Had a friend in college who was from Rwanda. She grew up in an orphanage after watching her parents get brutally attacked with an axe to the head in their own home. I just cannot even imagine going through that and coming out the other side... like at all. She was here in the US for college. She speaks 3 languages fluently. She's a mechanical engineer now. A lovely human who's parents would be extremely proud of her just like all of her friends are now.
By some heartrending coincidence, there’s an interview with another survivor who was estimated to have been only 8 months old when the genocidaires murdered her entire family. She still has a nasty scar on her head from the machete gash as they tried to kill her also and left her for dead. A passerby who was fleeing happened upon her, all bloodied up, and picked her up. She nearly died from inanition as the stranger who was carrying her in her own flight could not find milk to feed her. But eventually they made it across the border to neighboring Burundi. Soldiers on the Burundian side revived her, after which she and her ‘new mother’ proceeded to a refugee facility. They stayed there for the next 8 years before finally going back to Rwanda. But then she couldn’t even begin to locate any surviving relatives because at 8 months old she didn’t even know what her original name had been. Obviously couldn’t recall anything from the period before the genocide. Her adoptive mother had no information about her either as she just hurriedly picked her out of a pile of dead bodies in the rush to escape the killers on her heels.
@John Arsebuckle For Americans, anyone who knows more than one language, it's noteworthy. I only know one. I've tried to learn other languages, it's not easy for me. Most Americans are easily impressed by people who speak more than one or two languages. We aren't taught other languages. Especially at such young ages. I should also point out that most Americans my age don't know a lot about things like the Genocide in Rwanda. Her telling me about her experience was eye opening. I had heard of the Rwandan Genocide but knew nothing about it. So I also think that it is not a bad thing to share so that more people know. I have asked her if it is ok for me to share her story sometimes. She said that I could and told me that she would like for people to know her story and to know more about her home. I would be just as proud of a white friend for going through such a traumatic childhood to go on and move to a whole other country on their own to go to school to become a mechanical engineer... not a "mechanic" although there isn't a thing wrong with working on cars or machines for a living. I actually misspoke in my initial post, she is in biochemical engineering, not mechanical engineering. I can (and do) brag about one of my white friends who had a great childhood and became a mechanical engineer but it's not relevant here. He has no connection to Rwanda. I have a white friend who's a pilot. Any chance I get, I brag about his accomplishments. I've got a white friend that's a doctor and another that is a nurse in a very difficult specialty. I brag about them all the time. But again, it's not relevant here so why would I talk about them here? I've also got a friend who put herself through college while pregnant and already caring for one kid on her own. She had a difficult childhood and has worked so hard for everything she has. But again, none of that is relevant to this video that I commented on. I'm not bragging about my friend's accomplishments because she's black or because she's from an African country. I brag about her because she is a good human being, she is very smart, and I am proud of her. I'd brag on her regardless of her history because she is a sweet person and because an engineering degree program is not an easy path. I am not great at complicated math and chemistry. I definitely could not do it myself. My degree program was not as hard as hers.
@John Arsebuckle Mechanical Engineer, not mechanic. In Rwanda the Tutsis and Hutus speak the same language, so that’s one language. Am guessing the other 2 are French and English. She wasn’t being racist, however you were being stupid, but then your name says it all. Dummy.
@John Arsebuckle Wow, your humble and generously gracious. I hope to one day be as friendly and open minded as you are. I'm proud to be able to comment on the words of the great JOHN ARSEBUCKLE! 👍 GREAT JOB! There, was that enough praise for you? I'm sorry your family never said that to you.
A farmer was asked why he brutally butchered his neighbors family with a machete? He answered, "Because everyone else was doing it." This leads me to believe that anyone is capable of anything under the right set of circumstances.
A buddy of mine was a Canadian peacekeeper there. He rarely talks about it. But on the very few occasions he brought it up it is heartbreaking, horrific and utterly shocking. A true failure of humanity. The world watched. And did nothing for weeks.
They mobilised everyone of the race to perform the genocide, I doubt anyone can do anything. You send ground troops and they risk being overwhelmed and murdered, you bomb the Hutu villages and they call it crime against humanity. You can’t blame the world for inaction for something African tribal mindsets have been doing to each other for thousands of years
I'm from Saskatchewan. I served in the RCR. As you undoubtedly know, Another Tragedy was the Airborne torturing a young Somali to death. This was a Direct! Result of their CO essentially putting a bounty on the heads of any Somali civilians caught on His base! Only 3 enlisted men were punished. The End.
@@fangslaughter1198 I don’t know what the punishment was, but at least there was one. On the French side no one gets punished. To illustrate, below is a quote from a 2005 book (pp. 207-208) by an author named Pean, who was decorated by French president François Hollande for his writings on French politics: “At the end of 1992, beginning of 1993, a section of the 21st RIMa [a regiment of French Marines], based in Fréjus [France] was assigned to guard the airport [at Kigali, Rwanda, under the genocidal regime which they were assisting]. One night part of the section left on a spree with *a military truck* to go to a nightclub called Kigali Night [owned by the son of Rwanda’s president]. Upon exiting the club, the soldiers forced a Rwandan woman *into the truck.* Two of them raped her and then "worked" her genital organs *with bayonets* while the other soldiers refrained from intervening. Then *they dumped her naked on the side of the road.* The girl was taken to Kigali hospital. On the admission log, it was reportedly stated: _"Raped by French soldiers.”_ Even before word spread about the incident, two provosts [i.e. military police] took up the matter and *notified both* Lieutenant-Colonel Boré, second-in-command for the 21st RIMa, and Colonel Robardey, Deputy Defense Attaché [at the French embassy in Kigali]. At this stage the provosts were encouraged to continue their investigation. These two military police officers did indeed continue their investigations. They received the complaint from the victim who also requested *compensation* (which she obtained), and took into custody the perpetrators and their accomplices. Then, they contacted the prosecutor at the trial court in Draguignan [France]. The assistant prosecutor there told one of the provosts that the soldiers weren’t on duty when they committed the crime and therefore he would not take the case. He advised the French military police officer to take the case to a local court in Rwanda. The officer argued to the French prosecutor that *the prisons in Kigali were not good* ... Eventually, the file was indeed sent to Draguignan. But the case has been buried ... At the time of my book going to press, I have not discovered the details and mechanisms of how *the case was made to disappear.* Some [French] generals have pointed to François Léotard as the ultimate person responsible for *burying the case.* At the time he was the Mayor of Fréjus, and later became the French Minister of Defense. He reacted very strongly when I brought up the facts to him: “I was never informed of this horrible crime. I hope that the criminals will be prosecuted and I encourage you to continue your investigation. We need to know who covered up this crime. I am appalled at what you are telling me. Keep me informed." A quarter of an hour later, François Léotard called me back after coming into contact with François Lépine, who was then his chief of staff. Lépine had just told him that he had no recollection of the case either. General Philippe Mansuy, who was then chief of staff to Admiral Lanxade, himself chief of the general staff for the French armed forces, had heard about the case, but had not dealt with it. “Militarily, it did have consequences. There was an investigation and some sanctions. In terms of military ethics, it could not be allowed to pass ..." Captain Filipi, the deputy chief officer of the 21st RIMa corps, was clearly not aware of this case. After some research, he told me that the regiment kept its records for only ten years and was therefore *unable to tell* me what penalties had been imposed.” [In the aftermath of the assault, French military officers together with the Rwandan police (exclusively Hutu) found the victim (who was Tutsi) in a hospital where she lay agonizing. They told her never to talk about the incident. In return they gave her 5K Rwandan francs, the equivalent of $20. That was the *“compensation”.* They also told her to leave the city and warned her not to come back. She was taken back to her rural village where she died of her wounds.]
@@hkchan1339 you gas the regions with canabinoid 1 which was developed by the usa army in the 60-70s. It is a chemical close to thc but 1000x as strong but also still safe compared to most fake weed today. Make the people unable to move in a coordinated fashion. Make people have spontaneous feelings of connection. Screw with their emotions and maybe cause some to turn against their leaders
Saw an interview of a Rwandan genocide survivor. She witnessed a mother get decapiated while her baby was feeding on her. It was a very heavy listen and made me realise how hopeless humanity can get at times
When a leader creates an enemy and then pins your problems on them you need to start paying very close attention. Its the oldest trick in the book and yet it never fails those with nefarious intentions. It is our species' Achilles heel... :(
I am really astonished by how easy people are hooked to hating a group of people. In my home country (I am happy I do not live there anymore) it is the gypsy minority that is targeted (nowadays alongside refugees). Based on statistics, every person belonging to the group is immediately judged. No one attempts to look at the action of each individual separately. Judging a group instead of each individual separately is way easier, but it is not something that should be done by any human that consider themselves part of the developed world.
Went to Rwanda in 2004, just less than a decade after the genocide... went to Kigali and Butarre I think it was. Was very eerie feeling being there as I couldn't help but wonder what role everyone I'd come into contact with had had in that. The person driving the taxi, working at the hotels, restaurants, etc.. .people were really friendly and it was actually pretty safe compared to some of the other neighboring countries but the thought was always there given almost the entire population was involved in some way....
@@mrebbesen there is always 2 sides in a story, I encourage you to educate yourself about this topic, nobody is an angel in that conflict, there might be( the hutu and tutsi civilians who were not involved in politics). The genocide was preventable through negotiations and but they choose violence
Many of the perps are shielded against court trial by Western governments. Detailed in this article: _"Five genocide suspects who sought refuge in UK run up £5m legal aid bill"._
Sparing himself the old "I won't ask whether you enjoyed this video..." from his other channels simply because it would always apply on this channel... Good move
If they were hutus then they not lucky survivor they are murderers. I anti hutu racist after this video. I mean rape squads??? Those are indeed the inferior race
@@socialistrepublicofvietnam1500 I have an overwhelming amount of survivors guilt. Both my parents lost all of their siblings. I always wonder where my uncle, aunts and cousins would be in life. I feel a burden to over achieve to justify my existence.
@@johnboy2349 both of my parents were Tutsis, if you can’t tell by my pfp- I’m 6’3, lightskin with a narrow frame. I definitely wouldn’t have made it. My parents are the same.
I remember hearing an interview with a Hutu militia member who participated in the massacre at the church. He said something that translated to "we were possessed. When you're controlled by the devil, you're not yourself." I couldn't help but think if his reasoning allows him to stay a free man, I wonder what he'd think of I hacked everyone he loved to bite sized pieces with a machete and said sorry,.that damn devil had me. I wasn't myself. But you understand, right?
That's how people tend to rationalize mass hysteria. All genocides are basically conducted by population en-masse,everyone is ought to blame for it in some way or the other.
@@dutt_arka agreed. in countries that commit wholesale genocide, there are hardly innocents among the perpetrators. to be able to commit such violence, it must be first normalized, which requires the consent of the people or main ethnic/religious group in power
If he admitted the truth, that he was responsible for his choices and actions, he'd probably never be able to look at himself in the mirror ever again.
Many prominent Nazi members responsible for the Holocaust and the scourging of Eastern Europe claimed "they were under orders". Makes you wonder which is actually worse out of the two.
I met and worked with a woman who hid under the bodies of her family for 5 days. Thank you very much for mentioning the HIV rape squads. The widows and rape survivors were then looked upon as “damaged” and many had to turn to prostitution to survive, but therefore also spreading the disease. 27 years later, the land and people are still ravaged. Much of the wildlife was killed, people are still struggling but from what I saw, the people are reuniting. I worked with Hutu, Tutsi and one Twa woman. Neither Tutsi nor Hutu discussed who was who, it was the epitome of bad taste to ask, although it was obvious the woman was Twa and she was open and proud about it.
People always want to ignore situations like this all over Africa, where black people were extremely racist, to other black people. But hey, it's only white people that are racist...
@@fort809 That shit didn't work in India. Dalit folks are still oppressed, even after their names changed from Shudra, to Harijan, then to Dalit (Dalit means crushed)
I remember sitting with my newborn in my arms, watching a news report in Finland. The picture of a dead child on a road, the baby no older than the one I was nursing, just in front of a pile of dozens of bodies from the village it had lived in with its parents. It is something I don´t think I will ever forget.
😪 I remember this unfolding as a 5 yo and being shocked by what I saw and heard on the news. It has stuck with me to this day and it completely breaks my heart to think about all those poor innocent people who were so brutally murdered on all sides😪😪😪
The most horrifying thing I have ever seen was a body with its head separated at a place called dinsoor in south Somalia. A it was so bad that a pregnant woman fainted and miscarried. The man was killed by an alshabab commander because he refused to marry off his daughter to one of them. 2006 to 2013 was hell on earth in rural south Somalia.
My best friend and her brother were adopted from Rwanda. She was 5 and her brother was 2. Her mother hid them under the bed, baskets were just under it to hide them from view. She still could see her mother. She watched as her mother was hacked to death. My friend managed to keep her baby brother quiet. They were later found by friendly people and sent to a orphanage and later came to the US upon adoption. We were watching "Hotel Rwanda" in history class and despicable some of the boys were laughing, my friend ran out crying and shaking and because I was the TA I went after her to comfort her. The teacher didn't know her past and came to chastise her and so I took it on myself to tell him that she experienced the genocide without going into detail. He let her off for the week we covered it and she went to the library instead of class.
Jesus Christ I'm so sorry your friend went through all that no 5 year old should have to be forced to witness that and those Boys were fucking ignorant and nimrods I hope she didn't let their stupidity affect her. How is she now if u don't mind me politely asking?
I had a rwandan family living next to my home when I was a kid. We were good friends. The two kids were born right when the genocide began and their uncle (who became their adoptive father after their parents were killed) managed to get them both safely to Canada. Married a canadian woman. They still live there. Really nice people. I was very sad when I got old enough to understand what they went through.
I am glad they could find a new life here in Canada. Makes me proud that my country at least somewhat provides shelter and safety to those from terrible places and circumstances
People there who technically live in the same country, but are in a different tribe and your tribe is at war with them and you are in a bad mood, hey, why not?
Spoke to a Rwandan Canadian . The guilt, sad look and repent in his face when I asked about genocide is very moving. He said " everyone was involved, we just couldn't help it"
Had an uncle who served in Vietnam and then went private sector in Africa and the Middle East for a while before he left and warfighting in a crisis of faith and became an outspoken anti-war advocate in response. His words . "The only difference between a diamond and a dollar is what part of the world is on fire." I still think about that quote a lot to this day.
@@brunettesuspecte African nations who ask for military assistance have a reputation for paying in diamonds rather than hard currency bc it's more valuable to them. Versus any number of the European conflicts retaining active duty or PMCs funnel millions in cash. I interpreted it was his way of saying "war never changes"
I've met the UNAMIR commander Canadian General Roméo Dallaire. It's clear from his speeches and written works how defeated he felt. There was very little he could do to stop the violence because the US was vetoing any Security Council resolution that would have given him use of force authorization. He suffers from PTSD and has openly discussed his suicidal thoughts in the years following the genocide. I highly recommend his two books Shake Hands With the Devil, which directly addresses Rwanda, and his second book They Fight Like Soldiers and Die Like Children which deals with the wider issue of child soldiers.
Basically, because of UN's orders that were forbiding any kind of direct intervention, the peace keepers under Dallaire's commandment ended up being passive spectators of this genocide. I'm a Québécois and I dated a girl that fled Ruwanda to escape the genocide (don't remember if she was hutu or tutsi) and how many times she told me what she'd witness.....I really dunno how she kept her sanity though.....This brought me to read J'ai serré la main du Diable (shake hands with the Devil) by Dallaire and I just read it once and it took me forever to get to the end even if I'm a fast reader because this book was simply too hard to read with all the accounts of rapes and murders and how useless Dallaire felt being the witness of this nighmare that occured 24/7. For 100 days.
I've read both his books and he was the commencement speaker at my high school graduation assembly before the actual ceremony for our parents. Got the chance to meet him and shake his hand and speak with him for a few minutes. Lovely man who clearly tried his best but he made it clear that the Genocide was a part of his career he regrets as try as he might he couldn't stop the killing
@@keithmoore5306 that's not how it works in reality. You disobey an order at his rank the best you get is to be replaced in the field but more likely get "allowed" to resign. Let alone the fact that without support he'd have just got his men killed and made the situation worse for everyone involved.
@@keithmoore5306 That’s not how it works buddy. Without authorisation any military action will be considered as insubordination, treason or as a war crime. Don’t disrespect every single soldier in that situation and I advise you not to repeat that statement in a face-to-face conversation.
