IB History Ethnic Tensions in Rwanda Notes

Ethnic Tensions in Rwanda

1. This case study of Prescribe Topic: Conflict and Intervention focuses on the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.
2. Over 100 days between April and June, approximately 800,000 to over one million people-mainly Tutsi civilians-were brutally murdered by Hutu extremists.
3. This killing spree, faster and more intense than any genocide of the 20th century, surpassed those in Cambodia and Bosnia and occurred at five times the speed of the Holocaust.
4. While much of the international community remained unaware or inactive, Rwanda was devastated.
5. The massacre was not a spontaneous act of violence but a calculated strategy by a ruling elite desperate to retain power.

Rising of ethnic tensions: the colonial legacy

1. After World War I, Rwanda was handed to Belgium after having been colonized by Germany, under a League of Nations mandate.
2. The Belgians reinforced the existing social hierarchy, favoring the minority Tutsi-deemed racially superior based on pseudo-scientific beliefs-over the majority Hutu.
3. This preference entrenched an ethnic divide that had previously been more fluid and socio-economic than rigid or racial.
4. Belgian colonialism propagated the myth that the Tutsi were a racially distinct, superior people-taller, more intelligent, and better suited to rule.
5. These ideas, rooted in 19th-century European racial theory, shaped future ethnic ideology in Rwanda and were later weaponized by Hutu extremists in the 1994 genocide.

Belgian colonial rule in Rwanda

1. Direct rule and exploitation
   1. Belgium imposed direct rule, forcing labor and heavy taxation.