Introduction
The paper aims to tackle the constituents of Genocide. It also aims to tackle the differences and similarities of the Holocaust and the Rwanda genocide. Although at the core, both the Rwandan Genocide and the Holocaust are originated in racist ideologies, deep hatred and discrimination; at the surface they present the world in different views. The ways society accepted and aided both circumstances as well as the socio-cultural factors that provoked these atrocities were differentiable. In order to attain the paper’s objective, this paper will first give the definition of genocide, then facts about Rwanda Genocide and holocaust. Before giving the analysis, differences and similarities of these two incidents will be discussed.
Definition of Genocide
Genocide is defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Article 2) as ‘any of the subsequent acts committed with objective to tear down, entirely or partly, a religious, racial, ethnical or national group including: relocating children of the group to a further group by force; commanding actions deliberately to stop births inside the group; intentionally imposing on the group circumstances of life intended to bring about its physical devastation entirely or partly; inflicting grave bodily or psychological damage to constituents of the group; Killing constituents of the group.
The Convention verifies that genocide, whether done in the period of peace or war, is considered as crime under international law which parties to the Convention assume to stop and to penalize according to article 1. The primary accountability to avoid and end genocide depends with the State in which this crime occurs.
Genocide frequently takes place in societies in which diverse religious, ethnic, racial or national groups develop into protected in conflicts linked to identity. Nevertheless, it is not the disparities in identity per se that produce conflict, but rather the unpleasant unfairness related with those disparities in the basis of admittance to social services, development opportunities, power and resources, and the pleasure of basic rights and freedoms. It is frequently the focused group’s responses to these inequalities, and counter-responses by the overriding group, that produce disagreement that can rocket to genocide.
However, scholars state that there are some limitations in this definition. There is an extensive application of the expression genocide to an assortment of unconnected situations. This uncertainty seems to be a consequence of the wide physical fundamentals in the Convention’s definition. The committed acts under the definition of genocide combine lethal with non-lethal doings, which permits a lot of individuals contradicted to particular procedures (connecting to cultural integration, birth control and the ruling out of a specific religion or language, etc.) to call upon the Genocide Convention.
The scholars redefined genocide by placing stress on the intentions and costs of perpetrators. Genocides are then categorized into elimination, devastation and substitution. Horowitz defined genocide as a systematic and structural annihilation of innocent people through state bureaucratic machinery. Genocidal society was placed on the far left of a social spectrum followed by oppressive society. The center of the spectrum consists of the liberal society while on the far right is the lenient society. With this, fanaticism is not an adequate provision for genocide, but nationwide culture is (Harff and Gurr, 2005).
Moreover, genocide was also described as the calculated murder of a section or the entire group defined exterior of the universe of responsibility of the perpetrator by a crowd, staff, elite or government representing the perpetrator in reply to a chance supposed to be caused by or obstructed by the victim. Genocide consists of social crisis, dehumanization and physical destruction.
Between 1938 and 1945, six million European Jews were killed by Nazi Germany as a component of Hitler’s expedition to institute a great German empire of untainted race. In 1994, an estimated population of eight-hundred-thousand Tutsis and some Hutus were cut to death with machetes in merely three months in Rwanda. Despite the fact that these atrocities took place at dissimilar places and times, and under diverse socio-political situations, they have a similar feature: the indiscriminate and methodical obliteration of the constituents of a group, only because they belonged to that group. As a result, to utilize the presented, officially recognized UN definition of genocide, it must be redefined as: Any of the subsequent acts committed with the objective to obliterate, entirely or partly, a group, as such: commanding procedures intended to avoid births with the group; inflicting grave bodily or psychological damage to members of the group; and/or Killing constituents of the group (Harff and Gurr, 2005).
Facts of Rwanda Genocide
The Rwanda genocide happened in 1994 which lasted for 100 days. It started on 6 April 1994 when the Presidents of Burundi and Rwanda died in a place crash caused by a rocket assault. This occurrence started several weeks of forceful and methodical massacres.
Before the killing of the president of Rwanda, Juvénal Habyarimana, he had decided to obey with the Arusha Accords and place a conclusion to the catastrophe and civil war. The civil war started when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)’s armed wing attacked from Uganda in 1990. The RPF was a group composed of the Tutsi refugee in Uganda with which the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (MRND) had been required to cooperation. Upon the president’s return from negotiations in the Tanzanian capital, his plane was attacked killing the president and several top officials.
After the death was announced, a group of senior military officials fast held power. Affiliates of the presidential guard began killing Tutsi civilians in a sector of Kigali close to the airport. After the plane crash, roadblocks were initiated by Hutu militiamen and were frequently supporters by gendarmerie or paramilitary police or military workforce were set up to recognize Tutsis. Organised massacres of Tutsi and moderate Hutu started, led by the army and the Impuzamugambi and Interahamwe youth militia. Men started calling for ‘Hutu power,’ waving machetes and firing it everywhere (Haperen et al., 2012).