The 90's were such a polarised decade. They were either dreamy and nostalgic or bloody and nightmarish. Bosnia, Rwanda and Chechnya. I wish the credits just rolled when the wall fell in '89.
@@lolmao500 am not a pro USSR, but many of the older generation blame Gorbachev for the current state of affairs of many or all of the former soviet nations. Also, many of those nations still want to reform USSR to thus day.
It mirrored the 20's in that way. The privileged classes enjoyed unprecedented success while the rest struggled and resentment bubbled below the surface. It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. To call either period the "calm before the storm" would be misleading. The storm had already broken, just not for everyone.
@Tony Wagoner maybe Tsarist Russia's fault, back in the Balkan wars... but yes, certainly not the fault of the USSR... I think it is very close to if not an outright genocide in places, but, within what was a huge violent war....
a survivor came to speak at my middle school about the horrors he saw, his arms were amputated with machetes and he was left to bleed out in agony but he survived. i don’t remember much about the story about how he survived or what else he saw but i do remember that he taught himself how to paint and was very upbeat and kind
I have served with an infantry regiment with the British Army for 19 years, I have served in both Iraq and Afghan on multiple tours BUT I have never seen anything so horrific than we I got posted to Rwanda on a humanitarian mission as a boy soldier. The things I saw will haunt me for the rest of my life.
30 years before your time fellow British were just as appalled by this same genocide. “A Member of Parliament for north Devon in the British House of Commons once got to his feet to ask the UK Foreign Minister *on an urgent issue.* ‘Would he instruct the British delegation at the United Nations to raise immediately, in the Security Council, as a threat to peace, the killing of members of the Tutsi Tribe by the Rwanda Republican Government, as a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of *the Crime of Genocide…* does the Honourable Gentleman not feel that Her Majesty’s Government should be doing more to stir the conscience of the world against these barbaric acts?’ The genocide was also condemned by the English philosopher and historian Bertrand Russell who called it *‘the most horrible and systematic human massacre we have had occasion to witness* since the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis.’ All this was in December 1963.” [A. Wallis 2017] But nothing was ever done. It was all swept under the proverbial carpet, and the systematic murders were allowed to continue. Today, people should be shocked that the government in England still insists on protecting genocide suspects from being taken to court, as detailed in this article: _"Five genocide suspects who sought refuge in UK run up £5m legal aid bill"._
@@rutonde wait I’m confused. You said that people were calling the government to task about the crimes in 1963 but it happened in 94 no? Was their another Genocide At that time?
@@kaeade4290 Yes there was. The genocide era in Rwanda lasted several decades from 1959 to 1994. The 1963-1964 episode was widely reported in the news, for example in this article dated Feb 11th, 1964: The Geneva Journal (Switzerland) *Genocide in Africa* (From our correspondent in London) An *organized attempt at total extermination, A TRUE GENOCIDE,* is systematically ongoing against the 250,000 members of the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda. The figure of 30,000 dead first cited was perhaps exaggerated. That of 15,000, given by the Prime Minister of Burundi, Mr. Ngendandumwe, upon his arrival in Nairobi on February 4, is around ten thousand lower than those *[i.e. 25,000]* reported by missionaries and other Europeans residing in the tiny republic, which has about 2,500,000 inhabitants. Whatever it really is, one shudders at the thought that no one is doing anything from the outside to put an end to this dreadful butchery, and that international opinion is not awake to the situation. The Hutus *decimate entire families, kill men, women and children without discrimination. They mutilate their victims and often they throw their corpses into the Rusizi river, blocking it in places. The massacres continue, according to Christian missionaries, at the average of a thousand a day.* Appeals have been made to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and to the governments of Tanganyika and Uganda, but no effective intervention has taken place. President Gregoire Kayibanda and his Hutus, blinded by hatred, appear *determined to annihilate the entire Tutsi tribe.* The two or three British newspapers which took the trouble to follow the unfolding of the terrible tragedy suggest a possible solution. In addition to an investigation that could be carried out by the Red Cross, they believe that the United Nations should act urgently to obtain either the evacuation of the Tutsi population to neighboring countries, or the creation, under United Nations protection, of a Tutsi reservation in Rwanda. Either way, close international surveillance would be necessary to prevent Kayibanda and the Hutus from continuing their horrific crimes.
Isn’t it sadly funny how, as you described in your conclusion, two groups, who are ostensibly so similar, can have such a deep chasm constructed between them, that hate and conflict seem to be inevitable. This goes to many conflicts around the world, between neighbouring tribes, religions or ethnic groups, who an outsider could barely tell apart, who have deeply entrenched desire to exterminate the other group, and often a perceived religious zeal to justify it.
My mom is Rwandan and she'd never told me how exactly the genocide happened. All I knew is that she was Tutsi and it was a horrendously traumatic experience so I appreciate this video shedding light on the history.
My great aunt Felicia worked for a Rwandan official in the 60s and was assassinated after a car chase. As disturbing as it sounds my gran was always grateful that her sister had a relatively quick departure from this world, as you rightly mentioned people were butchered in unspeakable ways. Whoever said "war is hell" wasn't wrong, the depraved and inhuman things people will do to each other in the name of politics/religion is sickening. People are capable of great things and, unfortunately, terrible things also. Thankfully Rwanda is becoming a hugely popular place for people to visit nowadays, I hear it's one of the safest countries in Africa to visit which is wonderful news. The people of Rwanda deserve a positive future, onwards and upwards 🏴❤🇷🇼
discrimination is punishable by the law people see themselves as Rwandans now the older generation still is suffering from PTSD they also somehow don't like eachother lowkey but nothing serious to cause a problem a larger population of the new generation don't like to be called tutsis or hutus so everyone is one and just want to work live their lives in peace @@eho6380
Every time I hear about events like this, all I can think is "how could people do this to their neighbors??" And then I look around today and see how it happens.
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I look at my neighbors that poisoned the stray I was feeding because they didn't like cats and think "Yeah, makes sense to me."
@ see... The raw love and compassion it takes for a person to feed a stray cat and have real feelings for that animal are so starkly contrasted by people who would kill that cat, just because. Humans are capable of so much... Good or bad.
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@@danelynch7171 I'd never harm an animal, hell I even escort flies safely outside. But people? I don't have the same level of empathy. I understand what happened on a visceral level because given the opportunity to avenge that cat - I can't say 100% I wouldn't do it. People are the worst thing on this planet, I am not excluded.
@ eh... People are also some of the best things on this planet.. Do you think animals have the same capacity for empathy as humans? Do you think animals have the ability to love and cherish each other the way we as humans do?
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@@danelynch7171 Having been around dogs and rabbits all my life I can say with absolute certainty they have more empathy. A couple of months back I had a migraine from hell, and my bunny jumps on the couch and starts licking my forhead then nuzzles up beside me. She knew I was in pain and attempted to help. When I had my last dog, he didn't quite understand the concept of me pointing at something, everytime I pointed my finger he would lick it because he thought I hurt it. If you truly spend time with animals you'll end up being horrified by humanity treats them.
If anyone is interesting in learning more about the UN Peacekeepers’ actions (or inactions) during this tumultuous time, I recommend reading Shake Hands With the Devil by Roméo Daillaire.
Out of curiosity, I often see people chastising the UN, what would you have them do? I'm not trying to be rude, I genuinely want to know what they could do without resorting to killing. Unless you think just outright killing the perpetrators is the right course of action, which I'm no inherently against but I image that would have an absolute ton of blowback.
@@R3demptionzz The man who represented the Czech Republic at the UN provided a vivid answer to your question even as the events were occurring in 1994: “My delegation is troubled that it has taken so long for the Secretary General [i.e. Top UN boss] to use this description [i.e. genocide against the Tutsi population] in his reports on which the Security Council bases its work *so heavily.* We are equally confused that even before the outbreak of the holocaust on April 6 [1994], UNAMIR and its representatives _had been aware_ for example of inflammatory broadcasts of the local radio, of suspicious movements of armed groups, of an inflow of arms into Rwanda. My delegation feels that if these facts had been forcefully communicated to the Security Council as soon as the Secretary became aware of them, we might have been a step further by today.”
The way Simon ends these videos is just chilling. I mean it's appropriate to end these dark stories not with a plug or an "ending" but also damn, it really just leaves a shiver how he just walks off.
Massive credit to Fasih, the editor for Into the Shadows for that. I got the pilot back from him, and was like "Hey, I think you left a bit in at the end." He never removed it. Just left it there. He was right. What a legend.
I do wonder how much of this is affecting Simon, this and his Casual Criminalist show... Might need to balance this with a - how humans can be good to one another channel
I am from Uganda, was only 10yrs old at that time. Watched the news & also would hear my parents talk about what was going on in Rwanda but couldn't really understand fully. But what I do vividly remember is we stopped eating fresh fish from Lake Victoria bcoz of the countless stories of body parts found in the bellies of the fish caught during that period. It was years later when I got to fully grasp the horrors that happened to our neighbours! It was a sad time!
I had a work colleague that was originally from Rwanda. I always wanted to know more but I didn't want to ask any uncomfortable questions and bring up any bad memories he might have had. Thanks for covering this.
You did the right thing. If you want to broach the subject just simply ask them "Hey, are you doing OK? I just watched a video that went fairly in depth on the Rwandan Genocide and I know you're originally from there. I'm not prying. I just wanted to make sure you're ok."
@A Huddleston You don’t always know who you’re dealing with. Just plainly keep in mind that while the victims were from Rwanda, so were the rapists and mass murderers. To complicate things further, those criminals do have children and relatives. Even if the latter are innocent of any crimes themselves, they may nonetheless sympathize and support their criminal parents or relatives. Caution is necessary.
I met two people from there but they completely justified it. Basically they said this happened throughout all human history and often times is all that can be done to advance a society quicker, wich then saves people more in the long run (basically that some ends justify the means), and that us westerners have always done this but have a problem with it now because is them doing it, not us; and for us to search how well Rwanda is in comparison with other African nations if we don’t believe…
This is probably the best accounting of the facts that led to the Rwandan genocide that I've heard or read. I was 23 when this happened and I had friends in the US military that were in Somalia. Every member of the military I know says that east Africa is the worst place to be stationed.
@@Tonyx.yt. Latin America is more violent than Africa. North Western and central Africa normally have more violent conflicts compared to east Africa. Somalia is in the Horn of Africa while East Africa is Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, South Sudan, Burundi. East Africa in general is much safer than other regions of Africa.
@@markm2092 Latin America has more violence due to the drug trade, since is a major producer and close to the major markets, but normally that's the deal, if you stay out of production, distribution and or commercialization of drugs then you are ok in most latin countries, i.e Argentina, Perú, Ecuador, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, etc. There are some countries that ARE really dangerous but it's mostly Honduras, El Salvador in central America, but for the most part latin america is pretty functional as societies go, on the other hand some African countries are a living hell to this day, I don't think there's a real comparison between the continents, because circumstances and living standards, culture and so on are so different. Africa is a huge place, 40 some countries and lots of them are really different from each other
@@TheWallki I understand what you’re saying but I was commenting to tony who said east Africa is most dangerous place to be deployed which isn’t true. He probably meant Horn of Africa as in Somalia. Because east Africa is pretty safe.
I swear this man is monopolizing UA-cam, he's all I see now on a million different channels covering all sorts of different topics and I'm all for it. Keep it up.
I went on from here to watch a couple of interviews from survivors who were just kids at the time. I don't think there's any way to truly understand how horrible it must have been without having actually been there and lived through it. All I know is that these people are a million times stronger than I am.
I remember watching it on the news as a kid. However the UN is a complete joke, not only here, the actually FAILED with all the missions they have been given. Couple of years back a few military here in the Netherlands were charged because of their participation in the UN during their Serbia failure and genocide.... ironically western politicians now want the UN to take over ALL governments in the world, to be a one world government.... a group of people that have a history of incompetence all the way to their foundation.... what possibly could go wrong....
If i remember correctly, this was the incident the UN debated if it was genocide until it was over. So instead of doing something, they debated the meaning of a word as if they said it was genocide , the UN charter says they have to intervene. And the US not doing something goes hand in hand with people saying the US is not the world police. It a no win situation.
@@Master_Yoda1990 And yet the US has out-sized influence in the UN. Much of the reason the UN couldn't be more effective in Rwanda was because the US kept voting against it.
@@Master_Yoda1990 Perhaps not the best argument, given the US will go against what you said whenever it chooses. To say you are inconsistent would sum it up nicely, especially as US action is always linked to US enrichment, be it political power or resources, no matter which wankers are in charge.
@@owenshebbeare2999 that maybe the goal, but rarely the outcome on long drawn out wars, look at Vietnam, the country definitely wasn’t enriched in that conflict, same with the 20 years in Afghanistan.
One of my St. John Ambulance cadet mentors here in Australia was a doctor who went over there to help out the peacekeeping forces and man did he have some absolutely shocking stories to tell... Even hearing about it from his own mouth, it just seemed inconceivable that such things could still occur not ten years before I'd met him. Nightmare fuel of the highest order.
I stayed at Hôtel Des Mille Collines for almost two weeks while in Rwanda. The hotel is very nice. I absolutely loved being in Rwanda. The food is great, and the people are wonderful. Rwanda takes security and education very seriously; I admire the country for its principles. The Genocide memorial in Kigali was a very spiritual-heavy place.
Simon's range is amazing. Deadly serious pieces like this, fun pieces where you learn something, and Brain Blaze where he just...well, I still don't know what he does. And he does it all convincingly. If there's someone else on UA-cam that has this range, I'm not aware of it.
Admittedly, I'm not a fan of the conversational commentary Simon inserts into his Brain Blaze videos, because they make the video longer and make me feel like I'm getting the info from my ADHD brother, but I know everyone has their own style of preference.
In my high school world history class we watched a movie about the Rwandan Genocide but were given absolutely zero context for it. We weren't told even one one-hundredth of what this sixteen minute covered during the two one-hour-long class periods we watched the movie. I didn't even really get that it was a real thing and not some hypothetical 'this is something that could happen'. Then we went back to our mostly european based history lessons. I'm glad Simon has such a well put together video about this so I can finally understand what that movie was supposed to tell me.
Your high school sounds like mine. We were assigned to read the book "Animal Farm" and were given a very ind-depth worksheet about it, asking us to give historical analysis, though we were a class of kids who had never heard the name Stalin in our lives. We were not even informed the book had anything to do with the USSR!
maybe your teacher knew nothing about it and didn't want to research, lol. my history teacher (australia) said "the battle of stalingrad, yeah, that happened around... here..." *points to a map of Poland during the First World War*
I was born in Rwanda in 95 and had no idea.. about a lot of this. This one touched me on a personal level Simon. Thank you for the in-depth context. Great video, same as always! 🙏🏾💯
@@WaddedBliss That’s a great question. But difficult and almost impossible to answer for myself since my experience itself is different than most kids growing up in Rwanda or even other refugees. We left Rwanda when I was 9 months old and fled to Uganda where my sister was born. We moved again to Kenya where I grew up until 2004 when we came to America. But even while in Kenya, we were always blessed to be associated with the UNICEF through my father and his work so we had access to opportunities many refugees didn’t. Even as we left Kenya, there were jealous neighbors we were wary of that were killing my mom’s chickens out of spite lol seems like we’ve been running my whole life. Education was always a huge part of my life so I only learned english(and some french) and though it was easy assimilating into American culture once we got here in 04, I lost all real connections to Rwanda besides my parents speaking our language at home and family members popping up once in awhile. To this day I still can’t speak Kinyarwanda even though I understand it. My mom hates when I reply to her in English but it’s really her fault! Lol sorry for the tangents
@@WaddedBliss But then again, with access to the internet and our older generation; we have always been and will always be aware somewhat of the tragedies. My mom still has PTSD from those times so it’s not something I bring up often unless she does you know. I kinda don’t even like hearing the stories because she’s so numb to the senseless loss of life she witnessed and along with other things. Soon as she got here she started up a refugee Women organization called Women for Women coalition as her way of coping for years.
This is exactly how my grandma told the story of what really happened and what she saw, word for word. She is a Tutsi, and hearing her recount those events is both heartbreaking and a testament to her resilience. Thank you for shedding light on this truth. It’s important the world remembers.
I remember all this happening and asked my Dad why New Zealand didn't send peacekeeper troops in so we could help. My Dad just looked sad and said we could send every soldier we had and it wouldn't have made a difference. The population of Rwanda was at least 50 times our own. I cried. Thank-you for telling this story with such compassion.
