When The World Turned Away

In 1994, Tutsi Rwandans continued to flee the country due to increased propaganda that labeled them as “the enemy” (A).  Out of desperation, President Habyarimana appealed to regional presidents and discussed the issue of refugees in their countries.  On his return to Kigali, a missile fired by an unknown culprit shot down the plane carrying himself and the president of Burundi; the resulting crash killed everyone inside the plane.  Even though the identity of the true culprit was never determined, Colonel Theoneste Gabosora unleashed a systematic, violent attack upon Rwanda; the ultimate goal was the elimination of all Tutsi left in the country, an attack known as genocide (A).  One of Gabosora’s first orders was the assassination of Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a Hutu “moderate” as well as the murder of ten Belgian UN peacekeepers (C).  Knowing that this assault would cause Belgium to with draw all of its troops, the door for genocide was left wide open.  It is estimated that the Hutu "death squads" killed, attacked, mutilated, and raped between 800,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi men, women, and children (as well as suspected Tutsi sympathizers) for the three month period for which the genocide lasted (A).  All the while, millions of people around the globe who watched televised reports waited in shock as National Governments as well as the UN did nothing.  The UN Security Council later discussed the crisis for eight hours, avoiding the term “genocide,” because by the provisions of the Genocide Convention, written in response to the Holocaust, they would have had to “prevent and punish” those responsible, which up to this point, they had not done (C).  By the time UN troops began to arrive in Rwanda after a dispute for which countries would pay, most government accepted that genocide had taken place in Rwanda.