The Rwanda genocide was one of the most dreadful cases of mass murder in the world since World War II. The Hutu composed 85% of the population and they turned on the Tutsi which composed only around 12% of the population. Loads of corpses lay on the roadsides. As many as 1 million people were estimated to have suffered. The acts stunned the global community and were obviously acts of genocide. Around 150,000 to 250,000 women were also raped. A total of 800,000 people were killed.
The underlying cause of Rwanda genocide is the struggle for state power, population growth, civil war and an economic crisis. Moreover, Magnarella (2002) concluded that Rwandan genocide was caused by the elevating imbalance in food, people and land that led to periodic famine, hunger, malnutrition, and violent competition for land in order to farm.
The leaders of Rwanda decided to respond to these circumstances by removing the Tutsi segment of the population in addition to their Hutu political opponents. They engaged the weapons of indoctrination to prove to the Hutu masses that this approach was right. Nevertheless, they are unsuccessful in employing the types of economic and demographic policies that would have tackled these issues in a nonviolent and more valuable means. These strategies would have incorporated requests for considerable foreign food assistance, economic diversification into non-agrarian sectors, birth control, genuine negotiation with the RPF, and efforts at a regional resolution to the refugee dilemma (Magnarella, 2002).
The ultimate causes of the Rwandan genocide were the nation’s economic dilemma, caused in great fraction by the world economy and Rwanda’s rising imbalance in people, farm and land. The neighboring causes were the political instruction that demonized the Tutsi and persuaded a lot of Hutu that Tutsi abolition was the nation’s economic and political solution (Magnarella, 2002).
Facts of Holocaust
The Holocaust is the genocide of European Jews happened between 1941 and 1945. Around five to six million Jews were methodically murdered by the Nazi regime, its surrogates and allies in the Nazi-occupied regions.
Germany decided to invade Russia. This is called Operation Barbarossa and it violates the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (the Treat of Non-Aggression between the Reich and Soviet Union). This violation caused a remarkable change in the course of World War II but a seismic move in strategy towards Europe’s Jews.
Between the outburst of the Second World War in 1939 and the beginning of complete extermination in mid-1941, the Nazis were occupied by combining and imprisoning the Jews under their power. The core policy was called ghettoization or confinement of Jews in congested areas of major cities. Hundreds of thousands of Jews died in the ghettos and are also considered as victims of the Holocaust.
On June 22, 1941, around 1.8 million Jews were murdered, generally by straight on rifle fire which is also called the Holocaust by bullets. The direct genocidal agents integrated the so-called Einsatzgruppen or the four death-squad battalions consist of 3,000 men who followed the normal German army.
The regular German army the Wehrmacht has done the mass murder of 3.3 million Soviets seized as prisoners-of-war. The Wehrmacht was the core perpetrator of the Jewish Holocaust.
The intensive slaughter, however, could not get rid of European Jewry in a quickly. Moreover, the murder by gunfire took a psychological toll to the perpetrators. To decrease this stress on the killers, and to augment efficiency of killing, the developed “death camp” with its gas chambers was employed. Through this method, around one million Jews died at Auschwitz. Around two million more Jews died by starvation, shootings, beatings and gas at the other “death camps” in Poland.
Differences
A crucial difference between Holocaust and Rwanda genocide is the type of genocide they are under. Holocaust can be considered as ideological genocide while the Rwandan genocide can be a retributive one.
The Nazi racial anti-semitic philosophy was the fundamental factor in the expansion toward the Holocaust. Moreover, one major difference between the Holocaust and Rwanda genocide is that realistic deliberations were vital Rwanda genocides, conceptual ideological motivations less so.
Another difference is the perception and method of killing. Hutus were not killing Tutsis because of racial philosophy but because they felt and thought that the Tutis oppressed them. In addition, the method of the mass killings that were done during the Holocaust was less humane and more infuriating compared to Rwanda genocide. In Rwanda Genocide, Hutus did not construct concentration camps to murder Tutsis. The killing was done by hand, frequently using clubs and machetes (Fein, 1999).
On the outcome of the Rwandan genocide, dissimilar from the Nazis, no person attempted to keep the Rwanda genocide a secret. Media representatives were there to report what they saw throughout the period as well as after the genocide. There could have been actions to stop the mass murdering in Rwanda; however, the United Nations and the United States and other nations did not exert enough effort to stop the killings.
The Rwandan genocide, according to Functionalist, was not planned because perpetrators did not strategized genocide rules until quite a few months before the genocide. The Arusha Peace accord was a reason in doing the genocide because the possible loss of power sensed by the Hutu conquered government subsequent to the signing of the agreement.
The intentionalists argue that the mass murder of the Tutusi was premeditated well previous to the 1994 genocide. In contrast with Nazi Holocaust, the Rwandan perpetrators were uncomplicated to recognize, because they did not attempt to conceal their objectives. The political position played by the president at that time, Habyarimana, was obvious and his redefinition of national distinctiveness along the ethnic and racial positions on top of gathering his associate Hutu ethnic group against minority Tutsi became the preface for afterward completion of 1994 genocide.