@@samaalethespacepirate8342 I've obviously misremembered this entirely. My Dad wouldn't have got the populations wrong like that. Now I am left to wonder what catastrophe event he was talking about. God knows there are plenty of candidates.
NZ could have sent an Infantry Battalion Group and ENDED the Genocide within two weeks of arriving. NZ was the Chair of the UN Security Coucil at the time and pushed for military intervention but could not get the other members to even agree that it was a Genocide. The actual word was never used. Too scary. NZ did what it could and I'm sure the troops would have cleared it all up in no time but politicians always get in the way. Most of the murders were carried out by civilian militias only armed with machetes. 1,000 Kiwi soldiers would have sorted them out real quick. A very shameful failure by the UN as a whole but it wasn't NZ's fault.
You really should take a look at one of these events in Indonesian history for future episodes: • Purgings of suspected communists in 1965-66 following September 30th Movement - the definition of "suspected communists" is so arbitrary that everyone could practically be picked on at that time. At least half a million were killed; some other estimates put the death toll in the 1 million range. • The massacre at Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili, East Timor, in 1991. Indonesian military opened fire at pro-independence strikers, leading to at least 250 fatalities.
Keep in mind more than a few Republican politicians in the US are calling on their followers to kill their neighbors if their neighbors are suspected of being Democrats.
Unfortunately, it's pretty standard for historical events. Humans been doing this shit to each other for as far back as we can see... This is just another horrific bump on a long, bumpy road.
I went to school with a tusty, he barely grew up outside the violence but he tells me about how it was common to see mutilated bodies, mobs violence and lynchings
Umm really?...Colonialism? Genociding of Native tribes all over the planet? The Nazi Holocaust alone killed at least 6 times more people than the Rwandan genocide are you kidding?
I genuinely thought nothing could bring me to tears anymore. I thought I had become truly hardened. This video did it. This video broke me. Thank you for reminding me that I am human. Thank you for reminding me that I still have a soul. Thank you for the hard work that you do Simon and team.
Roméo Dallaire’s book/memoir about the conflict was one of the hardest books I’ve ever read. I could only read a chapter at a time, if not pages, before I had to put it down to make sure I wouldn’t start screaming.
:hugs: Watching the movie about it was enough for me. I will never forget. As a Canadian, some aspects of his story were close enough to me to impress the lesson that must never be forgotten : that anyone of us can get caught up in such atrocities... and that they can - and will - happen again. Anytime, anywhere. :more hugs:
I feel bad for him. He was one of the only people who TRIED to do something, but did not have the resources to do much. And he’s suffered from PTSD and guilt ever since.
Same here. I tried to read it a 2nd time, many years after reading it for the first time. I couldn't do it. When I first read it, it took me forever to finish it even if I'm a fast reader. I could only read 10-15 pages at the time as it was making me cry. A close friend of mine back then almost beg me to stop reading it because it was making me feel miserable
@@michaelsinger4638 Gen. Dallaire is estimated to have saved 30 000 people during those horrific 100 days. 30K (directly or indirectly, for ex. by inspiring the Ghana contingent to stand fast). He's founded an important org against child soldiering. He is one of the very few heroes of that conflict.
Like everyone's saying- read Shake Hands With the Devil by General Dallaire. There's also a documentary and a feature film. They're not easy watches, though.
I still remember watching late night news when I was 6 years old and feeling ill from the images and stories of death and rape. It's haunted me for years. I couldn't understand how people could be so evil...I still don't.
Umm really?...Colonialism? Genociding of Native tribes all over the planet? The Nazi Holocaust alone killed at least 6 times more people than the Rwandan genocide.
I was a very small kid when this happened, but I remember watching the news reports with my dad after he came home from work and we had finished supper. It cemented in my mind from a very young age that humans can be the absolute worst to each other.
Yes, it is. I almost couldn't watch it all the way through, it was so painful. Another film that gets, I feel, not enough notice, is 'Beyond the Gates', with John Hurt. I've also seen two documentaries that I felt were very good: 'The Triumph of Evil', and 'Ghosts of Rwanda' - both shown on PBS.
Robbed the people that stayed there to enter the hotel, then told the Mutu militia which rooms the Tutsi civilians were in so they could drag them out into the yard and hack them to death, especially if they didn't have any money left!
Kudos to Factboi for the sentence "it seemed as if the rules for genocide in Europe were vastly different than in Africa". As someone who's worn a blue helmet: Those are the kind of bullshit politics that makes men come home as empty shells with dead eyes. It should be a human rights violation to tell an armed and able man to just stand down and stand by while watching unarmed men, women and children be slaughtered. There should be a deep understanding in marshal law that a man is not just allowed, but outright expected to, disobey such an order and just act as comes natural to any trained soldier. In fact, anyone who does not wish to disobey with every fibre in their body is not trustworthy of neither bearing arms nor receiving military training.
Kinda reminds me of Mogadishu. When U.S. soldiers were overseeing a U.N. relief effort local militias occupied the food storages and massacred any civilians who tried to get at the food that was brought for them. The Soldiers observing were told not to do anything, as rules of engagement stated that they cant fire on them unless they themselves were being shot at. One of the things i hate the most is the bureaucracy that stagnates any effort to actually make a difference. Kind of disgusting when you think about soldiers being told not to do their job when literally witnessing inhumanity in its most primal form.
Why didn't you intervene anyway? I bet those who ordered you to stand down were 3000 miles away, sipping lattes in Washington DC. I would have stopped the killings and said if you think protecting innocent civilians is a crime,arrest me.
@@thechosenone1533 I'm going to invoke the right to not self incriminate here and just go "To the best extend of my knowledge I have never wilfully disregarded a direct order". Balkan was a "funny" place. There was no real clear cut "good vs evil". There was only "evil vs just as evil and nobody agrees on when, why or where it all stared". Combatants were not necessarily wearing uniforms. The lines between military, militia and mafia were in constant flux. Even to those who were supposed to decisively be one or the other. However, the rules of engagement were screamingly simple for UN forces: "You may fire only when fired directly upon. And you must cease fire at the first sign of surrender or retreat." So I ever only discharged my weapon when I was *under the impression* that the muzzle blasts were facing me directly. But in the heat of battle it can be hard to tell, you know... The rules of engagement were changed by NATO under the KFOR directive. That was my second tour. And I only signed up precisely because of the change. The new rules were equally simple: "If you see someone with guns shooting at someone without guns, fire at will. If you're being fired upon, neutralize target".... So I went back and picked up the pieces of my soul I had left behind. I may also have cancelled a few life subscriptions in the process. But in the heat of battle it can be hard to tell, you know... But just so we're clear on the legalities of what you're suggesting: When in service killing without orders is, under Martial law, homicide of the first degree. That is life in prison or the death penalty depending on state/country. So it boils down to "their life or mine" but in a sickeningly reversed fashion in this particular situation. Talk is cheap, and anyone can say what you just said. In fact many have. And I'll believe you when you've had your finger on the trigger while you had to make that particular judgement call. But not a second sooner. Sorry... but sometimes it do be like that. And just for the record (not that it's important to the topic at all): I'm not an American. I'm Danish.
Knowing they wouldn't get resupplied... taking a stand on ones own initiative would be signing a death sentence for themselves and the rest of the mission. There's only so many bullets they had at their disposal and not everyone has the courage to make that decision.
The statement that there seems to be a different definition and reaction to a genocide in Africa and Europe by mentioning the response to the atrocities in former Yugoslavia is tbh dishonest. My brother was sent there twice under the UN flag, their mandate and their rules of engagement were not any better than those given when intervening in Rwanda. They had to stand there, armed to the teeth while civilians were put up against the wall, shot and thrown into mass graves. Including women and children. Just try to imagine the horror of not only seeing what is happening but being equipped and trained to stop genocidal maniacs... only to not be allowed by your officers due to the ridiculous mandate given by the UN. And when returning home, a lot of these soldiers were very sick, only after pressing charges because the military wouldn't tell them what was happening, did they find out they had radiation poisoning during the investigation. Awesome invention those armor piercing bullets... Before the cause was known, it was named "The Balkan syndrome". I only found out most of this a couple of years ago when my brother's PTSD became undeniable and he was unable to work, or pretty much do anything for about 3 years... So yeah, the idea for forming the UN might have been a good one... the actual implementation of that idea is horrendous, not intervening and allowing genocide to happen under the watchful eyes of those that have chosen to risk their lives to never allow such a thing to happen just so they can claim that they did something about it... The UN is simply put a disgusting organization that, because it's run by politicians who all want to enrich and empower themselves, has nothing to offer the world but cowardice and misery.
Your brother couldn’t have done anything about it or he would have been killed. The paramilitaries in Bosnia were far more numerous than UN peacekeepers and well trained having all completed a year of National service. They were not clowns with machetes like in Rwanda.
@@stefan2serb I am aware of that but that just proves my point that the UN is useless, they could have sent more troops, 193 countries are members of the UN... Which means, just like nearly all of their missions, this was just virtue signalling and sacrificing the (mental) well being of their soldiers... So, yeah, again, disgusting in my opinion.
i feel the same about the dishonesty. i also feel its a lot easier to deploiy and supply un troops in europe then it is in east/central africa. heck even the tunesian troops that were rwanda would've been faster deployed in croatia then in rwanda just from an infrastructure point of view.
Minor correction: The problem with depleted uranium munitions isn't radiation, it's heavy metal poisoning. Which doesn't really make much difference to the person dying from it, though.
Ukrainian peacekeepers had their first UN mission in Yugoslavia. The village of Zepa. Serbs attacked Ukrainians and threatened to kill everyone if they keep defending the village. Our guys stood their ground. Later, quote "Unlike in Srebrenica, a widespread slaughter of Bosniak men did not occur, as most Bosniak males had fled the enclave by the time Bosnian Serb forces arrived." Why? BECUASE WE ARE UKRAINIANS, THE ONLY ONES IN EUROPE WHO FIGHT AND RESIST WHEN THE USELESS WEST ASSISTS RUSSIANS AND SERBS WITH THEIR WAR CRIMES.
I firmly believe that the Rwandan genocide saved South Africa from a similar fate. In April 1994 my mother died and I travelled to the UK for her funeral. I was a monitor/mediator in KZN and I was bewildered when I landed in the UK that everyone was talking about Rwanda. Eventually when I returned to SA a week later I realised that the Rwandan genocide was a terrible warning of what could happen. Luckily the powers that guided SA saw the writing on the wall we escaped a similar catastrophe. RIP to all who died in Rwanda - and Thank You. Your deaths were not in vain though it was a terrible thing to happen.
I am so glad that Simon made this video. While this was an absolute horrific tragedy, we need to never forget atrocities like this so we don't repeat them.
To be fair, knowing about the nazis didn't really stop the genocide in Rwanda. The same thing will happen eventually somewhere else regardless of what we should already know. Knowing is just an excuse to not do anything. You're just simply hoping that it won't happen again.
@@Wheres_my_Dragonator It is the fact that because some atrocity is happening halfway across the world the impact is only sliver deep on people's psyche. Unless it is literally happening in peoples own backyard,.most people don't care. How many people have ever heard of or know about the genocide against the Rohingya people in Myanmar in 2017 that is even now still ongoing? Not enough people know or even care which is why I have no faith in the human race as a whole, regardless of race.
I visited Rwanda for the first time last year. The personal accounts people tell you, and the collective attempt to overcome the past horror are impressive. Now, Rwanda is very safe, but also very strict.
Wrote my college thesis on Rwandan women’s experiences as victims and perpetrators during the genocide. I read horrifying things, but it’s fascinating to look at specific lenses of experience during this event; the endurance of the surviving female community now is sad but gives hope for the future generations moving onward
It baffles me that something of this scale and this terrible happened in my lifetime when I was only 4 years old. We mostly think of these types of stories as something on the very old like those of WW2 know anything about, but something this massively terrible that happened this recently, THAT'S truly scary.
It doesn't fit in many people's mindset so it's not particularly talked about. It's the same for Japan's warcrimes which are often overlooked by Japan itself, uncritical weebs and people that think only white people are capable of horrible warcrimes. If it was whites Vs blacks in Rwanda you can be sure it would be brought up twice a week on twitter.
When It happened I was 4 years old as well. The difference is, I was running and hiding for my life. I was Young but I still have some very vivid disturbing memories,pstd. I stopped sleep walking around 14 years.
My mother told me that people we're often given the chance to say their last prayers before getting killed. When they found her hiding under her bed, she asked to pray not that they would spare her life, but that they would shoot her instead of hacking her with a machete. Luckily, she was spared because the person who was going to kill her happened to be my grand-father's high school mate. The thing about the genocide is it really was neighbor killing neighbor and in some cases even relatives killing each other. This is why so many died so quickly
When I was in college, one of my professors had a man come in from Rwanda to discuss the genocide. His family was Tutsi and the neighborhood was split pretty evenly between Hutu and Tutsi. He was out of country for school but family was still there. His mom and sisters were able to get away to sanctuary when the neighbors attacked. Said there was never any indication of trouble. Just one day, all hell broke loose. He lose his father, his brothers, and multiple aunts, uncles, and cousins. I think his grandparents were even killed (I can't remember all of the deaths as this was about 20 years ago). Basically all of his family was wiped out except for the few that were able to get in sanctuary. He was able to get in after some peace had been established to get his surviving family members out and even then, he said he remembers seeing the bodies in the streets and stains where the blood had soaked into the ground.
Keep in mind it is easy to get to Croatia, a coastal country. Rwanda is very difficult to get to, you have to fly over at least hundreds of miles of usually hostile territory. Logistics always matters.
@capnstewy55 The difficulty never resided in logistics but political will alone. Examples: When the war started on 10/01/90, the French troops of Operation Noroit were on the ground in Rwanda by 10/4/90 to assist the genocidal regime. Three days is all it took. That’s the same day Congolese DSP troops also arrived in Rwanda. The Belgian troops of Operation Green Bean were there the following day, 10/5/90, together with planeloads of bullets. After the final genocide was launched on 4/7/94, the French troops of Operation Amaryllis arrived there on 4/9/94. Just *TWO DAYS* is all they needed for both troops and additional military supplies to arrive. And again the Belgian troops of Operation Silverback landed there the next day on 4/10/94. Italian troops were also on the ground at the same time.
Two months onward the decision to launch Operation Turquoise was announced by the French government on 6/18/94. UN Resolution 929 to authorize it was voted by the Security Council within four days on 6/22/94. The troops arrived in Rwanda hours later *the same day.*
Yeah, but UN did nothing to stop genocide in Bosnia (mostly land locked too) either... Except for like one Ukrainian unit that saved one village, NOBODY tried to stop Serbs OR Croats from wiping out Bosniaks for so long! Of course UN is even more useless in Ukraine. They ONCE brough a single truck of water to Dnipro, a city completely on a river... That's like bringing sand to Cairo. Note that they have BILLIONS in financing but those only go towards mansions and luxury cars we see in front of most expensive hotels far from frontlines in Ukraine. So they can get to Lviv or Kyiv or Odesa all right but not when those cities are bombed either. Fuck UN.
I took AP comperative politics in high school and I cant believe we never talked about Rwanda. I only learned about the Rwandan genocide a couple months ago, I must say that the changes that have been made in the country is astounding and mind blowingly revolutionary
In California atleast in the Bay Area, part of the curriculum for world history(sophomore year) is learning about the Rwandan genocide, followed up by watching “Hotel Rwanda”…it was disturbing but the class was all glad we learned about it
I'll never forget the photo of Lake Victoria, red with corpses and human blood. I would hope we've learned something from this horror over the last 25 years, but the human race never fails to disappoint
A sergeant I worked with in the Australian army served in Rwanda and was apart of a company of Australian soldiers that stood in between tutis and hoards of killers.
Aussies actually helped? That's great, I've read most of UN was completely useless... I remember a Ukrainian unit stood ground and saved a Bosnian village from joining another mass grave despite Serb threats. Big contrast with Netherland troops who stood outside of Srebrenica.
Lmao that's how you know you are sheltered from the world , what made you think so naivety? Honestly how I'm curious to how such childish gullible mindset occur , what's next you gonna be surprised when ppl pass away due to old age ?
@@kingtachalla6181 I'm not real sure why you feel like attacking me for feeling horrified about something horrible when I was raised to believe that it's our job in this world to leave it better than we found it, but ok. Hope you're doing well.
