched into glass and children's clothing hung on wire racks.

The world, meanwhile, has offered apologies. The U.N. admitted failure, Former-President Bill Clinton called U.S. inaction one of his gravest regrets but no apology returns the dead and no apology explains why it was allowed to happen.

V. A Warning in the Hills

The Rwandan genocide was not a spontaneous tribal bloodbath. It was planned and expertly organized. It was state-sanctioned annihilation, rooted in decades of colonial manipulation and postcolonial power games. It is a reminder that genocide is never inevitable, it is enabled. Enabled by propaganda, foreign interests, institutional cowardice and by the silence of those who know better.

As the world pledges "never again," mass atrocities still erupt in Sudan, Myanmar, Gaza and D.R.Congo. The hills of Rwanda, green and still, carry the weight of warning. They whisper: You knew and you did nothing.

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