Discrimination And Prejudice In Rwanda

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Discrimination and Prejudice in Rwanda Over a period of three months there was mass destruction in the city of Rwanda. At least 800,000 people were killed in this massacre by the Hutus. The genocide was sparked by the death of the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, when his plane was shot down above Kigali airport on April 6, 1994. From that time to June of that year, which was a span of one hundred days, death reeked havoc of the Rwandan people. Many blame the Tutsis and the current President Kagame for the attacks, and others blame the Hutu extremist for this travesty. But who ever are to blame, the fighting amongst these two tribes has captured the Twa or Batwa in the middle. (BBC, 2008) According to Anderson (2009), the roots of conflicts are based on race, ethnicity, religion or nationality; and these in turn are marked by a great deal of discrimination and exclusion. Hatred in many circumstances may involve self-hate because of shared characteristics. He explains that in the Rwandan communities, some people fit the profile of a Hutu or a Tutsi; there are a lot of shared elements, so it is not always easy to tell them apart. Because of this generalization in tribes this may have been one of many that began the war of 1994. There are two main ethnic groups which have similarities in speaking the same language, inhabiting the same areas, as well as following the same traditions. These groups are the Tutsis and the Hutus. In contrast the Tutsis are somewhat taller and thinner and some claim origination in Ethiopia. In 1994, the time of war in Rwanda, the Tutsis were said to be buried in rivers, signifying that they were being returned to Ethiopia, their place of origin. In 1916, Belgian colonist began identifying tribesmen by ID cards according to their ethnicity creating strife. This was because the Tutsis were now considered

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