I remember in high school we had a Survivor come and talk to us about the whole experience. I remember her telling us how she lost many family and friends and everything that she experienced. It was horrible.
Great videos as usual mate. One thing that often gets ignored though is how the genocide led to the Congolese civil war. The new Rwandan Government armed a rebellion against Mobutu in the hopes that the new guys would deal with the hutu militias doing cross border raids on Rwanda. Suffice to say that didn't happen, what did happen was a colossal shitstorm that led to the deaths of millions.
Thanks for mentioning this. I was going to write about it too. The collapse of Zaire was precipitated by the RPF and it became an African world war basically which nobody ever talks about. They went to hunt down the genocidaires and got involved in carving up Zaire for profit along with every other African country with any power. It lead to millions of deaths. The other thing is not emphasised is that the RPF was seen by the French as an Anglophone armed group and just like in the American Revolution anything that would stick a finger up at the English the French government to this very day would be happy to be involved in. It's utterly bizarre to let bring in your small contingent of soldiers to protect the genocidaires from the beginning and then when they were defeated to fly them to shelter in Paris for decades afterwards knowing full well what these monsters did. But the French can afford to feel powerful by sending a few thousand soldiers into their former African colonies to exert influence. It also shows how a small Western force can have a profoundly disproportionate effect in Africa when it suits their interests. I believe a small force could've shut it down but it was up to the RPF to do it.
It did reduce the FDLR in size and intensity of attacks. The RPF wiped out more than half of the rebels during the 2 Congo wars killing millions of Congolese and Refugees in the process as FDLR rebels used civilians as shields. In fact, most international organizations say that currently, FDLR has just a couple of thousand soldiers compared to the force that left Rwanda in the 1990s. Some even say there is no FDLR and Kagame is using that excuse to attack Congo and steal their minerals, make no mistake, RPF have dealt with the issue of FDLR on a very large scale and the threat is not as it was in the 1990s, some could argue there is no threat at all
It’s crazy to watch this in Oct 2023 in light of the Israeli-Palestine war and Russia/Ukraine. It’s sad how people who are ethnically practically identical just hate each other and justify atrocities. It’s sad how a persecuted people can then become the ones who persecute…
@@valerierodger there's a current genocide of Ukrainians nation by russian invaders. Difference is that there is nothing in common between humans and an orc.
UNLaid did an interview with a survivor of the 90s genocide. Very touching, sad, crazy to imagine how calm she had to remain to survive. Out of 7 I think she said ... 3 survived. Very moving interview if you are interested in a follow up to this content. Matches what she explains.
My buddy (who’s in the military) was over there when this happened, he tells me stories that make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck (literally). The things that humans are willing to do to each other is very disturbing, the term “short sleeve” or “long sleeve” says it all.
My father was the first crew to fly in humanitarian aid with the Canadian Air Force after this. Took him him over 25 years to open up about the things he saw, and even then, not much. He told us he had to toss all the kit he had with him when he got back. We don't ask for more details, he was just an observer after the fact. This still affects him if any past mission or deployment we talk about has any details in common with his short time in Rwanda. Pictures, videos and news reports can only reveal so much as opposed to witnessing the devastation first hand. "I shook hands with the devil" is a great movie demonstrating just how bad things were going on the front line for the UN when many countries were pulling out their troops because of the fear of violence.
Also noted is that very few genocides in history have the goal or even realistic chance at complete extermination. Majority deaths did happen but killing everyone with no survivors was rare.
How would you know? Most of history is unrecorded especially in Africa. Genocide one way or other happens all over in Africa. European accounts in South Africa that when they were attacked by the locals they would kill everyone women and children. A famous tribal chief Shaka Zulu killed preganant women in his tribe because he was upset his mother died.
@@alastair9446 i agree! Most accounts we have from ancient or medieval campaigns of conquest suggest widespread genocidal tendencies. See the mongols in hungary/russia; romans in Gaul; chinese while conquering China etc.
@@ProudRegressive Well if you kill everyone so no one can tell the tale is that still history? On a serious note the definition I get is "the study of past events, particularly in human affairs". Says nothing about being recorded, just study of the event. So if you can dig up dead bones or look at DNA to get the story I guess it still counts as history.
I remember being given a DVD called Hotel Rwanda, didn't know anything about Rwanda so it sat unwatched for at least 6 months before I had a rainy day off... If you know nothing of Rwanda then find the time to watch Hotel Rwanda as it's one of those movies that change you as a person, I cried so hard that I couldn't breathe! It's truly brutal to try and wrap your mind round just what level of insanity you would have be to send out a HIV positive rape squad??? I think the way this has been put together is really, really impressive but the best part is Simon educating a generation who have never heard of Rwanda, never mind what happened!! This is something that should never be forgotten!
I'm from south Africa, never heard about this in history class, but I was taught about Hitler and the black lady in the bus from America. Makes you wonder about our education system 🤔
@@y2j1490yahoo you have to keep in mind that Rosa was in American history and she was living in South Africa… America already does a bad job at teaching American history of black ppl as well let alone how much was taught in another country
A Biographics on Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire would be great. I met him once a few years ago. The nightmare that man lived should be known more throughout the world. Perhaps there would be less hatred.
I’ve beeeeeeeeen waiting for this.. My mom was in Rwanda a few years back and what she learnt about this genocide was crazy for her to digest - literally
Thanks for your videos. I love learning about history and I appreciate you not sugar coating the events. It's hard to hear but I'd rather know what's really happened so we can hopefully learn from it. Thanks for your brevity, while not leaving our important facts.
Many Canadian troops were left traumatized by the slaughter in that country. When Belgian para's we're told to lay down their firearms to appease the hoard around them, they were massacred on the spot. Their comrades went out headhunting but were blocked by other peacekeepers. The Belgians shredded their berets & refused to engage in any further peacekeeping mission's. There's no way in hell I would have stood in their way. Romeo Dillard the Canadian commander on the ground went into heavy drinking & was found under under a park bench. He did fail to secure protective enclaves, that was a massive mistake.
For those of you who have a negative view of the education system in the US. I was taught this as a standardized subject in middle school going to a public school in Colorado. I’m not sure how it was in other countries, but the US surely doesn’t shy away from telling their students about awful events, even one’s they’ve taken part in. But the personal accounts may be a little one sided as we know, especially if it didn’t end in the United States favor.
In my experience, my history classes in grade school did cover a few atrocities committed by supposedly “good” countries, they seldom delved in depth, and certainly didn’t cover things such as the Ratlines.
@@Lauren_C Re "Ratlines" - it is embarrassing to admit, but I was 20+ years old when I realized that Allied countries did air raids the same as Germans, I was reading a fictional novel (The Book Thief) where a small German village gets bombed." I used to genuinely believe that civilian bombing was a thing only bad guys did and "good guys would never"! I wouldn't lay the blame solely on education system, though, if you think about popular/famous war movies you naturally think Pearl Harbor or many British movies with the sirens blaring and people running for the Underground, you don't think firestorm in Hamburg.
I remember when I was a kid and had a French math tutor. My dad asked him one day when he came to Canada. My tutor said he came from Rwanda in 1994. My dad didn't ask any more questions, and explained to me why on the ride home.
I’m sorry that you had to tell this story Simon but I see the respect and sorrow in your eyes if Anyone had to tell me this story. Id put that burden on you time and time again. Thank you and keep ‘em coming
I had just learned about this horrific piece of history when I started doing research on it. I somehow stumbled upon footage on UA-cam or google that I thought was a news report. It was not. It was raw footage of children attacked by machetes. My husband can attest that I was thoroughly horrified. My hands were still shaking hours after seeing it. I cant even fathom the horror they went through.
During my time in the US public school system we covered the genocide in Rwanda a couple times as I recall. Interesting how we never covered things like the Tulsa Race Riots… In any case, I can recommend the movie Hotel Rwanda on the topic of the Rwanda Genocide. It’s actually an excellent, if deeply unhappy movie.
I went to school in Hawaii where the ruling race/class are of Japanese descent. We didn't even talk about WWII. I suppose it's too much to ask for the losers to even acknowledge it even happened...
better movie to watch is Raol Peck''s (who's known for his films based on war areas)-to ''Sometimes In April'' -only 4 of the cast are foreign, everybody else is local. Hotel Rwanda pales in comparison to it.
You fail to mention that the Rwandan kings refused to cooperate with Belgians and their divide and rule politics. The Tutsi King Yuhi V Musinga who was in power when Rwanda was given to Belgium refused to cooperate with the Belgians and to be baptized. Consequently, he was exiled and killed by poisoning on 13th-January-1944. His successor Mutara III Rudahirwa met the same fate on 25th-July-1959 a Belgian hospital in Burundi where he was summoned by Belgian officials to discuss the rise of ethnic tensions promoted by the Belgian colonialists. Overall, this is a good recount and it's inspiring how you shade light on such disregarded events.
That’s true. The colonizers had done the same even before the specific events you mention and continued the same way afterwards. From the historian Stefaan Minnaert (6 September 2013): “Following the First World War, Rwanda had just passed from German occupation to Belgian occupation. The population has suffered terribly from looting and the requisitioning of labour, food and firewood. The economy came out of it completely deregulated. This has had implications for public health. The weakened population was decimated by *the famine of 1916 to 1917* and by a series of diseases. Musinga (c.1882-1944) himself narrowly escaped the *death* penalty. In March 1917, *the Belgians* put him in *prison* for treason. Accused of collaborating with the Germans, *he risked being hanged.* Never before had a King been humiliated in this way by foreigners! Musinga's *detention* was short-lived, as without him the country would be ungovernable.” Like I said, after they had murdered King Mutara, they did to his successor what they had done to his predecessor: They forcibly exiled King Kigeli in 1960 as part of their plan to install their local genocidal subordinates in power. There’s a video on y-tube where Kigeli explains how they went about it.
Disturbing and well presented indeed. However you utterly fail to mention the Canadian UN troops under Gen.Dallaire who also were there. The orders to not act included them and led to many cases of PTSD.
that is because the belgians made ID cards based on two things. If you looked ahum ethiopian enough you were tutsi. However, if you had enough cattle wealth but not the right features the belgians would still ID you as tutsi
My parents' relationship began the same week as the genocide. I didn't know anything about it until one day at SAT prep, November 11, 2016. We got nothing done that day, just talked about the election, and at the end of class the program coordinator got us all in one room and gave an absolutely terrifying speech in which he referenced the Rwandan Genocide- effectively implying we were on the path to people hacking up Latinos and Muslims with machetes. Most of us were too young and too American to know what he was talking about, but I went home and Googled "rwandan genocide" and 8 years later this is still literally the worst thing I have ever heard. This was the first video I ever watched from you and you are the perfect presenter for information as bone-chillingly horrifying as this.
The comparison with Yugoslavia is not very accurate. The UN forces in the former Yugoslavia were not effective for most of the war. The Dutch peacekeeper were unable to prevent the massacre of Srebrenica. Also the breakup of Yugoslavia, took almost 5 years the deaths were 140,000. Compare to half a million to 1 million deaths that happened in Rwanda in just 3 months. It took a long time to increase the number of peacekeepers in Bosnia, and to enable them to use force. When Vukovar in Croatia collapsed, and all the people at the local hospital, wounded, sick or not were executed, there were no peacekeepers. Probably 2 - 3 hours drive from Italy or Austria and connected by highways. The Rwanda genocide lasted 3 months. I believe UN forces in Sarajevo started using force against the Serbs only once some French soldiers were killed by snipers and some attacked. It took 3 - 4 years for the USA to get involved in Bosnia. So that criticism of the UN you make is a bit unfortunate and is an opinion/editorializing claim that I don't see supported by historical evidence.
I think that because the problems in Yugoslavia lasted for so long and the UN peacekeeping Force failed that's why it attracted the attention of NATO I agree the mere fact that only 3 months violence happened and then stopped in Rwanda was not seen as enough to justify NATO going in there and I don't believe NATO even had capacity and infrastructure to pull something off like that in the 1990s
Western nations definitely had power to try and stop this massacre, but to imply it was not done based on prejudice, and ethnic or racial motives is despicable coming from you. Rwanda is not 2 hours away from London or Paris, contrary from Sarajevo. Any troops on the ground would be acting on foreign soil, in unknown terrain, having to fight combatants that would be indistinguishable from innocent civilians. It's not like a policeman catching a burglar. You need actual UN or multinational approval for this, which was not reached even after the massacres died down. And even then with troops on the ground, you think that would have gone like a normal war like in Yugoslavia? How did the UN soldiers who actually stood between the victims and the butchers fare, funny you don't mention them. They got hacked to literal pieces, and some actually eaten.
It astonishing how many people have this view of western soldiers being 'parents' of severly misbehaved African 'children' in this situation. They really think sending armed troops to a foreign country with the 'shoot at will' order against foreign civilians would be 'a good way to tackle the situation'.
I’m not sure your point. It would have been easier to put down because Rwanda as a whole did not have anywhere near the weaponry and firepower of a Soviet state. People were literally being hacked to death with machetes, that’s easy to stop with a few M16s let alone more advanced weaponry. The US military was literally invading Latin American countries for much minor infractions 90 years earlier, and most European countries were just a few decades removed from being colonial regimes well practiced in putting down rebellions. They could have done something to this stop this.
I was in Rwanda when this happened. It is impossible to understand how bad it really was, without first hand experience. The Belgians are very much guilty of letting it happening.
One thing incredibly disturbing about this particular genocide is the extremely meticulous and clearly and openly pre-meditated way it was gone about. I'm sure plenty of planning, manipulating and instigating occurred with other genocides, some of which I'm already aware of in detail, but the way this video progresses, really makes this one feel different. Extra twisted and cold-blooded. Seems as if the perpetrators actively made an effort to let their victims know what was coming, and kept this moving as efficiently and mechanically as they could.
Had a friend in college who was from Rwanda. She grew up in an orphanage after watching her parents get brutally attacked with an axe to the head in their own home. I just cannot even imagine going through that and coming out the other side... like at all. She was here in the US for college. She speaks 3 languages fluently. She's a mechanical engineer now. A lovely human who's parents would be extremely proud of her just like all of her friends are now.
By some heartrending coincidence, there’s an interview with another survivor who was estimated to have been only 8 months old when the genocidaires murdered her entire family. She still has a nasty scar on her head from the machete gash as they tried to kill her also and left her for dead.
A passerby who was fleeing happened upon her, all bloodied up, and picked her up. She nearly died from inanition as the stranger who was carrying her in her own flight could not find milk to feed her. But eventually they made it across the border to neighboring Burundi. Soldiers on the Burundian side revived her, after which she and her ‘new mother’ proceeded to a refugee facility.
They stayed there for the next 8 years before finally going back to Rwanda. But then she couldn’t even begin to locate any surviving relatives because at 8 months old she didn’t even know what her original name had been. Obviously couldn’t recall anything from the period before the genocide. Her adoptive mother had no information about her either as she just hurriedly picked her out of a pile of dead bodies in the rush to escape the killers on her heels.
@John Arsebuckle For Americans, anyone who knows more than one language, it's noteworthy. I only know one. I've tried to learn other languages, it's not easy for me. Most Americans are easily impressed by people who speak more than one or two languages. We aren't taught other languages. Especially at such young ages. I should also point out that most Americans my age don't know a lot about things like the Genocide in Rwanda. Her telling me about her experience was eye opening. I had heard of the Rwandan Genocide but knew nothing about it. So I also think that it is not a bad thing to share so that more people know. I have asked her if it is ok for me to share her story sometimes. She said that I could and told me that she would like for people to know her story and to know more about her home.
I would be just as proud of a white friend for going through such a traumatic childhood to go on and move to a whole other country on their own to go to school to become a mechanical engineer... not a "mechanic" although there isn't a thing wrong with working on cars or machines for a living. I actually misspoke in my initial post, she is in biochemical engineering, not mechanical engineering. I can (and do) brag about one of my white friends who had a great childhood and became a mechanical engineer but it's not relevant here. He has no connection to Rwanda. I have a white friend who's a pilot. Any chance I get, I brag about his accomplishments. I've got a white friend that's a doctor and another that is a nurse in a very difficult specialty. I brag about them all the time. But again, it's not relevant here so why would I talk about them here? I've also got a friend who put herself through college while pregnant and already caring for one kid on her own. She had a difficult childhood and has worked so hard for everything she has. But again, none of that is relevant to this video that I commented on.
