Introduction to Rwanda
Land of thousand hills.

The Republic of Rwanda is a small landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of east-Africa central .It has a population of approximately 10.1 million people amd supports the densest population in continental Africa, with most of the population engaged in subsistence agricultures. It is a verdant country of fertile and hilly terrain.
History
Tutsis were a minority of the population, mostly herders, and the majority Hutus were mostly croppers. Tutsi, a tall cattle-rearing people probably from the upper reaches of the Nile, infiltrate the area and win dominance over the Hutu, already in residence and living by agriculture.
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A hutu boy & A tutsi boy

Why the Conflict
Begining of conflict...
When the kings, known as Mwamis, began to centralize their administrations, they distributed land among individuals rather than agreeing for it to be held by the hereditary chieftains, who were mainly Hutu. This show a social mobilitybetween the Tutsis and Hutus, on the basis of hierachial status. This system of patronage, i.e. work for access to land, left Hutus in a serf-like status, with Tutsis as their feudal masters.These meant there was a continuation of preferential treatment for Tutsis over Hutus, on the basis of ethic, rather than of economic, alignment.
Divided in to diffrent class
Tutsi-Hutu divide is by class and occupation. The Tutsi are the upper class and are mostly herdsmen. The Hutu are the lower class and for the most part live by farming. During the british colony,the Hutu are subject to the forced labour by the Europeans and,the Tutsi whosupervisethem at their tasks.

Rwanda Genocide
The bloodiest period of the Rwanda Civil War
Tutsi rebels and Hutu regime were able to agree to a cease-fire, with the preliminary implementation of the Arusha Accords, in 1993. The genocide was primarily the action of two statutory factions, the MRND (political wing of the Interahamwe) and the CDR (political wing of the Impuzamugambi ), against dissenters to their culture of Hutu power.
An attempt to exterminate Tutsi minority of Rwanda,and the moderates of Hutus majority.
Tutsi men, women, children and babies were killed in thousands in schools. They were killed in churches. The victims, in their last moments alive, were also faced by another appalling fact: their cold-blooded killers were people they knew neighbours, friends, sometimes even relatives. Even aid agencies were helpless; having let into compound or hospital people injured or in flight, they were forced to leave them there.
Physically and Psychologoically affected.
Within a period of three months in 1994, an estimated five to eight hundred thousand people were killed as a result of civil war and genocide in Rwanda. Large numbers were physically and psychologically afflicted for life through maiming, raping, and other trauma; over two million fled to neighboring countries and maybe half as many have been internally displaced.
No Bravery - Rwanda Genocide


News Articles
ICTR refuses third suspect's bid to be tried in Rwanda
Fri Jun 20, 1:21 PM ET
ARUSHA, Tanzania (AFP) - The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has rejected a request to return another genocide suspect to Rwanda on the grounds that he would not receive a fair trial. Ildephonse Hategekimana, a former captain, is accused of genocide and crimes against humanity including crimes committed by his subordinates. Hategekimana served as the commander of a small military camp during the 1994 genocide. The tribunal was not satisfied that Rwanda could ensure Hategekimana would be able to get his defence witnesses to testify under the same conditions as those testifying against him, said the 25-page written judgment.
The judges also expressed concern about the sentence the defendant might face: "Life imprisonment in isolation, in violation of his right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment." The judges nevertheless said they appreciated "the significant progress" Rwanda had made in improving its judicial system. Earlier this month, the tribunal also refused to return former businessman Gaspard Kanyarukiga, accused of genocide and crimes against humanity, to Rwanda, arguing it was not satisfied he would receive a fair trial. And a week before that ruling, they reached a similar decision in the case of another suspect, businessman Yussuf Munyakazi. The public prosecutor is to appeal in both cases. The ICTR, set to wrap up its mandate by the end of 2008, is in theory supposed to transfer certain suspects to stand trial in their national jurisdictions. On June 4, ICTR President Dennis Byron and ICTR Prosecutor Hassan Bubacar Jallow asked the UN Security Council to extend the court's mandate by one year. Eight suspects are still waiting to stand trial, while another is detained in Germany and 13 are on the run. The Court has so far sentenced 30 people and acquitted five. According to UN figures, approximately 800,000 people, mainly ethnic Tutsis but also moderate Hutus, were killed in the Rwandan genocide between April and July of 1994.ARUSHA, Tanzania (AFP) - The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has rejected a request to return another genocide suspect to Rwanda on the grounds that he would not receive a fair trial. Ildephonse Hategekimana, a former captain, is accused of genocide and crimes against humanity including crimes committed by his subordinates. Hategekimana served as the commander of a small military camp during the 1994 genocide. The tribunal was not satisfied that Rwanda could ensure Hategekimana would be able to get his defence witnesses to testify under the same conditions as those testifying against him, said the 25-page written judgment. The judges also expressed concern about the sentence the defendant might face: "Life imprisonment in isolation, in violation of his right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment." The judges nevertheless said they appreciated "the significant progress" Rwanda had made in improving its judicial system. Earlier this month, the tribunal also refused to return former businessman Gaspard Kanyarukiga, accused of genocide and crimes against humanity, to Rwanda, arguing it was not satisfied he would receive a fair trial. And a week before that ruling, they reached a similar decision in the case of another suspect, businessman Yussuf Munyakazi. The public prosecutor is to appeal in both cases. The ICTR, set to wrap up its mandate by the end of 2008, is in theory supposed to transfer certain suspects to stand trial in their national jurisdictions. On June 4, ICTR President Dennis Byron and ICTR Prosecutor Hassan Bubacar Jallow asked the UN Security Council to extend the court's mandate by one year. Eight suspects are still waiting to stand trial, while another is detained in Germany and 13 are on the run. The Court has so far sentenced 30 people and acquitted five. According to UN figures, approximately 800,000 people, mainly ethnic Tutsis but also moderate Hutus, were killed in the Rwandan genocide between April and July of 1994.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080620/wl_africa_afp/rwandaictrgenocidecourt_080620172155

