*looks down at video title* *sigh* This can’t be good for my mental
health, but this subject was a Patreon Stretch Goal, and the numbers say you like the sad
videos, so let’s talk about one of the darkest events of the 20th century.
And that’s a lot because have you seen the 20th century?
I know this feels like a glib way to start a serious video, and it’s because I am working
myself up to a pretty damn dark subject, and this is about all the levity you’re going
to get.
I guess, all of this is to say this is a massive content warning.
If the title didn’t give it away, we’re going to some dark places, and if you're feeling
vulnerable or have children watching with you, you might want to give this one a pass.
It’s been 24 years since a horrific genocide occurred in the African nation of Rwanda.
Estimates vary, but over a 100 day period, between 500,000 and 2,000,000 people were
massacred.
I want that to really sink in.
Even by conservative estimates, that’s a reasonably sized city murdered.
Those who committed this genocide targeted an ethnic minority in the country known as
the Tutsi people and belonged to the Hutu majority.
The genocide itself killed as many as 70% of the Tutsi population, as well as about
30% of the Pygmy Batwa people.
And you’d think the world would have intervened in such a situation, but it only ended once
a Tutsi backed paramilitary group took over the government.
How did these people get there?
The story of the Rwandan genocide takes us all the way back to the 19th century, and
Rwanda still lives with the scars of these 100 days today.
Let’s explore what happened, what caused it, and maybe, just maybe, come to an idea
of how to never let something like this happen again.
Let’s start at the beginning of the division between these groups.
It’s a bit older than colonisation, but this is when it began in earnest.
Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi fell into the hands of the Germans after the Berlin
Conference of 1884.
When it came to colonial administration, the divisions sprung up right away.
The colonists preferred working with the Tutsis over the Hutu because they believed them to
be racially superior.
This continued after the Belgians conquered Rwanda during the First World War.
The Belgians even used pseudoscience like Phrenology to determine why they benefitted
one group over another.
Racists, they’re always measuring bones!
Later, in 1935, the Belgians also implemented ID cards which labelled everyone in the country
as either Tutsi, Hutu, Twa or Naturalized.
Because European race science makes these categories irreducible, this had a massive
impact on Rwandan society.
Before, a wealthy Hutu might become an honourary Tutsi, but now with strict racial categories
and friggin’ ID cards, this became a rigid caste system.
If you wanna learn more about the concept of race “science”, you can watch this
video here.
A Hutu emancipation movement began to grow after the Second World War.
Their power base grew from increasing resentment towards the social order and support from
the Catholic church.
The divisions established by class and colonisation turned into a racial category, and violence
between the groups increased year on year.
Eventually, the Belgian administrators gave the Hutu power to maintain order.
Rwanda got independence in 1962.
In this new republic.
Already we saw what are referred to as Tutsi purges.
Those who left became refugees, primarily in countries like Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda,
and Zaire which is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In Rwanda, the government was openly hostile towards any Tutsis who remained, slowing down
only a bit in the 1970s.
Rwanda also exploded in population as it modernised; becoming one of Africa’s most densely populated
countries by the late 80s.
In an agricultural society, many began to have anxiety over the competition for land.
In 1990, this tension exploded into a civil war between the Hutu led government, and a
militia consisting mainly of Tutsi refugees.
The war lasted until 1993 when international pressure put it to an end with a sort of power-sharing
agreement.
Many conservative Hutus hated this agreement, seeing it as a concession to the enemy.
A Hutu power movement began to take hold, and it portrayed Tutsis as alien non-Christians
who wanted to enslave the Hutus and rule with a Tutsi king.
With all this tension, a small spark could set off mass violence.
That came on April 6 of 1994, when a plane carrying the presidents of both Rwanda and
Burundi was shot down, killing everyone and ending the peace process.
The killings began the next day.
I think though if I told the story just like this, you would think this was just some spontaneous
breakout of violence; another example of the horrors of human nature.
I want to point out this genocide was a plan looking for an excuse to go into action.
Many members of the political elite in Rwanda were planning this genocide.
Soldiers, police officers, and government-backed militia members murdered key Tutsi leaders,
as well as moderate Hutus who might take power after the death of the president and end the
plan prematurely.
They set up checkpoints and looked over those ID cards to identify and massacre any Tutsis
they could find.
These murderers brought in machetes, clubs, and other weapons to encourage regular people
to kill, maim, and rape their neighbours and feel free to take their property.
Over the next three months, between 500,000 and 2,000,000 people were slaughtered.
At the same time, a Tutsi-led militia called the Rwandan Patriotic Front renewed its offensive;
reigniting the civil war.