I'm not bragging about my friend's accomplishments because she's black or because she's from an African country. I brag about her because she is a good human being, she is very smart, and I am proud of her. I'd brag on her regardless of her history because she is a sweet person and because an engineering degree program is not an easy path. I am not great at complicated math and chemistry. I definitely could not do it myself. My degree program was not as hard as hers.
@John Arsebuckle
Mechanical Engineer, not mechanic. In Rwanda the Tutsis and Hutus speak the same language, so that’s one language. Am guessing the other 2 are French and English. She wasn’t being racist, however you were being stupid, but then your name says it all.
Dummy.
In Africa I've seen refugees that have never been to school that can speak 5 languages fluently
@John Arsebuckle Wow, your humble and generously gracious. I hope to one day be as friendly and open minded as you are. I'm proud to be able to comment on the words of the great JOHN ARSEBUCKLE! 👍 GREAT JOB!
There, was that enough praise for you? I'm sorry your family never said that to you.
A farmer was asked why he brutally butchered his neighbors family with a machete? He answered, "Because everyone else was doing it." This leads me to believe that anyone is capable of anything under the right set of circumstances.
Our environment has a really big impact on how we behave
Lots of psychology research on regular people has proven this 100%
That's what will happen to our country if we don't work together and get our shit and priorities straight.
@@mikebeesley5458 true and very important words
Hence, nazism
A buddy of mine was a Canadian peacekeeper there. He rarely talks about it. But on the very few occasions he brought it up it is heartbreaking, horrific and utterly shocking. A true failure of humanity. The world watched. And did nothing for weeks.
They mobilised everyone of the race to perform the genocide, I doubt anyone can do anything.
You send ground troops and they risk being overwhelmed and murdered, you bomb the Hutu villages and they call it crime against humanity.
You can’t blame the world for inaction for something African tribal mindsets have been doing to each other for thousands of years
Tell your friend thank you, truly.
I'm from Saskatchewan. I served in the RCR. As you undoubtedly know, Another Tragedy was the Airborne torturing a young Somali to death. This was a Direct! Result of their CO essentially putting a bounty on the heads of any Somali civilians caught on His base!
Only 3 enlisted men were punished.
The End.
@@fangslaughter1198 I don’t know what the punishment was, but at least there was one. On the French side no one gets punished. To illustrate, below is a quote from a 2005 book (pp. 207-208) by an author named Pean, who was decorated by French president François Hollande for his writings on French politics:
“At the end of 1992, beginning of 1993, a section of the 21st RIMa [a regiment of French Marines], based in Fréjus [France] was assigned to guard the airport [at Kigali, Rwanda, under the genocidal regime which they were assisting]. One night part of the section left on a spree with *a military truck* to go to a nightclub called Kigali Night [owned by the son of Rwanda’s president].
Upon exiting the club, the soldiers forced a Rwandan woman *into the truck.* Two of them raped her and then "worked" her genital organs *with bayonets* while the other soldiers refrained from intervening.
Then *they dumped her naked on the side of the road.* The girl was taken to Kigali hospital. On the admission log, it was reportedly stated: _"Raped by French soldiers.”_
Even before word spread about the incident, two provosts [i.e. military police] took up the matter and *notified both* Lieutenant-Colonel Boré, second-in-command for the 21st RIMa, and Colonel Robardey, Deputy Defense Attaché [at the French embassy in Kigali]. At this stage the provosts were encouraged to continue their investigation.
These two military police officers did indeed continue their investigations. They received the complaint from the victim who also requested *compensation* (which she obtained), and took into custody the perpetrators and their accomplices. Then, they contacted the prosecutor at the trial court in Draguignan [France].
The assistant prosecutor there told one of the provosts that the soldiers weren’t on duty when they committed the crime and therefore he would not take the case. He advised the French military police officer to take the case to a local court in Rwanda. The officer argued to the French prosecutor that *the prisons in Kigali were not good* ... Eventually, the file was indeed sent to Draguignan.
But the case has been buried ... At the time of my book going to press, I have not discovered the details and mechanisms of how *the case was made to disappear.*
Some [French] generals have pointed to François Léotard as the ultimate person responsible for *burying the case.* At the time he was the Mayor of Fréjus, and later became the French Minister of Defense.
He reacted very strongly when I brought up the facts to him: “I was never informed of this horrible crime. I hope that the criminals will be prosecuted and I encourage you to continue your investigation. We need to know who covered up this crime. I am appalled at what you are telling me. Keep me informed."
A quarter of an hour later, François Léotard called me back after coming into contact with François Lépine, who was then his chief of staff. Lépine had just told him that he had no recollection of the case either.
General Philippe Mansuy, who was then chief of staff to Admiral Lanxade, himself chief of the general staff for the French armed forces, had heard about the case, but had not dealt with it. “Militarily, it did have consequences. There was an investigation and some sanctions. In terms of military ethics, it could not be allowed to pass ..."
Captain Filipi, the deputy chief officer of the 21st RIMa corps, was clearly not aware of this case.
After some research, he told me that the regiment kept its records for only ten years and was therefore *unable to tell* me what penalties had been imposed.”
[In the aftermath of the assault, French military officers together with the Rwandan police (exclusively Hutu) found the victim (who was Tutsi) in a hospital where she lay agonizing. They told her never to talk about the incident. In return they gave her 5K Rwandan francs, the equivalent of $20. That was the *“compensation”.* They also told her to leave the city and warned her not to come back. She was taken back to her rural village where she died of her wounds.]
@@hkchan1339 you gas the regions with canabinoid 1 which was developed by the usa army in the 60-70s. It is a chemical close to thc but 1000x as strong but also still safe compared to most fake weed today. Make the people unable to move in a coordinated fashion. Make people have spontaneous feelings of connection. Screw with their emotions and maybe cause some to turn against their leaders
Saw an interview of a Rwandan genocide survivor. She witnessed a mother get decapiated while her baby was feeding on her. It was a very heavy listen and made me realise how hopeless humanity can get at times
The baby was still feeding off the decapitated mother too she said after
Bla..
@dontfindmeples Both of those were the fault of government. In Rwanda it was "so wer killing our neighbors and their families, cool!"
@dontfindmeples No. You are wrong. The situations are completely different whether you acknowledge it or not.
@@purplepurple8179 If they're different why are they both labelled as genocides? Oh, because genocide is genocide.
When a leader creates an enemy and then pins your problems on them you need to start paying very close attention. Its the oldest trick in the book and yet it never fails those with nefarious intentions. It is our species' Achilles heel... :(
The Unvaccinated
@@NeiyMaritzThe Vaccinated
@@ADavid42 No, you probably life in Florida, go visit Germany and you know what I mean
@@NeiyMaritz America, LoL
I am really astonished by how easy people are hooked to hating a group of people. In my home country (I am happy I do not live there anymore) it is the gypsy minority that is targeted (nowadays alongside refugees). Based on statistics, every person belonging to the group is immediately judged. No one attempts to look at the action of each individual separately. Judging a group instead of each individual separately is way easier, but it is not something that should be done by any human that consider themselves part of the developed world.
Went to Rwanda in 2004, just less than a decade after the genocide... went to Kigali and Butarre I think it was. Was very eerie feeling being there as I couldn't help but wonder what role everyone I'd come into contact with had had in that. The person driving the taxi, working at the hotels, restaurants, etc.. .people were really friendly and it was actually pretty safe compared to some of the other neighboring countries but the thought was always there given almost the entire population was involved in some way....
It’s the same feeling many Americans have walking the streets of the inner city, where police homicide clearance rates are abysmally low.
I get the same feeling when I'm around older Australians... who were more or less involved or atleast witnesses to the Indigenous Australian Genocide.
I’m thinking exactly this.
Many of the offenders of this genocide are still alive. So many feelings and questions regarding that
@@mrebbesen there is always 2 sides in a story, I encourage you to educate yourself about this topic, nobody is an angel in that conflict, there might be( the hutu and tutsi civilians who were not involved in politics). The genocide was preventable through negotiations and but they choose violence
Many of the perps are shielded against court trial by Western governments. Detailed in this article: _"Five genocide suspects who sought refuge in UK run up £5m legal aid bill"._
I really appreciate Simon's method of ending videos like this. No social media protocols like "like and subscribe." He just wants to tell the story.
Does he really need to by now?
@@Arkanadra I never said he did. No one said he did. Just appreciate that, unlike his other channels, he doesn't do that with this subject matter...
I agree. It lets the story sink in.
Sparing himself the old "I won't ask whether you enjoyed this video..." from his other channels simply because it would always apply on this channel...
Good move
@@Arkanadra of course not. We are beholden to him like the Disciples were to Christ. Where he goes, we follow.
Prague
As a Rwandese who was born in 98, I cannot imagine what my parents who are survivors went through.
If they were hutus then they not lucky survivor they are murderers.
I anti hutu racist after this video. I mean rape squads??? Those are indeed the inferior race
It is weird to think that you escaped so much horror by not being born a year earlier
Maybe they participated??
@@socialistrepublicofvietnam1500 I have an overwhelming amount of survivors guilt. Both my parents lost all of their siblings. I always wonder where my uncle, aunts and cousins would be in life. I feel a burden to over achieve to justify my existence.
@@johnboy2349 both of my parents were Tutsis, if you can’t tell by my pfp- I’m 6’3, lightskin with a narrow frame. I definitely wouldn’t have made it. My parents are the same.
I remember hearing an interview with a Hutu militia member who participated in the massacre at the church. He said something that translated to "we were possessed. When you're controlled by the devil, you're not yourself." I couldn't help but think if his reasoning allows him to stay a free man, I wonder what he'd think of I hacked everyone he loved to bite sized pieces with a machete and said sorry,.that damn devil had me. I wasn't myself. But you understand, right?
That's how people tend to rationalize mass hysteria. All genocides are basically conducted by population en-masse,everyone is ought to blame for it in some way or the other.
hate is the devil that possessed them. hatred, scaffolded by dehumanizing propaganda from some very committed ethnonationalist organizations.
@@dutt_arka agreed. in countries that commit wholesale genocide, there are hardly innocents among the perpetrators. to be able to commit such violence, it must be first normalized, which requires the consent of the people or main ethnic/religious group in power
If he admitted the truth, that he was responsible for his choices and actions, he'd probably never be able to look at himself in the mirror ever again.
Many prominent Nazi members responsible for the Holocaust and the scourging of Eastern Europe claimed "they were under orders". Makes you wonder which is actually worse out of the two.
I met and worked with a woman who hid under the bodies of her family for 5 days. Thank you very much for mentioning the HIV rape squads. The widows and rape survivors were then looked upon as “damaged” and many had to turn to prostitution to survive, but therefore also spreading the disease. 27 years later, the land and people are still ravaged. Much of the wildlife was killed, people are still struggling but from what I saw, the people are reuniting. I worked with Hutu, Tutsi and one Twa woman. Neither Tutsi nor Hutu discussed who was who, it was the epitome of bad taste to ask, although it was obvious the woman was Twa and she was open and proud about it.
It's forbidden to use those ethnic words Wikepedia says. "Divisionism" is a crime.
People always want to ignore situations like this all over Africa, where black people were extremely racist, to other black people. But hey, it's only white people that are racist...
@MrSpectre287 don't know.
@@MrSpectre287 it’s worked in Germany so far
@@fort809 That shit didn't work in India. Dalit folks are still oppressed, even after their names changed from Shudra, to Harijan, then to Dalit (Dalit means crushed)
I remember sitting with my newborn in my arms, watching a news report in Finland. The picture of a dead child on a road, the baby no older than the one I was nursing, just in front of a pile of dozens of bodies from the village it had lived in with its parents. It is something I don´t think I will ever forget.
😪
I remember this unfolding as a 5 yo and being shocked by what I saw and heard on the news. It has stuck with me to this day and it completely breaks my heart to think about all those poor innocent people who were so brutally murdered on all sides😪😪😪
The most horrifying thing I have ever seen was a body with its head separated at a place called dinsoor in south Somalia. A it was so bad that a pregnant woman fainted and miscarried. The man was killed by an alshabab commander because he refused to marry off his daughter to one of them. 2006 to 2013 was hell on earth in rural south Somalia.
you have your own problem in finland with muslims worrie about yourself
@@whitedom2041 wtf
@@PsionicBardLady no my cousin did from 6 years old until 11
My best friend and her brother were adopted from Rwanda. She was 5 and her brother was 2. Her mother hid them under the bed, baskets were just under it to hide them from view. She still could see her mother. She watched as her mother was hacked to death. My friend managed to keep her baby brother quiet. They were later found by friendly people and sent to a orphanage and later came to the US upon adoption. We were watching "Hotel Rwanda" in history class and despicable some of the boys were laughing, my friend ran out crying and shaking and because I was the TA I went after her to comfort her. The teacher didn't know her past and came to chastise her and so I took it on myself to tell him that she experienced the genocide without going into detail. He let her off for the week we covered it and she went to the library instead of class.
Jesus Christ I'm so sorry your friend went through all that no 5 year old should have to be forced to witness that and those Boys were fucking ignorant and nimrods I hope she didn't let their stupidity affect her. How is she now if u don't mind me politely asking?
🧢
Thank you. We need to hear these things... and thank you for being such a good friend to her
Your friend is definetly a brave and a beautiful person
That teacher is properly useless and a disgrace to his profession.
I had a rwandan family living next to my home when I was a kid. We were good friends. The two kids were born right when the genocide began and their uncle (who became their adoptive father after their parents were killed) managed to get them both safely to Canada. Married a canadian woman. They still live there. Really nice people. I was very sad when I got old enough to understand what they went through.
It’s terrible whites did this to them
I am glad they could find a new life here in Canada. Makes me proud that my country at least somewhat provides shelter and safety to those from terrible places and circumstances
People there who technically live in the same country, but are in a different tribe and your tribe is at war with them and you are in a bad mood, hey, why not?
Spoke to a Rwandan Canadian . The guilt, sad look and repent in his face when I asked about genocide is very moving. He said " everyone was involved, we just couldn't help it"
1:10 - Chapter 1 - Rwanda
3:35 - Chapter 2 - The rwandan revolution & independence
5:45 - Chapter 3 - The roots of genocide
8:15 - Chapter 4 - The UN
9:55 - Chapter 5 - 04/07/1994
11:20 - Chapter 6 - 100 Days
13:35 - Chapter 7 - The end
This is why I keep saying that the US media stoking racial hatred is dangerous af.
Yes Ben Shapiro and the likes shouldn't make huge deals about lets say CRT
@Gwyn and Gold Except it isn't and never has been taught outside of law school and certain graduate studies.
@@IanAlcorn Laudin County seems to prove you wrong
I agree Fox "news" has been stoking the flames of hatred for far too long now.
@@paulthepainter2366 are you joking?? CRT is perpetrating said hatred. The goal is to care less about race, not focus on it
Had an uncle who served in Vietnam and then went private sector in Africa and the Middle East for a while before he left and warfighting in a crisis of faith and became an outspoken anti-war advocate in response. His words . "The only difference between a diamond and a dollar is what part of the world is on fire." I still think about that quote a lot to this day.
can you explain the meaning of the quote? (sorry english is not my first language and i don't understand all the nuances).
@@brunettesuspecte African nations who ask for military assistance have a reputation for paying in diamonds rather than hard currency bc it's more valuable to them. Versus any number of the European conflicts retaining active duty or PMCs funnel millions in cash. I interpreted it was his way of saying "war never changes"
I've met the UNAMIR commander Canadian General Roméo Dallaire. It's clear from his speeches and written works how defeated he felt. There was very little he could do to stop the violence because the US was vetoing any Security Council resolution that would have given him use of force authorization. He suffers from PTSD and has openly discussed his suicidal thoughts in the years following the genocide. I highly recommend his two books Shake Hands With the Devil, which directly addresses Rwanda, and his second book They Fight Like Soldiers and Die Like Children which deals with the wider issue of child soldiers.
Basically, because of UN's orders that were forbiding any kind of direct intervention, the peace keepers under Dallaire's commandment ended up being passive spectators of this genocide. I'm a Québécois and I dated a girl that fled Ruwanda to escape the genocide (don't remember if she was hutu or tutsi) and how many times she told me what she'd witness.....I really dunno how she kept her sanity though.....This brought me to read J'ai serré la main du Diable (shake hands with the Devil) by Dallaire and I just read it once and it took me forever to get to the end even if I'm a fast reader because this book was simply too hard to read with all the accounts of rapes and murders and how useless Dallaire felt being the witness of this nighmare that occured 24/7. For 100 days.