For the Holocaust, there are dissimilar interpretations of recognizing the Holocaust perpetrators. The Intentionalist has different point of view from the functionalist. Intentionalist deemed the Nazi elites as perpetrators. They supposed that it was Hitler’s purpose and goal to eliminate the Jews as early as 1919. Thus, it was a command from the uppermost ‘evil elite’. Other explanation states that annihilation plan by Hitler did not exist. However, the plan of extermination of the Jews steadily formed institutionally and in performance because of individual movements from as early as 1942 and grew determinative nature subsequent to the building of the concentration camps in Poland.
The motive of perpetrator in Rwandan genocide can be observed as ‘retributive’, because the Hutu thought that the negotiation in Tanzanian town of Arusha might terrorize their interest. Another factor that made this genocide retributive is that the historic victimization of Hutus by the colonial leaders as well as the monarchy of Tutsi in the past contributed in the Hutu’s conversion from being victims to perpetrators. Moreover, the economic and political crises the country was experiencing in early 1990 and the structural change made by IMF further worsened the state of the nation. Unlike, the Holocaust, Rwandan genocide was engineered by the government and its leaders; it was assisted by the local leaders and accomplished by the public. It was extremely premeditated in its accomplishments and it was retributive in this logic (Nash, 2007).
Similarities
Both Rwandan and Holocaust genocides are not easily comparable with each other since both are unique in its own way. Nevertheless, they do have similar features; Both Holocaust and Rwanda genocide has propaganda that played a key factor for the preparation and accomplishment of the genocide. Also, in both cases, the global community has failed to defend the Jews and Tutus, regardless of the obvious signs of imminent genocide.
Adolf Hitler began propaganda against the Jews residing in Germany. He blamed the Jews for the nation’s economic troubles, without definite confirmation. The Jews did not show aggression, they did not once rule Germany or exercise force over the nation. The Jews did not give a definite danger to German people (Fein, 1999). In Rwanda Genocide, the Hutus sturdily believed that they had to battle domination and intimidation from the Tutsis.
The similarities that can be found between the two are the method in which the propaganda was done and alleged. Both the Nazis and the Hutus 'demonized' their opponents by using media broadcasts. This method fired hatred and gave the perpetrators more motivation to kill.
Another major similarity between the two genocides is that the people who contradicted the Hutus or Nazis or aided Tutis or Jews escape, were killed when caught. But, numerous Hutu were situated in painful condition where they had to murder their Tutsi comrades so as to not be accused of treason. This circumstance can be found in both Holocaust and Rwanda genocide and any other occasions of genocide.
Both cases’ origin can be connected to the combination of economic and political crises, war and revolution prior to the genocide. But most significantly, their main similarities are the degree of military and ideological preparation previous to genocide, and in the methodical employment of conspiracy theories and mythology to rationalize concealed plans for massacre (Lemarchand, 2009).
Analysis
Differences as well as similarities can be obtained between these two genocides – Rwanda genocide and the Holocaust. The Rwandan genocide did not act after a philosophy but rather because they fear and hated their opponents. The Holocaust aimed for a brutal ideology, with the purpose to efficiently exterminate as many Jews as achievable.
So as to accelerate and encourage augmented hatred, perpetrators of both genocides used media to guarantee that their objectives were obtained. Nevertheless, the method of killing was dissimilar. Nazis use special camps to torture Jews, while Hutus use physical force to slaughter the Tutsis. Moreover, the Nazis tried to their killings a secret, while the Hutus did not care if the other nations will know.
Both the Rwandan Genocide and the Holocaust were brutal crimes against humanity. Rwanda genocide took over eight hundred thousand lives while the holocaust took over six million lives. Even though there is an apparent balance between those figures, the Rwandan genocide ought not to be disregarded as a 'minor' genocide. It is genocide nevertheless, which is a crime against humanity and, as a result, must be considered as much as any other genocide.
We can say that Holocaust and Rwanda genocide aggravated diverse responses in terms of brutality. However, the number of people who died must not matter; we must understand the reason behind these people was slaughtered. Despite the fact that the Holocaust happened fifty years before than Rwanda genocide, it appears that humanity did not learn from its past mistakes.
In conclusion, in order to state the similarities and differences of Rwanda genocide and Holocaust, understanding and analyzing the fundamental causes that led people to commit such heinous crimes under the observant of the global community must first be accomplished. Factors such as social and ethnic and economic crises must be considered to contribute to both Rwanda and Holocaust.
References
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Harff, B., & Gurr, T. R. (2005). Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945. International Studies Quarterl , 359-371.
Lemarchand, R. (2009). The dynamics of violence in Central Africa: hate crimes. . Philodelphia: The dynamics of violence in Central Africa.
Magnarella, P. J. (2002). Explaining Rwanda’s 1994 . enocide Human ri g h t s & human we l f a r e , 2:1 25-34.
Nash, K. (2007). A comparative anaysis of justice in post- genicide Rwanda. africanajournal.org , 1 (1), 65.
