During the Rwandan debate in Mr. Fielder’s 6th hour class I had the chance of defending
France. Few people know the details about the Rwandan genocide and at first some my think France was just an innocent by stander of situation. In the past week I have studied and learned how attached France was to Rwanda and also how big of role they played in the genocide.Frances connection to Rwanda dates back to 1975 (way before the genocide even started) when France signed a military agreement with the president Juvenal Hayarimana. In just a few years President Hayarimana developed a personal bond with France. He made many trips to France to see Francois Mitterrand, a Socialist leader of France. Due to the military agreement France started to help teach and strengthen the Rwandan army. They claimed they were just their in order to support and stabilize Rwanda, others accuse them of using this engagement with Rwanda as a way of keeping there name and language
a world power.When President Hayarimana’s plane was shot down, by the way the plane was bought by France and given to Hayarimana as a gift, France took action. They immediately sent in private investigators to find out who shot down the plane. At this time though the killings had started and the Hutus were killing all Tutsis in their sight. Even some Rwanda soldier’s were blamed in the killing of innocent Tutsis. When France found out about the mass killings they stopped all support to the Rwandan Armed Forces.
Many would think they would switched sides and defended the innocent Tutsis, but that was not the case. They helped for only a couple weeks but after witnessing the death of 10 UN soldier and once they got all there men and French natives out they left. They thought that then 10 lives was worth the 800,000 Tutsis killed. This is only one nation intertwined in the Rwandan genocide there are many other nations and political parties that refused to help.
The worse part about the genocide is that it went unnoticed. America refused to even recognize is horrible occurrence and the UN didn’t call it a genocide because if they did they would have to encounter into the war. 800,000 innocent people died and it went unnoticed even to this day you can ask your parents or grand parents about it and they wont know what your talking about. In this past month searching and learning about the Rwandan genocide has really opened my eyes.
P.S.-If anyone would like to learn more about the genocide I would highly recommend the movie Hotel Rwanda.