I've read both his books and he was the commencement speaker at my high school graduation assembly before the actual ceremony for our parents. Got the chance to meet him and shake his hand and speak with him for a few minutes. Lovely man who clearly tried his best but he made it clear that the Genocide was a part of his career he regrets as try as he might he couldn't stop the killing
generals obey orders commanders do what needs done and to hell with the orders!! clearly he's a general and not a commander!!
@@keithmoore5306 that's not how it works in reality. You disobey an order at his rank the best you get is to be replaced in the field but more likely get "allowed" to resign. Let alone the fact that without support he'd have just got his men killed and made the situation worse for everyone involved.
@@keithmoore5306 That’s not how it works buddy. Without authorisation any military action will be considered as insubordination, treason or as a war crime. Don’t disrespect every single soldier in that situation and I advise you not to repeat that statement in a face-to-face conversation.
The 90's were such a polarised decade. They were either dreamy and nostalgic or bloody and nightmarish.
Bosnia, Rwanda and Chechnya. I wish the credits just rolled when the wall fell in '89.
Bosnia and Chechnya happened because of Russia. Russia is a cancer on humanity
@@lolmao500 am not a pro USSR, but many of the older generation blame Gorbachev for the current state of affairs of many or all of the former soviet nations. Also, many of those nations still want to reform USSR to thus day.
It mirrored the 20's in that way. The privileged classes enjoyed unprecedented success while the rest struggled and resentment bubbled below the surface. It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times.
To call either period the "calm before the storm" would be misleading. The storm had already broken, just not for everyone.
@Tony Wagoner it for sure was genocide
@Tony Wagoner maybe Tsarist Russia's fault, back in the Balkan wars... but yes, certainly not the fault of the USSR...
I think it is very close to if not an outright genocide in places, but, within what was a huge violent war....
I worked with a man who had lived through this. PTSD to a tragic extreme. Lost his entire family. He was really nice.
I couldn't even live on after something like that. The survivors of such events are the bravest people on earth.
a survivor came to speak at my middle school about the horrors he saw, his arms were amputated with machetes and he was left to bleed out in agony but he survived. i don’t remember much about the story about how he survived or what else he saw but i do remember that he taught himself how to paint and was very upbeat and kind
I have served with an infantry regiment with the British Army for 19 years, I have served in both Iraq and Afghan on multiple tours BUT I have never seen anything so horrific than we I got posted to Rwanda on a humanitarian mission as a boy soldier. The things I saw will haunt me for the rest of my life.
30 years before your time fellow British were just as appalled by this same genocide. “A Member of Parliament for north Devon in the British House of Commons once got to his feet to ask the UK Foreign Minister *on an urgent issue.*
‘Would he instruct the British delegation at the United Nations to raise immediately, in the Security Council, as a threat to peace, the killing of members of the Tutsi Tribe by the Rwanda Republican Government, as a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of *the Crime of Genocide…* does the Honourable Gentleman not feel that Her Majesty’s Government should be doing more to stir the conscience of the world against these barbaric acts?’
The genocide was also condemned by the English philosopher and historian Bertrand Russell who called it *‘the most horrible and systematic human massacre we have had occasion to witness* since the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis.’ All this was in December 1963.” [A. Wallis 2017]
But nothing was ever done. It was all swept under the proverbial carpet, and the systematic murders were allowed to continue. Today, people should be shocked that the government in England still insists on protecting genocide suspects from being taken to court, as detailed in this article: _"Five genocide suspects who sought refuge in UK run up £5m legal aid bill"._
@@rutonde wait I’m confused. You said that people were calling the government to task about the crimes in 1963 but it happened in 94 no? Was their another Genocide At that time?
@@kaeade4290 Yes there was. The genocide era in Rwanda lasted several decades from 1959 to 1994. The 1963-1964 episode was widely reported in the news, for example in this article dated Feb 11th, 1964:
The Geneva Journal (Switzerland)
*Genocide in Africa*
(From our correspondent in London)
An *organized attempt at total extermination, A TRUE GENOCIDE,* is systematically ongoing against the 250,000 members of the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda. The figure of 30,000 dead first cited was perhaps exaggerated. That of 15,000, given by the Prime Minister of Burundi, Mr. Ngendandumwe, upon his arrival in Nairobi on February 4, is around ten thousand lower than those *[i.e. 25,000]* reported by missionaries and other Europeans residing in the tiny republic, which has about 2,500,000 inhabitants. Whatever it really is, one shudders at the thought that no one is doing anything from the outside to put an end to this dreadful butchery, and that international opinion is not awake to the situation.
The Hutus *decimate entire families, kill men, women and children without discrimination. They mutilate their victims and often they throw their corpses into the Rusizi river, blocking it in places. The massacres continue, according to Christian missionaries, at the average of a thousand a day.*
Appeals have been made to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and to the governments of Tanganyika and Uganda, but no effective intervention has taken place. President Gregoire Kayibanda and his Hutus, blinded by hatred, appear *determined to annihilate the entire Tutsi tribe.*
The two or three British newspapers which took the trouble to follow the unfolding of the terrible tragedy suggest a possible solution. In addition to an investigation that could be carried out by the Red Cross, they believe that the United Nations should act urgently to obtain either the evacuation of the Tutsi population to neighboring countries, or the creation, under United Nations protection, of a Tutsi reservation in Rwanda. Either way, close international surveillance would be necessary to prevent Kayibanda and the Hutus from continuing their horrific crimes.
@@lh1822 No, boy soldier means I joined the British Army when I was 17.
Hope it was worth minimum wage
Isn’t it sadly funny how, as you described in your conclusion, two groups, who are ostensibly so similar, can have such a deep chasm constructed between them, that hate and conflict seem to be inevitable.
This goes to many conflicts around the world, between neighbouring tribes, religions or ethnic groups, who an outsider could barely tell apart, who have deeply entrenched desire to exterminate the other group, and often a perceived religious zeal to justify it.
Opression leads to hate, yes.
My mom is Rwandan and she'd never told me how exactly the genocide happened. All I knew is that she was Tutsi and it was a horrendously traumatic experience so I appreciate this video shedding light on the history.
My great aunt Felicia worked for a Rwandan official in the 60s and was assassinated after a car chase. As disturbing as it sounds my gran was always grateful that her sister had a relatively quick departure from this world, as you rightly mentioned people were butchered in unspeakable ways. Whoever said "war is hell" wasn't wrong, the depraved and inhuman things people will do to each other in the name of politics/religion is sickening. People are capable of great things and, unfortunately, terrible things also. Thankfully Rwanda is becoming a hugely popular place for people to visit nowadays, I hear it's one of the safest countries in Africa to visit which is wonderful news. The people of Rwanda deserve a positive future, onwards and upwards 🏴❤🇷🇼
sorry to hear about your aunt felicia
Is the discrimination against Tutsis still strong?
discrimination is punishable by the law people see themselves as Rwandans now the older generation still is suffering from PTSD they also somehow don't like eachother lowkey but nothing serious to cause a problem a larger population of the new generation don't like to be called tutsis or hutus so everyone is one and just want to work live their lives in peace @@eho6380
Every time I hear about events like this, all I can think is "how could people do this to their neighbors??"
And then I look around today and see how it happens.
I look at my neighbors that poisoned the stray I was feeding because they didn't like cats and think "Yeah, makes sense to me."
@ see... The raw love and compassion it takes for a person to feed a stray cat and have real feelings for that animal are so starkly contrasted by people who would kill that cat, just because. Humans are capable of so much... Good or bad.
@@danelynch7171 I'd never harm an animal, hell I even escort flies safely outside. But people? I don't have the same level of empathy. I understand what happened on a visceral level because given the opportunity to avenge that cat - I can't say 100% I wouldn't do it. People are the worst thing on this planet, I am not excluded.
@ eh... People are also some of the best things on this planet.. Do you think animals have the same capacity for empathy as humans? Do you think animals have the ability to love and cherish each other the way we as humans do?
@@danelynch7171 Having been around dogs and rabbits all my life I can say with absolute certainty they have more empathy. A couple of months back I had a migraine from hell, and my bunny jumps on the couch and starts licking my forhead then nuzzles up beside me. She knew I was in pain and attempted to help. When I had my last dog, he didn't quite understand the concept of me pointing at something, everytime I pointed my finger he would lick it because he thought I hurt it. If you truly spend time with animals you'll end up being horrified by humanity treats them.
If anyone is interesting in learning more about the UN Peacekeepers’ actions (or inactions) during this tumultuous time, I recommend reading Shake Hands With the Devil by Roméo Daillaire.
@Gwyn and Gold Is it, though? Gangs aren't known for their lack of efficency xD
Out of curiosity, I often see people chastising the UN, what would you have them do? I'm not trying to be rude, I genuinely want to know what they could do without resorting to killing. Unless you think just outright killing the perpetrators is the right course of action, which I'm no inherently against but I image that would have an absolute ton of blowback.
@Gwyn and Gold they're more like a gang from a musical. They have a lot to say but we all know they aren't throwing any real punches.
@Gwyn and Gold Nato is a military gang, UN is more like the bullies, the school director told to do the peacekeeping on the play yard as a punishment.
@@R3demptionzz The man who represented the Czech Republic at the UN provided a vivid answer to your question even as the events were occurring in 1994:
“My delegation is troubled that it has taken so long for the Secretary General [i.e. Top UN boss] to use this description [i.e. genocide against the Tutsi population] in his reports on which the Security Council bases its work *so heavily.*
We are equally confused that even before the outbreak of the holocaust on April 6 [1994], UNAMIR and its representatives _had been aware_ for example of inflammatory broadcasts of the local radio, of suspicious movements of armed groups, of an inflow of arms into Rwanda.
My delegation feels that if these facts had been forcefully communicated to the Security Council as soon as the Secretary became aware of them, we might have been a step further by today.”
The way Simon ends these videos is just chilling. I mean it's appropriate to end these dark stories not with a plug or an "ending" but also damn, it really just leaves a shiver how he just walks off.
Massive credit to Fasih, the editor for Into the Shadows for that.
I got the pilot back from him, and was like "Hey, I think you left a bit in at the end."
He never removed it. Just left it there.
He was right.
What a legend.
@@IntotheShadows Maybe you have done it on some of your channels, but there are too many to know.. Have you introduced your whole team somewhere?
It’s really the perfect way to end something like this....because what is really left to say?
@@IntotheShadows Simon, you have to do a Biographics about Gen. Romeo Dallaire, it would be a fitting follow up to this
I do wonder how much of this is affecting Simon, this and his Casual Criminalist show... Might need to balance this with a - how humans can be good to one another channel
I am from Uganda, was only 10yrs old at that time. Watched the news & also would hear my parents talk about what was going on in Rwanda but couldn't really understand fully.
But what I do vividly remember is we stopped eating fresh fish from Lake Victoria bcoz of the countless stories of body parts found in the bellies of the fish caught during that period.
It was years later when I got to fully grasp the horrors that happened to our neighbours!
It was a sad time!
I hope you are well. peace
Go back
I had a work colleague that was originally from Rwanda. I always wanted to know more but I didn't want to ask any uncomfortable questions and bring up any bad memories he might have had. Thanks for covering this.
You did the right thing.
If you want to broach the subject just simply ask them "Hey, are you doing OK? I just watched a video that went fairly in depth on the Rwandan Genocide and I know you're originally from there. I'm not prying. I just wanted to make sure you're ok."
@A Huddleston You don’t always know who you’re dealing with. Just plainly keep in mind that while the victims were from Rwanda, so were the rapists and mass murderers. To complicate things further, those criminals do have children and relatives. Even if the latter are innocent of any crimes themselves, they may nonetheless sympathize and support their criminal parents or relatives. Caution is necessary.
you could just ask, the person you are asking has the rights to say "no"
well he is most likely no tutsi
I met two people from there but they completely justified it. Basically they said this happened throughout all human history and often times is all that can be done to advance a society quicker, wich then saves people more in the long run (basically that some ends justify the means), and that us westerners have always done this but have a problem with it now because is them doing it, not us; and for us to search how well Rwanda is in comparison with other African nations if we don’t believe…
This is probably the best accounting of the facts that led to the Rwandan genocide that I've heard or read. I was 23 when this happened and I had friends in the US military that were in Somalia. Every member of the military I know says that east Africa is the worst place to be stationed.
Got fixed by RDF and Kagame. Clean safe country now. Can’t say the same for Somalia
africa is the worst continent for almost every possible classification, so it make sense.
north africa would have been ok but then islam arrived.
@@Tonyx.yt. Latin America is more violent than Africa. North Western and central Africa normally have more violent conflicts compared to east Africa. Somalia is in the Horn of Africa while East Africa is Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, South Sudan, Burundi.
East Africa in general is much safer than other regions of Africa.
@@markm2092 Latin America has more violence due to the drug trade, since is a major producer and close to the major markets, but normally that's the deal, if you stay out of production, distribution and or commercialization of drugs then you are ok in most latin countries, i.e Argentina, Perú, Ecuador, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, etc. There are some countries that ARE really dangerous but it's mostly Honduras, El Salvador in central America, but for the most part latin america is pretty functional as societies go, on the other hand some African countries are a living hell to this day, I don't think there's a real comparison between the continents, because circumstances and living standards, culture and so on are so different. Africa is a huge place, 40 some countries and lots of them are really different from each other
@@TheWallki I understand what you’re saying but I was commenting to tony who said east Africa is most dangerous place to be deployed which isn’t true. He probably meant Horn of Africa as in Somalia. Because east Africa is pretty safe.
The ending gave me chills. Thanks for leaving this one without an outro
I swear this man is monopolizing UA-cam, he's all I see now on a million different channels covering all sorts of different topics and I'm all for it. Keep it up.
I went on from here to watch a couple of interviews from survivors who were just kids at the time. I don't think there's any way to truly understand how horrible it must have been without having actually been there and lived through it. All I know is that these people are a million times stronger than I am.
I remember watching it on the news as a kid. However the UN is a complete joke, not only here, the actually FAILED with all the missions they have been given. Couple of years back a few military here in the Netherlands were charged because of their participation in the UN during their Serbia failure and genocide.... ironically western politicians now want the UN to take over ALL governments in the world, to be a one world government.... a group of people that have a history of incompetence all the way to their foundation.... what possibly could go wrong....
If i remember correctly, this was the incident the UN debated if it was genocide until it was over. So instead of doing something, they debated the meaning of a word as if they said it was genocide , the UN charter says they have to intervene. And the US not doing something goes hand in hand with people saying the US is not the world police. It a no win situation.
The US is not the world police, we simply can’t be and stay economically stable, the UN is supposed to be in that role, that’s why the UN was created.
@@Master_Yoda1990 And yet the US has out-sized influence in the UN. Much of the reason the UN couldn't be more effective in Rwanda was because the US kept voting against it.
@@Master_Yoda1990 Perhaps not the best argument, given the US will go against what you said whenever it chooses. To say you are inconsistent would sum it up nicely, especially as US action is always linked to US enrichment, be it political power or resources, no matter which wankers are in charge.
@@QBCPerdition I think that also goes along with my complaint of US should not be the world police
@@owenshebbeare2999 that maybe the goal, but rarely the outcome on long drawn out wars, look at Vietnam, the country definitely wasn’t enriched in that conflict, same with the 20 years in Afghanistan.
One of my St. John Ambulance cadet mentors here in Australia was a doctor who went over there to help out the peacekeeping forces and man did he have some absolutely shocking stories to tell... Even hearing about it from his own mouth, it just seemed inconceivable that such things could still occur not ten years before I'd met him.
Nightmare fuel of the highest order.
I stayed at Hôtel Des Mille Collines for almost two weeks while in Rwanda. The hotel is very nice. I absolutely loved being in Rwanda. The food is great, and the people are wonderful. Rwanda takes security and education very seriously; I admire the country for its principles. The Genocide memorial in Kigali was a very spiritual-heavy place.
Simon's range is amazing. Deadly serious pieces like this, fun pieces where you learn something, and Brain Blaze where he just...well, I still don't know what he does. And he does it all convincingly. If there's someone else on UA-cam that has this range, I'm not aware of it.
I think Thoughty2 could pull it off if he ever franchised. He certainly covers a broad enough range of subjects currently to compete with Simon.
wtf are you even speaking?
Admittedly, I'm not a fan of the conversational commentary Simon inserts into his Brain Blaze videos, because they make the video longer and make me feel like I'm getting the info from my ADHD brother, but I know everyone has their own style of preference.