In this carnage, I think we should talk specifically about two things which made the massacre even
worse.
First, the church.
Many of the Tutsis fleeing the genocide took refuge in churches.
However, as I mentioned earlier, the Catholic churches in Rwanda leaned heavier on supporting
the Hutus, so many turned overcrowded churches filled with hundreds or thousands of fleeing
people over to their butchers.
There’s a youtube video of a journalist visiting one of these churches more than 20
years later and goes through the horrors which occurred in these places.
I will link it in the cards and description, but yeah, not something to watch as a pick
me up.
The other thing we need to talk about is the radio.
During the genocide, radio stations blasted the airwaves with messages targeting specific
Tutsis and justified the genocide.
They tried to frame it as a slave rebellion and dehumanise the Tutsis calling them cockroaches.
They roused to anger and tried to encourage the Hutus to murder their Tutsi neighbours.
And what do you know, giving a platform to hate speech had a measured effect.
A study published in 2014 found these broadcasts had a significant impact on participation
in these mass killings.
The broadcasts motivated about 51,000 perpetrators, in total representing approximately 10% of
the overall violence.
It not only influenced those with radio reception but spread it to their neighbouring villages.
This spillover shows evidence it caused more destruction than those directly inspired by
the radio broadcasts.
Exposure and social interactions brought about by mass media can have a considerable role
in participation in violence.
Something to remember when someone complains universities don’t platform Nazis.
What also comes out as a glaring tragedy of the Rwandan genocide is the international
community by and large did nothing.
The United Nations Security Council in 1994 pulled peacekeepers out of Rwanda the month
the killing began.
Eventually, the UN voted to send in 5,000 peacekeeper troops, but by the time they got
there, the genocide was over.
In 2014, a Canadian Lt. General Romeo Dellaire who headed the UN peacekeeping operation in
Rwanda, claimed the genocide could have been prevented if the UN hadn’t pulled out of
the region.
The French attempted intervention in June, which likely saved a lot of Tutsi lives, but
recent reports show they also helped some of the genocide’s plotters to escape as
the Rwandan government in power was a French ally.
The genocide officially ended when the RPF took over Rwanda in July; 3 months after the
beginning of the killing.
The use of rape as a weapon of war caused a spike in HIV infections.
Many homes were now run by orphaned children, or by widows.
The genocide also led to a massive depopulation of Rwanda.
It caused a massive economic downturn which Rwanda has spent decades trying to bring itself
back from.
The new Tutsi led government prompted many Hutus to leave the country.
They were the bulk of an estimated 2 million people who fled Rwanda after the genocide.
This new government, claiming a need to stop further genocides also invaded Zaire in 1996,
and 1998, known as the first and second Congo Wars.
To this day a proxy war between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo continues
to smoulder.
Today, Tutsis still live in Rwanda, often close to those who perpetrated the killing
or their families.
There have been some remarkable breakthroughs in reconciliation, but there’s still a lot
of mistrust and anxiety.
How do these groups of people come to terms with what happened and constructively face
this atrocity?
There’ve been some attempts to bring in some form of justice for this crime against
humanity.
In October of 1994, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was established as an
extension for a similar body for former Yugoslavia.
Some high ranking people were tried for their roles in the Rwandan Genocide, but in the
chaos, many of them have escaped justice.
The trials themselves lasted more than 15 years.
More recently, in 2008 three Rwandan defence officials were convicted of organising the
genocide.
But how do we find an answer at the level of streets?
How does one move forward from this?
Rwanda has tried to go through a process of apologies, atonement, and trying to look towards
a brighter future.
Rwanda today is a different place than in 1994, but deep scars still remain.
What can we take away from this horror as a lesson to make sure something like this
never occurs again?
Today, the fires of rampant hate speech, dehumanisation, and us vs them thinking are rekindling around
the world.
Maybe if we looked just a little closer at what this leads to, we wouldn’t be so eager
to move down this path once again.
I want to let you know that the meetup I did with Thoughtslime and Mexie back in May went
so well, we’re going to do it again!
The meetup is going to happen on September 8th at 7PM at the bar Disgraceland on Bloor
Street in Toronto.
I look forward to seeing a lot of you out there!
If this is your first time here, I make all sorts of videos about the past, and if you
subscribe now, you’ll get more history every week.
There’s a big backlog to check out too.
I want to thank 12tone for the Step Back theme song, as well as a special thanks for all
the fantastic patrons who made this video possible.
I especially want to thank Don and Kerry Johnson, Kolbeinn Mani, Garrick Kwan, Michael Kirschner,
Scott Smith, and James McNeice.
Come back next time for more Step Back.