History of Recent Hutu and Tutsi Ethnic Hatred
German & Belgian Racial Attitudes Changed Social Order into Genocide
May 27, 2009
Western nations were at least complicit in the 100 days of ethnic cleansing that occurred in Rwanda; however, those actions would not have occurred had the West not perpetuated the discriminatory process of racial identification they created decades earlier. One hundred years of dictating to a common people the superiority of one over the other, created the very mental state necessary for the minority to believe the lie. This set the state for the racially inferior, but numerically superior people, to perform the genocide that eventually came.
Anthropological linguist, Dr. Orville Jenkins, wrote in a February 2009 paper; Tutsi, Hutu and Hima: Cultural Background in Rwanda, “The ancestors of the Tutsi and the Hutu populations gradually intermarried… It is rightly pointed out that today's general population in Rwanda…look very much the same….”
On December 18th 2008, BBC editors argued, “The two ethnic groups are actually very similar; they speak the same language, inhabit the same areas and follow the same traditions. [But] the Belgians considered the Tutsis to be superior to the Hutus.” A Western scheme was designed to identify the respective groups based upon ad hoc data. Racial profiling identity cards were issued creating the foundation for the subsequent systematic murder. Dr. Jenkins continued, “General stereotypes [were] recently exploited…by the colonial powers and successors for their own purposes and maintenance of power.”
What makes a Hutu or a Tutsi?
So if they look alike, speak the same language and follow the same traditions, what is the racially profiled, ad hoc data the Belgians used to differentiate them? When the white German colonialists arrived in German East Africa during the 19th century they brought with them their prejudices and bigotry. In a manner later followed by Adolph Hitler, they favored the minority tribe because of perceived lighter skin, taller structure and thinner noses.
Dr. Jenkins wrote, “Some Tutsis have more Bantu [Hutu] features than the…[Hutu majority but,] the Tutsis have commonly been referred to as the tall ones…. And that the tribal division referred to in recent history was a class distinction exploited by the Germans and treated only by the colonialists as a difference in ethnicity.”
After the First World War, the victorious Belgians gained that portion of German East Africa which is today’s Rwanda. The equally racist Belgians tried various methods of separation and identification but by now intermarriage between the two groups, made absolute racial classification impossible. By 1926 they devised a ridiculously simplistic method of segregating and distinguishing a similar people – cattle. Ten or more cattle made the person a Tutsi.
Why the Hatred and Genocide?
So as many Tutsis believed the lie about their superiority, so did many Hutus believe the lie about their inferiority. With the ever present demagogues, ready to exploit the dismay for personal gain, the state was set.
When the Belgians left in 1964, the Hutu majority took their place in government but blamed the Tutsis for every internal problem. Tutsis, with visions of returning to the power they enjoyed during Belgian occupation, formed rebel groups (Rwandan Patriotic Front – RPF) in neighboring countries. The US Department of State, Intelligence Assessment of April 29th 1994, Roots of the Violence in Rwanda, put it best, “The plan appears to have been to wipe out any Tutsi ally or potential ally, and thus raise the costs and limit the possibility of a Tutsi takeover….”
The plan failed, but nearly a million people died in the ethnic cleansing; with millions more raped, mutilated and orphaned.
* Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was formerly called Zaire.
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