Issues and Problems
It exploded in 1994 with the civil war in Rwanda in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. Source:http://www.cnn.com/EVENTS/1996/year.in.review/topten/hutu/history.html
Is it right for the Hutus to kill so many Tutsi in order to moderates their Hutus majority?
I think that violence could not solve the problem, instead, the killings and fightings would cause more misunderstanding between the two race and things would turn out worst than it is before.
During the british colony,the Hutu are subject to the forced labour by the Europeans and,the Tutsi whosupervisethem at their tasks.
Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide
If during the british colony,Hutus have been treated fairer, could the Civil War be prevented?
I do not think that it could be prevented because the Hutus has been continuously being unfairly treated and living in provety even after the british have left Rwanda.Thus,it has nothing to do with the British but with their own goverment policies.

Points of view
Tutsi-Hutu divide is by class and occupation. The Tutsi are the upper class and are mostly herdsmen. The Hutu are the lower class and for the most part live by farming.
sources adapt from:http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ad24
This source show that Tutsi and Hutus are divided into different class, the Tutis is richer as herdsmen and the Hutus are poorer as farmer.This shows an equal ditributions of jobs and a big gap between the rich and the poor. It is not something unexpected that the Hutus are unhappy living in provety while the Tutsi lead a luxury lives even though they live in the same country.
"No attempt to come to grips with the contemporary dimensions of ethnicity can overlook the potential for conflict inherent in the specific form of historically grounded relations between individuals."
source adapt from:http://trinstitute.org/ojpcr/2_3utter.htm
We must not take enthic r=tension lightly. A little mistake may results into tragety like what happened in Rwanda.This sources tries to tell us that everyone has overlooked the matter and nobody has come to help and tried to slove the tension between Hutus and Tutis, ths result in the civil conflict to happen.

Inferences
From the two pictures below, I can infer that people are still suffering even when the civil war in Rwanda is over.People are still not living in the peace and stability and are suffering from hunger, exterm provety and lack of health care. I can also infer that the country have not recover it's economic amd were finacially constrained due to the civil war. This can be seen in the first picture below, the picture on the exterm right showing a little boy crying and not knowing what to do in a famine in rwanda and the left shows two skinny boys with only a bowl of food.

Implications and Consequences

• Loss of life and general decline in health
• Loss in forgien investment and economic declined
• Produces ‘conflict traps’, post conflict societies have a high risk of plunging into a further conflict.
• Widespread of hard drug production, AIDS and international terrorism.
• The dependence of the Congo government under the second President Kabila, on foreign forces to keep it in power

News Articles: Couples' counselling in Africa could cut HIV spread

Reuters - Friday, June 27

CHICAGO - Counselling heterosexual couples in Zambia and Rwanda about HIV could avert up to 60 percent of infections, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.Most transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS in these countries is heterosexual, and the researchers said it is mainly among married couples or people who live together.
"To reduce HIV transmission, couples need to know their joint and have access to information which enables them to reduce the risk of infection both within and outside the union," Dr. Kristin Dunkle of Emory University in Atlanta and colleagues wrote in the journal Lancet.
"This is especially important for women, who might not have the cultural freedom to negotiate condom use and sexual activity within a union," they added.
Using a mathematical model based on existing data from voluntary HIV Counselling and testing in urban Zambia and Rwanda, Dunkle and colleagues showed that 55 to 93 percent of new HIV infections among heterosexuals occur within couples who are married or living together.
When they figured in the higher rates of condom use among heterosexual partners not living together, the estimate of new infections among married couples and those living together rose to 60 to 94 percent.
Next, they figured out how this transmission rate might change if the couples got HIV Counselling, using the results from a program in Zambia that reduced transmission among couples living together from 20 percent to 7 percent.
If applied more broadly, they believe a similar program could cut transmission rates by 36 to 60 percent.
The researchers said most HIV prevention efforts in Africa are focused on abstinence and nonmarital sex, but their findings suggest investing in programs that focus on couples who are married or living together might have a significant impact.
Sixty-eight percent of all people infected with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa, where 76 percent of all AIDS-related deaths occurred in 2007. AIDS infects 33 million people globally and has killed 25 million since the epidemic began in the 1980s.http://sg.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080627/twl-oukwd-uk-aids-counseling-bd5ae06.html

Purpose and Goal
Purpose of this Project
The purpose of this project is to allow myslef and the others to understand about the Conflict in Rwanda and the damgae that have brought by the Civil War.This project is also make to convince people that Civil War is not something that we can take it easily and we should learn to maintain the harmony we have here, in singapore.
Goal of this Project
Through this blog,I hoped that people would understand how hard peace came about and do not take it lightly from the stories of people in rwanda.A wrong word said, or a wrong thing done may made things turn out very ugly.I hoped that people could learn to cherish what we have now and countiue to maintain this harmony that we are experiencing.