In my high school world history class we watched a movie about the Rwandan Genocide but were given absolutely zero context for it. We weren't told even one one-hundredth of what this sixteen minute covered during the two one-hour-long class periods we watched the movie. I didn't even really get that it was a real thing and not some hypothetical 'this is something that could happen'. Then we went back to our mostly european based history lessons. I'm glad Simon has such a well put together video about this so I can finally understand what that movie was supposed to tell me.
That movie told you. "hey, stay out of this African mess white boy" 😂
Your high school sounds like mine. We were assigned to read the book "Animal Farm" and were given a very ind-depth worksheet about it, asking us to give historical analysis, though we were a class of kids who had never heard the name Stalin in our lives. We were not even informed the book had anything to do with the USSR!
@@mostskillful6672😂😂😂
maybe your teacher knew nothing about it and didn't want to research, lol. my history teacher (australia) said "the battle of stalingrad, yeah, that happened around... here..." *points to a map of Poland during the First World War*
I was born in Rwanda in 95 and had no idea.. about a lot of this. This one touched me on a personal level Simon. Thank you for the in-depth context. Great video, same as always! 🙏🏾💯
That's really interesting. Does that mean the horrors of the genocide that happened in your country has been forgotten by the next (your) generation?
@@WaddedBliss That’s a great question. But difficult and almost impossible to answer for myself since my experience itself is different than most kids growing up in Rwanda or even other refugees.
We left Rwanda when I was 9 months old and fled to Uganda where my sister was born. We moved again to Kenya where I grew up until 2004 when we came to America. But even while in Kenya, we were always blessed to be associated with the UNICEF through my father and his work so we had access to opportunities many refugees didn’t. Even as we left Kenya, there were jealous neighbors we were wary of that were killing my mom’s chickens out of spite lol seems like we’ve been running my whole life.
Education was always a huge part of my life so I only learned english(and some french) and though it was easy assimilating into American culture once we got here in 04, I lost all real connections to Rwanda besides my parents speaking our language at home and family members popping up once in awhile. To this day I still can’t speak Kinyarwanda even though I understand it. My mom hates when I reply to her in English but it’s really her fault! Lol sorry for the tangents
@@WaddedBliss But then again, with access to the internet and our older generation; we have always been and will always be aware somewhat of the tragedies. My mom still has PTSD from those times so it’s not something I bring up often unless she does you know. I kinda don’t even like hearing the stories because she’s so numb to the senseless loss of life she witnessed and along with other things. Soon as she got here she started up a refugee Women organization called Women for Women coalition as her way of coping for years.
Thanks so much for your posts.
@@WaddedBliss hahaha thank you for your geniune interest and inquiry!
This is exactly how my grandma told the story of what really happened and what she saw, word for word. She is a Tutsi, and hearing her recount those events is both heartbreaking and a testament to her resilience. Thank you for shedding light on this truth. It’s important the world remembers.
I remember all this happening and asked my Dad why New Zealand didn't send peacekeeper troops in so we could help. My Dad just looked sad and said we could send every soldier we had and it wouldn't have made a difference. The population of Rwanda was at least 50 times our own. I cried. Thank-you for telling this story with such compassion.
My uncle was in the US Marines at the time I asked him the same question, he said "Lack of political willpower"
New Zealand's population was 3.6 million in 1994 while Rwanda's was 5.9 million. Both are tiny countries.
@@samaalethespacepirate8342 I've obviously misremembered this entirely. My Dad wouldn't have got the populations wrong like that. Now I am left to wonder what catastrophe event he was talking about. God knows there are plenty of candidates.
NZ could have sent an Infantry Battalion Group and ENDED the Genocide within two weeks of arriving. NZ was the Chair of the UN Security Coucil at the time and pushed for military intervention but could not get the other members to even agree that it was a Genocide. The actual word was never used. Too scary. NZ did what it could and I'm sure the troops would have cleared it all up in no time but politicians always get in the way. Most of the murders were carried out by civilian militias only armed with machetes. 1,000 Kiwi soldiers would have sorted them out real quick. A very shameful failure by the UN as a whole but it wasn't NZ's fault.
@@JohnBeebe When will Politicians soon understand that putting their dicks in military operations is a surefire way to fuck things up for everyone?
You really should take a look at one of these events in Indonesian history for future episodes:
• Purgings of suspected communists in 1965-66 following September 30th Movement - the definition of "suspected communists" is so arbitrary that everyone could practically be picked on at that time. At least half a million were killed; some other estimates put the death toll in the 1 million range.
• The massacre at Santa Cruz cemetery in Dili, East Timor, in 1991. Indonesian military opened fire at pro-independence strikers, leading to at least 250 fatalities.
And the US activly helped them by making list
@@tuehojbjerg969 True that. And they basically swoop in by the time Suharto rose to power.
Keep in mind more than a few Republican politicians in the US are calling on their followers to kill their neighbors if their neighbors are suspected of being Democrats.
@Gwyn and Gold Communists won WWII and don't you forget it.
@@tuehojbjerg969 US tech companies are always happy to lend a hand, like Google in China or IBM in Germany in the 1930s/40s
Majority of world history is marred by violence and bloodshed, but this is definitely a whole different kind of horror.
Unfortunately, it's pretty standard for historical events. Humans been doing this shit to each other for as far back as we can see... This is just another horrific bump on a long, bumpy road.
I went to school with a tusty, he barely grew up outside the violence but he tells me about how it was common to see mutilated bodies, mobs violence and lynchings
@@bbgamegodpnw Tutsi
Animals kill, torture, and rape each other, but when Homo Sapiens does it, it reminds people that we are just animals.
Umm really?...Colonialism? Genociding of Native tribes all over the planet? The Nazi Holocaust alone killed at least 6 times more people than the Rwandan genocide are you kidding?
I genuinely thought nothing could bring me to tears anymore. I thought I had become truly hardened. This video did it. This video broke me. Thank you for reminding me that I am human. Thank you for reminding me that I still have a soul. Thank you for the hard work that you do Simon and team.
Roméo Dallaire’s book/memoir about the conflict was one of the hardest books I’ve ever read. I could only read a chapter at a time, if not pages, before I had to put it down to make sure I wouldn’t start screaming.
:hugs: Watching the movie about it was enough for me. I will never forget. As a Canadian, some aspects of his story were close enough to me to impress the lesson that must never be forgotten : that anyone of us can get caught up in such atrocities... and that they can - and will - happen again. Anytime, anywhere. :more hugs:
I have this book.. not picked it up yet, knowing this will be a problem
I feel bad for him. He was one of the only people who TRIED to do something, but did not have the resources to do much.
And he’s suffered from PTSD and guilt ever since.
Same here. I tried to read it a 2nd time, many years after reading it for the first time. I couldn't do it. When I first read it, it took me forever to finish it even if I'm a fast reader. I could only read 10-15 pages at the time as it was making me cry. A close friend of mine back then almost beg me to stop reading it because it was making me feel miserable
@@michaelsinger4638 Gen. Dallaire is estimated to have saved 30 000 people during those horrific 100 days.
30K (directly or indirectly, for ex. by inspiring the Ghana contingent to stand fast). He's founded an important org against child soldiering.
He is one of the very few heroes of that conflict.
I've always meant to learn more about this atrocity, so thank you for making a short but thorough summary of it and the surrounding circumstances.
Like everyone's saying- read Shake Hands With the Devil by General Dallaire. There's also a documentary and a feature film. They're not easy watches, though.
@@ShelleyScreen Damn.
I still remember watching late night news when I was 6 years old and feeling ill from the images and stories of death and rape. It's haunted me for years. I couldn't understand how people could be so evil...I still don't.
You really can't understand?
It is humanity at its worst.
Sure you can! You're just as evil! You just don't acknowledge it.
look at what happened to native Americans by whites you should know your history on the continent well enough that the evil is in you.
Umm really?...Colonialism? Genociding of Native tribes all over the planet? The Nazi Holocaust alone killed at least 6 times more people than the Rwandan genocide.
I was a very small kid when this happened, but I remember watching the news reports with my dad after he came home from work and we had finished supper.
It cemented in my mind from a very young age that humans can be the absolute worst to each other.
Sometimes in April is a phenomenal movie…Hotel Rwanda gets more recognition, but Sometimes in April is difficult to watch. It’s heartbreaking.
Yes, it is. I almost couldn't watch it all the way through, it was so painful. Another film that gets, I feel, not enough notice, is 'Beyond the Gates', with John Hurt. I've also seen two documentaries that I felt were very good: 'The Triumph of Evil', and 'Ghosts of Rwanda' - both shown on PBS.
The Hotel owner (Hotel Rwanda)
has just recently been sent to prison for life for his part in the genocide, don't believe Hollywood.
@@MrTaytersDeep What did he do?
@@MrTaytersDeep Can you just answer the question?
Robbed the people that stayed there to enter the hotel, then told the Mutu militia which rooms the Tutsi civilians were in so they could drag them out into the yard and hack them to death, especially if they didn't have any money left!
Kudos to Factboi for the sentence "it seemed as if the rules for genocide in Europe were vastly different than in Africa".
As someone who's worn a blue helmet: Those are the kind of bullshit politics that makes men come home as empty shells with dead eyes. It should be a human rights violation to tell an armed and able man to just stand down and stand by while watching unarmed men, women and children be slaughtered. There should be a deep understanding in marshal law that a man is not just allowed, but outright expected to, disobey such an order and just act as comes natural to any trained soldier. In fact, anyone who does not wish to disobey with every fibre in their body is not trustworthy of neither bearing arms nor receiving military training.
"Deployed to stand down" sums it perfectly.
Kinda reminds me of Mogadishu. When U.S. soldiers were overseeing a U.N. relief effort local militias occupied the food storages and massacred any civilians who tried to get at the food that was brought for them. The Soldiers observing were told not to do anything, as rules of engagement stated that they cant fire on them unless they themselves were being shot at. One of the things i hate the most is the bureaucracy that stagnates any effort to actually make a difference. Kind of disgusting when you think about soldiers being told not to do their job when literally witnessing inhumanity in its most primal form.
Why didn't you intervene anyway? I bet those who ordered you to stand down were 3000 miles away, sipping lattes in Washington DC. I would have stopped the killings and said if you think protecting innocent civilians is a crime,arrest me.
@@thechosenone1533 I'm going to invoke the right to not self incriminate here and just go "To the best extend of my knowledge I have never wilfully disregarded a direct order".
Balkan was a "funny" place. There was no real clear cut "good vs evil". There was only "evil vs just as evil and nobody agrees on when, why or where it all stared". Combatants were not necessarily wearing uniforms. The lines between military, militia and mafia were in constant flux. Even to those who were supposed to decisively be one or the other. However, the rules of engagement were screamingly simple for UN forces: "You may fire only when fired directly upon. And you must cease fire at the first sign of surrender or retreat." So I ever only discharged my weapon when I was *under the impression* that the muzzle blasts were facing me directly. But in the heat of battle it can be hard to tell, you know...
The rules of engagement were changed by NATO under the KFOR directive. That was my second tour. And I only signed up precisely because of the change. The new rules were equally simple: "If you see someone with guns shooting at someone without guns, fire at will. If you're being fired upon, neutralize target".... So I went back and picked up the pieces of my soul I had left behind. I may also have cancelled a few life subscriptions in the process. But in the heat of battle it can be hard to tell, you know...
But just so we're clear on the legalities of what you're suggesting: When in service killing without orders is, under Martial law, homicide of the first degree. That is life in prison or the death penalty depending on state/country. So it boils down to "their life or mine" but in a sickeningly reversed fashion in this particular situation. Talk is cheap, and anyone can say what you just said. In fact many have. And I'll believe you when you've had your finger on the trigger while you had to make that particular judgement call. But not a second sooner. Sorry... but sometimes it do be like that.
And just for the record (not that it's important to the topic at all): I'm not an American. I'm Danish.
Knowing they wouldn't get resupplied... taking a stand on ones own initiative would be signing a death sentence for themselves and the rest of the mission. There's only so many bullets they had at their disposal and not everyone has the courage to make that decision.
The statement that there seems to be a different definition and reaction to a genocide in Africa and Europe by mentioning the response to the atrocities in former Yugoslavia is tbh dishonest.
My brother was sent there twice under the UN flag, their mandate and their rules of engagement were not any better than those given when intervening in Rwanda.
They had to stand there, armed to the teeth while civilians were put up against the wall, shot and thrown into mass graves. Including women and children.
Just try to imagine the horror of not only seeing what is happening but being equipped and trained to stop genocidal maniacs... only to not be allowed by your officers due to the ridiculous mandate given by the UN.
And when returning home, a lot of these soldiers were very sick, only after pressing charges because the military wouldn't tell them what was happening, did they find out they had radiation poisoning during the investigation. Awesome invention those armor piercing bullets...
Before the cause was known, it was named "The Balkan syndrome".
I only found out most of this a couple of years ago when my brother's PTSD became undeniable and he was unable to work, or pretty much do anything for about 3 years...
So yeah, the idea for forming the UN might have been a good one... the actual implementation of that idea is horrendous, not intervening and allowing genocide to happen under the watchful eyes of those that have chosen to risk their lives to never allow such a thing to happen just so they can claim that they did something about it...
The UN is simply put a disgusting organization that, because it's run by politicians who all want to enrich and empower themselves, has nothing to offer the world but cowardice and misery.
Your brother couldn’t have done anything about it or he would have been killed. The paramilitaries in Bosnia were far more numerous than UN peacekeepers and well trained having all completed a year of National service. They were not clowns with machetes like in Rwanda.
@@stefan2serb I am aware of that but that just proves my point that the UN is useless, they could have sent more troops, 193 countries are members of the UN...
Which means, just like nearly all of their missions, this was just virtue signalling and sacrificing the (mental) well being of their soldiers...
So, yeah, again, disgusting in my opinion.
i feel the same about the dishonesty. i also feel its a lot easier to deploiy and supply un troops in europe then it is in east/central africa. heck even the tunesian troops that were rwanda would've been faster deployed in croatia then in rwanda just from an infrastructure point of view.
Minor correction: The problem with depleted uranium munitions isn't radiation, it's heavy metal poisoning. Which doesn't really make much difference to the person dying from it, though.
Ukrainian peacekeepers had their first UN mission in Yugoslavia. The village of Zepa. Serbs attacked Ukrainians and threatened to kill everyone if they keep defending the village. Our guys stood their ground.
Later, quote "Unlike in Srebrenica, a widespread slaughter of Bosniak men did not occur, as most Bosniak males had fled the enclave by the time Bosnian Serb forces arrived."
Why? BECUASE WE ARE UKRAINIANS, THE ONLY ONES IN EUROPE WHO FIGHT AND RESIST WHEN THE USELESS WEST ASSISTS RUSSIANS AND SERBS WITH THEIR WAR CRIMES.
I firmly believe that the Rwandan genocide saved South Africa from a similar fate. In April 1994 my mother died and I travelled to the UK for her funeral. I was a monitor/mediator in KZN and I was bewildered when I landed in the UK that everyone was talking about Rwanda. Eventually when I returned to SA a week later I realised that the Rwandan genocide was a terrible warning of what could happen. Luckily the powers that guided SA saw the writing on the wall we escaped a similar catastrophe. RIP to all who died in Rwanda - and Thank You. Your deaths were not in vain though it was a terrible thing to happen.
Watching this was traumatizing. I'm Rwandese, i was born years before the genocide and im still suffering from the effects of it 30years later
So sorry. Hope you find peace
I am so glad that Simon made this video. While this was an absolute horrific tragedy, we need to never forget atrocities like this so we don't repeat them.
or at least prevent future events from escalating too much
To be fair, knowing about the nazis didn't really stop the genocide in Rwanda. The same thing will happen eventually somewhere else regardless of what we should already know. Knowing is just an excuse to not do anything. You're just simply hoping that it won't happen again.
@@Wheres_my_Dragonator It is the fact that because some atrocity is happening halfway across the world the impact is only sliver deep on people's psyche. Unless it is literally happening in peoples own backyard,.most people don't care.
How many people have ever heard of or know about the genocide against the Rohingya people in Myanmar in 2017 that is even now still ongoing?
Not enough people know or even care which is why I have no faith in the human race as a whole, regardless of race.
And prevent events like this happening in the future
@@Wheres_my_Dragonator Now we have the Internet to help educate us. Specially young people.
I visited Rwanda for the first time last year. The personal accounts people tell you, and the collective attempt to overcome the past horror are impressive. Now, Rwanda is very safe, but also very strict.
