Friday, June 8, 2007

Tommy DeVito's Personal Reflection

The Genocide in Rwanda was a serious miscarriage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. None of the Tutsi had the right to a fair trial. None had the right to food and shelter. They were considered criminal. The Hutu were seen by the Tutsi as the same, inhuman, undeserving of life. Although the Declaration says what SHOULD be done, certain things usually aren't. There simply is no way to assure that all peoples have these rights. The UN, although they threaten to inflict punishment, usually don't. Countries have the right to sovereignty and that usually outweighs individual rights. In many ways, this event can be compared to the holocaust. There is a ethnic minority, the Tutsi, and a ruling majority, the Hutu. The Tutsi were forced out of their home country and put into refugee camps. They were tortured, killed and worked. Also, the UN did nothing, as the League of Nations had done nothing, physical to stop these mass killings. By the time other countries did something, in both cases, hundreds of thousands had died. The Rwandan Genocide seriously undermines the idea of humanism. What the Interhamwe and Impuzamugambi, the Hutu militias, did was unacceptable. They associated individuals with a group. They made no distinction between pacifists and extremists. All opposing Hutu or Tutsi were non-human and therefore, their individuality did not matter. It was always in the interest of the government that these extremists did what they did, never for the people. Everyone has the right to be themselves, but the Hutu and Tutsi extremists disallowed the idea. The leadership of both parties seemed to be full of greed. They wanted their PARTY to succeed, not their people. Once again, a contradiction of humanism. The crimes committed were under the categories of "Crimes against Humanity" and "Crimes Against Peace". The Rwandan Patriotic Front, although they were the ones being persecuted, still chose invasion as their best bet to get their rights back. They incited the Genocide. Not to say that the Hutu were in the wrong, for it was their fault to begin with. Their reaction was an inappropriate one. Instead of fending off the RPF, they decided to attack defenseless civilians and suspected sympathizers. Those people had done nothing but support a cause. They had the right to do so under the Declaration of Human Rights. I feel both sorrow and pity for the victims of the Rwandan genocide. They were caught up in a political game of "I'm Better Than You". Because the victims were not strongly Hutu or because they were Tutsi, they took the fall for their government's ideals. The governments actions were completely unjustified. They seemed to have forgotten that it was two separate factions, not a total war.

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