Remembering Rwanda's Madness.

The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutu sympathizers in Rwanda and was the largest atrocity during the Rwandan Civil War. This genocide was mostly carried out by extremist Hutu militias. At least 500,000 Tutsis and thousands of moderate Hutus died in the genocide. Some estimates put the death toll between 800,000 and 1,000,000.

Origins: The sead of hatred.
The genocide in Rwanda was started by Europeans who claimed that one sub race was superior to another thus sowing the seeds of destruction that would happen centuries later. Before the arrival of the Europeans, The Hutus and Tutsis had all but forgotten their tribal distinctions under the Kingdom of Rwanda.

When the Europeans arrived, they found complexity in the form of multiple tribal monarcy. When they colonized the lands and it's people, they sought to solve the problem by introducing a system that will separate it's inhabitants into two groups. Thus the Hutus and the Tutsis were born. Although the Hutus account for 90 percent of the population, the Tutsi minority was considered the aristocracy of Rwanda and dominated Hutu peasants for decades. This set the stage for the upcoming war and the masacre.

The reprisal
Following independence from Belgium in 1962, the Hutu majority seized power and reversed the roles, oppressing the Tutsis through systematic discrimination and acts of violence. Ethnic tensions in Rwanda were significantly heightened in October 1993 upon the assassination of the first popularly elected Hutu president, President Ndadaye.

Hutu extremists violently opposed to sharing any power with the Tutsis were those who desired nothing less than the actual extermination of the Tutsis. Amid ever increasing prospects of violence, Rwandan President and Burundi's new President held several peace meetings to defuse the situation. While returning from a meeting in Tanzania, a small jet carrying the two presidents was shot down as it approached Rwanda's airport.

Immediately after their deaths, Rwanda plunged into political violence as Hutu extremists began targeting prominent opposition figures, including moderate Hutu politicians and Tutsi leaders. The killings then spread throughout the countryside as Hutu militia, armed with machetes, clubs, guns and grenades, began indiscriminately killing Tutsi civilians.

Cowards at the U.N
At U.N headquarters in New York, the killings were initially categorized as a breakdown in the cease-fire between the Tutsi and Hutu. Throughout the massacre, both the U.N. and the U.S. carefully refrained from labeling the killings as genocide, which would have necessitated some kind of emergency intervention. "An extraordinary rate of killing", this was said by the Red Cross. The Red Cross estimated that hundreds of thousands of Tutsi had already been massacred.

The U.N. Security Council responded to the worsening crisis by voting unanimously to abandon Rwanda.

The Hutu, now without opposition from the world community, engaged in genocidal mania, clubbing and hacking to death defenseless Tutsi families with machetes everywhere they were found. The Rwandan state radio, controlled by Hutu extremists, further encouraged the killings by broadcasting non-stop hate propaganda and even pinpointed the locations of Tutsis in hiding. The killers were aided by members of the Hutu professional class including journalists, doctors and educators, along with unemployed Hutu youths and peasants who killed Tutsis just to steal their property.

The killings only ended after armed Tutsi rebels, invading from neighboring countries, managed to defeat the Hutus and halt the genocide. By then, over one-tenth of the population, an estimated 800,000 persons, had been killed.

Lessons learned.
Here in Malaysia, the dangers of ethnic clashes is real. Infact it happen on May 13th 1969. Although very unlikely to happen today, but the dangers still exist. Racial harmony through mutual understanding and sharing of wealth is essential.

In Malaysia today, extremist movement is on the rise. Be it politically or fundamentally. We must all decide what is more important to us. Peace and prosperity or violence and bloodshed.