Rwanda is a tough place to live. It has been marred with horrible living conditions, political corruption, and human rights abuse. What most people think of when Rwanda is brought up is the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, but the level of abuse goes much further than that.
Earlier this week Human Right Watch published an article calling out Rwanda for imprisoning and torturing poor and homeless people in major cities. This isn’t the first time Rwanda has been called out on their crap, and it probably will not be the last time either.
Long History Of Human Rights Abuse
The nation of Rwanda hasn’t exactly had a good track record with human rights. An important thing to note before we go into detail is that there are two main tribes in Rwanda. The main two are Hutu, which make up nearly 80 percent of Rwanda, and the Tutsi, which make up roughly 15 percent.
The country’s first real incident was in 1959, when the Hutu raised an army that used mass killing and torture of Tutsi’s to take control of the government.
This incident was largely unnoticed by Western countries, even though this was the first action that eventually led to genocide. After this sporadic events of killings and imprisonment of Tutsi’s happened throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s. By 1990 most people knew that something was going to blow up, and soon. This finally happened in 1993 when President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down and he perished in the crash.
Not a whole lot is known about the crash, but it was the perfect event to use Tutsi’s as a scapegoat.
What followed mere hours after the crash was blockades, killings, and rape. Within the next few years what happened is now called the Rwanda Genocide. No Tutsi was spared, men, women, and children alike were slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands. Many experts calculate that there could possibly have been 1 million people murdered during the genocide.
Imprisoning The Poor
On July 24th of this year Human Rights Watch posted an article about the wrongful imprisonment of locking up the poor. The article states that:
“Rwandan authorities are rounding up poor people and arbitrarily detaining them in “transit centers” across the country, Human Rights Watch said today. The conditions in these centers are harsh and inhuman, and beatings are commonplace. New research indicates that the authorities have made few changes in a center in Gikondo, in the capital, Kigali, despite an earlier Human Rights Watch report on abuses there, and that similar degrading treatment prevails in other transit centers.”
To see the full article click this text. What is quite troubling about this article is that many groups have already stated that Rwanda has been involved in these activities for years, and it just seems to be getting worse.
Remember the mis-quote that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it, said originally by George Santayana? This feels like Rwanda is on a path back to 1994 again.
Stand Up For Those Who Can’t
This type of government action is unacceptable in our world today. This is how a people die. There were obvious signs that the original genocide of 1994 was going to happen, and everyone ignored them. If we choose to ignore signs like these we are making a purposeful choice to ignore the signs of what could possibly be the start of another genocide.
We choose to not talk about the horrible mistreatment of transgender and poor people in Africa, but we instead talk about the Donald Trump porn craze. Rwanda needs to get its shit together, and maybe we need to as well.
Watch this documentary via the BBC YouTube Channel – be advised that this video is graphic, and parental supervision is advised.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPWRMDatxAM&ab_channel=ShonnaHigginbotham
Watch this video for more information about he abuses and evil happening in Rwanda, but please be advised the video is graphic, and parental supervision is advised.
Featured Image of Shonna Higginbotham Video Via YouTube.
