In 1994, the ethnic group of the Tutsis orchestrated a massive genocidal slaughter of the Hutus ethnic group in the Rwandan Genocide. Many past events contributed to the tension between the two groups that started as early as 1894 when Rwanda was a colony of Belgium. Under Belgium’s rule, the Tutsis, the minority (14%), were favored over the Hutus (85%) and only the male Tutsis were able to have education. The Belgians also reinforced the economic division between the Tutsi and Hutus by only defining the Tutsi as owners of ten or more cattle. However, in 1959, a revolution, developed by the Hutu counter-elite, began with riot attacks on Tutsi homes following false reports of murders of Hutus by the Tutsi extremists. It was a social warning …show more content…
peacekeeping force, send a letter to the United Nations. It was a personal warning of the Rwandan Genocide that revealed information about the minutely planned genocide, so much so that “the militias had trained to kill up to 1000 Tutsis in 20 minutes and the location of major weapons cache contained at least 135 weapons”. However, the letter of warnings was simply ignored by Kofi Annan, the head of UN peacekeeping operations who ordered Dallaire neither to take action nor to intervene. The conflicts inside the UN Security Council were a reference of Annan’s decision; the French openly supported the Hutus, and the US saw no value in preventing the mass murder in Rwanda and wanted to not to intervene. Two months later, the assassination of Juvenal Habyarimana, who was the president of Rwandan at the time, triggered massive conflict between the Tutsis and Hutus ethnic groups, which was the deadliest genocide since the Holocaust. Hutu extremists launched their plan to destroy the Tutsi population. In a few weeks, over 800,000 men, women and children perished, which was as many as three quarters of the Tutsi population. If the policy makers did not ignore the letter, the Rwandan Genocide could have been precluded by early reinforcement of UNAMIR, which may have saved hundreds of thousands of