In a mere 100 days, an estimated one million people were brutally murdered in a campaign of mass slaughter that still horrifies a generation later. In the spring of 1994, Rwanda was scarred by genocide that grew out of a civil war and decades of ethno-political rancor, following independence from Belgian colonialism, between the majority Hutu and minority Tutsi groups.
After unknown assailants shot down the plane of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, Hutu extremists armed with machetes began murdering Tutsi and moderate Hutus. Compounding the tragedy was the failure of the international community to aggressively intervene to stem the bloodshed despite warnings of impending violence. A United Nations peace-keeping force had been reduced from 2,165 soldiers to about 400.
In this episode of History As It Happens, genocide scholar and Rwanda specialist Omar McDoom of the London School of Economic and Political Science discusses the enduring lessons of the 1994 genocide, and whether it is possible to apply them to the violence in Israel and Gaza since Oct. 7 — violence that has provoked allegations of genocide on both sides of the Israel-Hamas divide.
“I often think the debate over whether what one side [committed genocide] distracts us from the reality that large numbers of people are dying from intended violence. Whether you want to characterize that as genocide or war crimes or crimes against humanity, I would leave that to the lawyers. But from the perspective of policy-makers, we need to confront the reality that large numbers of civilians, including large numbers of women and children, are being killed,” said Mr. McDoom, the author of “The Path to Genocide in Rwanda: Security, Opportunity, and Authority in an Ethnocratic State.”
History As It Happens is available at washingtontimes.com or wherever you find your podcasts.
SEE ALSO: History As It Happens: The question of genocide
