In April 1994, Shortly After Concluding Peace Negotiations With The Rwandan Patr

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Term Paper Title	In April 1994, Shortly After Concluding Peace Negotiations With The Rwandan Patr
# of Words	1221
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	4.88

In April 1994, shortly after concluding peace negotiations with the Rwandan Patriotic Front that called for UN peacekeeping forces to be stationed in Rwanda, President Habyarimana was killed in a mysterious  plane crash near Kigali. Habyarimana's death prompted a wave of ethnic violence. A militia of extremists that belonged to the ethnic group known as the Hutus attempted to rid the world of the Tutsis, the Hutus rival ethnic group. This was to become one of the fastest and most brutal genocides of all time. The reason this genocide happened was a result of many events and decisions that date back to the end of WWI.
     For centuries before the white man came, the mild climate and fertile valley of Rwanda provided the ground for a prosperous and vibrant culture.  German colonists, who arrived in the 1890's described Rwanda as centrally governed and efficiently run.  Before the end of World War I, there were many clans living throughout Rwanda.  Today we think of them as different ethnic groups, but actually they were different clans living in different regions of the country, not different ethnic groups.  They lived there peacefully among each other.
     After World War I, Rwanda was put under Belgian trusteeship by the League of Nations.  In order to strengthen their control the Belgians made up a rigid system of classification and divided the ethnically-mixed clan structure into three distinct groups  — the Twa, the Hutus and the Tutsis.  Racist ideas that the Belgians had brought with them made them think that the Tutsis were a superior group.  They thought this because the Tutsis seemed more "white" than the other groups to the Belgians because of their physical appearance and the way they acted.
     An early Belgian documentary on Rwanda described the Tutsis as being "the dominant race, very intelligent and polite, a very diplomatic people."  The same documentary described the Hutus as "farmers with heavy and passive spirits."
     Because the Belgians thought the Tutsis were natural rulers, the Belgians placed them in positions of power and the Hutus had to fill the lower, less important positions in society.  The Catholic Church also played a role in shaping the new social order.  The white priests provided the Tutsis with higher education, which prepared them to govern the colony for the Belgians and to convert other Rwandans to Christianity.
     The Hutus, who made up 90 percent of Rwanda's population, were denied many of the rights that the Tutsis were give...

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