Genocide In Rwanda

Genocide is the killing of a group of people for power, race, land, political or religious reasons. It is the extermination of large groups of people. Genocide includes the murder of men, women and children. In 1944 a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin defined this senseless killing of people, genocide. Lempkin along with the United Nations helped to establish that genocide was an international crime. The United Nations (UN), The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights established that Genocide is defined as follows: (a) Killing members of a group. (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions that are meant to bring about it's physical
There were three ethnic groups in Rwanda in 1944. The Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. Hutu extremists blamed the Tutsi for the poor social economic position that the country was in. There was much political pressure for economic improvement. The Rwanda Patriot Front (known as the RPF), a Tutsi rebel group, fought for changes and met with opposition from the Hutu. Habyarimana was the president and used propaganda and political power to cause fighting between the Hutu and the Tutsi factions. He approved the mistreatment of the Tutsi and encouraged rape and murder of the people. The Hutu feared that the Tutsi minority my again gain control and the Hutu felt that this previous control was oppressive. On April 6th 1994 a plane carrying President Habyarimana was shot down. Violence broke out. Hutu extremists planned and plotted to kill all Tutsi civilians. In a strategic move, all leaders that might have helped the Tutsi were killed first . Tutsi peoples were killed in their homes and while trying to escape. Entire families were killed at road blocks and women were raped and tortured. Estimates are that 200,000 Hutu extremists were involved in
A group of government funded militia called the Janjaweed, (the translation is devils on horseback) were provided weapons and financial support by the Sudanese government. They burned whole villages, poisoned water supplies, stole food and resources, murdered , raped and tortured the people of Darfur. They kept many humanitarians from providing much needed water and food from Darfur and in fact stole these supplies for their soldiers or left them to rot in their encampments. International pressure resulted in Darfur becoming an independent country but still today citizens are bombed with air strikes from the Khartoum government. Villages are still burned and citizens are imprisoned and or killed. No independent media sources are allowed to report any news from this area. According to the world report, “Authorities continue to apply Shari’a (Islamic) law sanctions that violate international prohibitions on cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment. The penalties are applied disproportionately to women and girls, typically for “crimes” that include private beliefs and decisions about marriage, sexuality, or dress code”. Only due to extreme international pressure a young woman was released this May that had been sentenced to death as she had married a non-Muslim husband. She had also been sentenced to