I dont believe its safe at all
Wrote my college thesis on Rwandan women’s experiences as victims and perpetrators during the genocide. I read horrifying things, but it’s fascinating to look at specific lenses of experience during this event; the endurance of the surviving female community now is sad but gives hope for the future generations moving onward
It baffles me that something of this scale and this terrible happened in my lifetime when I was only 4 years old. We mostly think of these types of stories as something on the very old like those of WW2 know anything about, but something this massively terrible that happened this recently, THAT'S truly scary.
WW2 really isn't long ago at all is the thing.
It doesn't fit in many people's mindset so it's not particularly talked about. It's the same for Japan's warcrimes which are often overlooked by Japan itself, uncritical weebs and people that think only white people are capable of horrible warcrimes.
If it was whites Vs blacks in Rwanda you can be sure it would be brought up twice a week on twitter.
@@ArchonCommando But the whites were the root cause of the problem. The Belgians causing segregation between the Hutus and Tutsis.
@@ArchonCommando Not one race is evil but the entire human race is evil
When It happened I was 4 years old as well. The difference is, I was running and hiding for my life. I was Young but I still have some very vivid disturbing memories,pstd. I stopped sleep walking around 14 years.
This has to be one of the most informative short stories of a significant historical event. Brilliantly delivered.
My mother told me that people we're often given the chance to say their last prayers before getting killed. When they found her hiding under her bed, she asked to pray not that they would spare her life, but that they would shoot her instead of hacking her with a machete. Luckily, she was spared because the person who was going to kill her happened to be my grand-father's high school mate. The thing about the genocide is it really was neighbor killing neighbor and in some cases even relatives killing each other. This is why so many died so quickly
Glad she survived.
When I was in college, one of my professors had a man come in from Rwanda to discuss the genocide. His family was Tutsi and the neighborhood was split pretty evenly between Hutu and Tutsi. He was out of country for school but family was still there. His mom and sisters were able to get away to sanctuary when the neighbors attacked. Said there was never any indication of trouble. Just one day, all hell broke loose. He lose his father, his brothers, and multiple aunts, uncles, and cousins. I think his grandparents were even killed (I can't remember all of the deaths as this was about 20 years ago). Basically all of his family was wiped out except for the few that were able to get in sanctuary. He was able to get in after some peace had been established to get his surviving family members out and even then, he said he remembers seeing the bodies in the streets and stains where the blood had soaked into the ground.
Keep in mind it is easy to get to Croatia, a coastal country. Rwanda is very difficult to get to, you have to fly over at least hundreds of miles of usually hostile territory. Logistics always matters.
@Jobben Liss not hostile countries,bad roads not much rail no blue water shipping Access, airlifts are expensivem
@capnstewy55 The difficulty never resided in logistics but political will alone. Examples: When the war started on 10/01/90, the French troops of Operation Noroit were on the ground in Rwanda by 10/4/90 to assist the genocidal regime. Three days is all it took. That’s the same day Congolese DSP troops also arrived in Rwanda. The Belgian troops of Operation Green Bean were there the following day, 10/5/90, together with planeloads of bullets.
After the final genocide was launched on 4/7/94, the French troops of Operation Amaryllis arrived there on 4/9/94. Just *TWO DAYS* is all they needed for both troops and additional military supplies to arrive. And again the Belgian troops of Operation Silverback landed there the next day on 4/10/94. Italian troops were also on the ground at the same time.
Two months onward the decision to launch Operation Turquoise was announced by the French government on 6/18/94. UN Resolution 929 to authorize it was voted by the Security Council within four days on 6/22/94. The troops arrived in Rwanda hours later *the same day.*
Yeah, but UN did nothing to stop genocide in Bosnia (mostly land locked too) either... Except for like one Ukrainian unit that saved one village, NOBODY tried to stop Serbs OR Croats from wiping out Bosniaks for so long! Of course UN is even more useless in Ukraine. They ONCE brough a single truck of water to Dnipro, a city completely on a river... That's like bringing sand to Cairo. Note that they have BILLIONS in financing but those only go towards mansions and luxury cars we see in front of most expensive hotels far from frontlines in Ukraine.
So they can get to Lviv or Kyiv or Odesa all right but not when those cities are bombed either. Fuck UN.
I took AP comperative politics in high school and I cant believe we never talked about Rwanda. I only learned about the Rwandan genocide a couple months ago, I must say that the changes that have been made in the country is astounding and mind blowingly revolutionary
In California atleast in the Bay Area, part of the curriculum for world history(sophomore year) is learning about the Rwandan genocide, followed up by watching “Hotel Rwanda”…it was disturbing but the class was all glad we learned about it
I'll never forget the photo of Lake Victoria, red with corpses and human blood. I would hope we've learned something from this horror over the last 25 years, but the human race never fails to disappoint
And we always repeat the same mistakes
Liberals today support the same abuses that caused the rawandan genocide. Critical racism training CRT.
Probably Lake Kivu or Tanganyika, Lake Victoria isn’t near Rwanda.
Kivu
This narrator's presentations are some of the very best to be heard. Glad he is presenting on so many other channels too!
Such a heartbreaking time.
I remember praying for my family in both Hutu and Tutsi tribes.
Man's inhumanity to man seems to have no limits
♥️
There isn't much humanity in Africa
@@Andrew-hk8qi🙄
A sergeant I worked with in the Australian army served in Rwanda and was apart of a company of Australian soldiers that stood in between tutis and hoards of killers.
Aussies actually helped? That's great, I've read most of UN was completely useless... I remember a Ukrainian unit stood ground and saved a Bosnian village from joining another mass grave despite Serb threats. Big contrast with Netherland troops who stood outside of Srebrenica.
I remember hearing about this as a teenager. We were all horrified. We couldn't believe things like that could still happen.
Lmao that's how you know you are sheltered from the world , what made you think so naivety? Honestly how I'm curious to how such childish gullible mindset occur , what's next you gonna be surprised when ppl pass away due to old age ?
@kingtachalla6181 Well, I was actually a child, so...
@@ericthompson3982 I was a child too and I knew the world wasn't sunshine and rainbows, sheltered is what you were
@@kingtachalla6181 I'm not real sure why you feel like attacking me for feeling horrified about something horrible when I was raised to believe that it's our job in this world to leave it better than we found it, but ok. Hope you're doing well.
@jerrylouiswiththethickness6403 And bless you. I hope you live a life of peace.
I remember in high school we had a Survivor come and talk to us about the whole experience. I remember her telling us how she lost many family and friends and everything that she experienced. It was horrible.
Thank you for covering such hard topics without bias. Its important and appreciated.
This was the first thing we studied in my freshman (high school) history class. It really set the tone for the rest of the course.
😂
Great videos as usual mate. One thing that often gets ignored though is how the genocide led to the Congolese civil war. The new Rwandan Government armed a rebellion against Mobutu in the hopes that the new guys would deal with the hutu militias doing cross border raids on Rwanda. Suffice to say that didn't happen, what did happen was a colossal shitstorm that led to the deaths of millions.
Thanks for mentioning this. I was going to write about it too. The collapse of Zaire was precipitated by the RPF and it became an African world war basically which nobody ever talks about. They went to hunt down the genocidaires and got involved in carving up Zaire for profit along with every other African country with any power. It lead to millions of deaths.
The other thing is not emphasised is that the RPF was seen by the French as an Anglophone armed group and just like in the American Revolution anything that would stick a finger up at the English the French government to this very day would be happy to be involved in. It's utterly bizarre to let bring in your small contingent of soldiers to protect the genocidaires from the beginning and then when they were defeated to fly them to shelter in Paris for decades afterwards knowing full well what these monsters did. But the French can afford to feel powerful by sending a few thousand soldiers into their former African colonies to exert influence. It also shows how a small Western force can have a profoundly disproportionate effect in Africa when it suits their interests. I believe a small force could've shut it down but it was up to the RPF to do it.
It did reduce the FDLR in size and intensity of attacks. The RPF wiped out more than half of the rebels during the 2 Congo wars killing millions of Congolese and Refugees in the process as FDLR rebels used civilians as shields. In fact, most international organizations say that currently, FDLR has just a couple of thousand soldiers compared to the force that left Rwanda in the 1990s. Some even say there is no FDLR and Kagame is using that excuse to attack Congo and steal their minerals, make no mistake, RPF have dealt with the issue of FDLR on a very large scale and the threat is not as it was in the 1990s, some could argue there is no threat at all
Congo's problems existed way before Rwanda happened.
It’s crazy to watch this in Oct 2023 in light of the Israeli-Palestine war and Russia/Ukraine.
It’s sad how people who are ethnically practically identical just hate each other and justify atrocities.
It’s sad how a persecuted people can then become the ones who persecute…
There is nothing like this going on in either of the current conflicts you mentioned.
@@valerierodger there's a current genocide of Ukrainians nation by russian invaders. Difference is that there is nothing in common between humans and an orc.
I was 10 when this went down. It was never discussed in school. Thank you for the history lesson. Often too quickly do we forget
UNLaid did an interview with a survivor of the 90s genocide. Very touching, sad, crazy to imagine how calm she had to remain to survive. Out of 7 I think she said ... 3 survived. Very moving interview if you are interested in a follow up to this content. Matches what she explains.
My buddy (who’s in the military) was over there when this happened, he tells me stories that make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck (literally).
The things that humans are willing to do to each other is very disturbing, the term “short sleeve” or “long sleeve” says it all.
My father was the first crew to fly in humanitarian aid with the Canadian Air Force after this. Took him him over 25 years to open up about the things he saw, and even then, not much. He told us he had to toss all the kit he had with him when he got back. We don't ask for more details, he was just an observer after the fact. This still affects him if any past mission or deployment we talk about has any details in common with his short time in Rwanda. Pictures, videos and news reports can only reveal so much as opposed to witnessing the devastation first hand. "I shook hands with the devil" is a great movie demonstrating just how bad things were going on the front line for the UN when many countries were pulling out their troops because of the fear of violence.
Also noted is that very few genocides in history have the goal or even realistic chance at complete extermination. Majority deaths did happen but killing everyone with no survivors was rare.
2/3 is horrifingly close
How would you know? Most of history is unrecorded especially in Africa. Genocide one way or other happens all over in Africa. European accounts in South Africa that when they were attacked by the locals they would kill everyone women and children. A famous tribal chief Shaka Zulu killed preganant women in his tribe because he was upset his mother died.
@@alastair9446 Isn't history known and recountable events, not unknown (prehistory)?
@@alastair9446 i agree! Most accounts we have from ancient or medieval campaigns of conquest suggest widespread genocidal tendencies. See the mongols in hungary/russia; romans in Gaul; chinese while conquering China etc.
@@ProudRegressive Well if you kill everyone so no one can tell the tale is that still history?
On a serious note the definition I get is "the study of past events, particularly in human affairs". Says nothing about being recorded, just study of the event. So if you can dig up dead bones or look at DNA to get the story I guess it still counts as history.
Been waiting for this video!
I remember being given a DVD called Hotel Rwanda, didn't know anything about Rwanda so it sat unwatched for at least 6 months before I had a rainy day off...
If you know nothing of Rwanda then find the time to watch Hotel Rwanda as it's one of those movies that change you as a person, I cried so hard that I couldn't breathe! It's truly brutal to try and wrap your mind round just what level of insanity you would have be to send out a HIV positive rape squad???
I think the way this has been put together is really, really impressive but the best part is Simon educating a generation who have never heard of Rwanda, never mind what happened!! This is something that should never be forgotten!
It’s a lie. He robbed tutsi’s seeking shelter then gave them up to be murdered.
I'm from south Africa, never heard about this in history class, but I was taught about Hitler and the black lady in the bus from America. Makes you wonder about our education system 🤔
You rarely learn about atrocities you do or that are close to you... especially if you have close political ties.
Black lady ? Wow she has a name show some respect .
Voetsek😊
@@y2j1490yahoo you have to keep in mind that Rosa was in American history and she was living in South Africa… America already does a bad job at teaching American history of black ppl as well let alone how much was taught in another country
@@TheKutie36 my girl is black and she disagrees. Black history is taught just as bad a white history in America.
A Biographics on Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire would be great. I met him once a few years ago. The nightmare that man lived should be known more throughout the world. Perhaps there would be less hatred.
You think? No-one cares until it happens to them.
I’ve beeeeeeeeen waiting for this..
My mom was in Rwanda a few years back and what she learnt about this genocide was crazy for her to digest - literally
Thanks for your videos. I love learning about history and I appreciate you not sugar coating the events. It's hard to hear but I'd rather know what's really happened so we can hopefully learn from it. Thanks for your brevity, while not leaving our important facts.
Many Canadian troops were left traumatized by the slaughter in that country.
When Belgian para's we're told to lay down their firearms to appease the hoard around them, they were massacred on the spot. Their comrades went out headhunting but were blocked by other peacekeepers. The Belgians shredded their berets & refused to engage in any further peacekeeping mission's.
There's no way in hell I would have stood in their way.
Romeo Dillard the Canadian commander on the ground went into heavy drinking & was found under under a park bench.
He did fail to secure protective enclaves, that was a massive mistake.
It still blows my mind how historically recent this event was, idk why but when I think of events like this, I think 50+ years ago
This story haunts me like no other. One of, if not THE, most beautiful countries in the world. My heart belongs there 🇷🇼
For those of you who have a negative view of the education system in the US. I was taught this as a standardized subject in middle school going to a public school in Colorado. I’m not sure how it was in other countries, but the US surely doesn’t shy away from telling their students about awful events, even one’s they’ve taken part in. But the personal accounts may be a little one sided as we know, especially if it didn’t end in the United States favor.
Yeah I learned about it in Middle School here in North Carolina too. We even watched the movie Hotel Rwanda.
In my experience, my history classes in grade school did cover a few atrocities committed by supposedly “good” countries, they seldom delved in depth, and certainly didn’t cover things such as the Ratlines.
@@Lauren_C Re "Ratlines" - it is embarrassing to admit, but I was 20+ years old when I realized that Allied countries did air raids the same as Germans, I was reading a fictional novel (The Book Thief) where a small German village gets bombed." I used to genuinely believe that civilian bombing was a thing only bad guys did and "good guys would never"! I wouldn't lay the blame solely on education system, though, if you think about popular/famous war movies you naturally think Pearl Harbor or many British movies with the sirens blaring and people running for the Underground, you don't think firestorm in Hamburg.
@@renata8979 “The Book Thief” is a fantastic book. Yet another thing that was no option in my school. Every kid read it.
"even one’s they’ve taken part in"
lol.
I remember when I was a kid and had a French math tutor. My dad asked him one day when he came to Canada. My tutor said he came from Rwanda in 1994.
My dad didn't ask any more questions, and explained to me why on the ride home.
I’m sorry that you had to tell this story Simon but I see the respect and sorrow in your eyes if Anyone had to tell me this story. Id put that burden on you time and time again. Thank you and keep ‘em coming
I had just learned about this horrific piece of history when I started doing research on it. I somehow stumbled upon footage on UA-cam or google that I thought was a news report. It was not. It was raw footage of children attacked by machetes. My husband can attest that I was thoroughly horrified. My hands were still shaking hours after seeing it. I cant even fathom the horror they went through.
Damn
During my time in the US public school system we covered the genocide in Rwanda a couple times as I recall. Interesting how we never covered things like the Tulsa Race Riots…
In any case, I can recommend the movie Hotel Rwanda on the topic of the Rwanda Genocide. It’s actually an excellent, if deeply unhappy movie.
I went to school in Hawaii where the ruling race/class are of Japanese descent. We didn't even talk about WWII. I suppose it's too much to ask for the losers to even acknowledge it even happened...
Paul Rusesabagina, the owner of hotel Rwanda is a much more complex figure than the movie shows. Not many Tutsi like him
better movie to watch is Raol Peck''s (who's known for his films based on war areas)-to ''Sometimes In April'' -only 4 of the cast are foreign, everybody else is local. Hotel Rwanda pales in comparison to it.
You fail to mention that the Rwandan kings refused to cooperate with Belgians and their divide and rule politics. The Tutsi King Yuhi V Musinga who was in power when Rwanda was given to Belgium refused to cooperate with the Belgians and to be baptized. Consequently, he was exiled and killed by poisoning on 13th-January-1944. His successor Mutara III Rudahirwa met the same fate on 25th-July-1959 a Belgian hospital in Burundi where he was summoned by Belgian officials to discuss the rise of ethnic tensions promoted by the Belgian colonialists. Overall, this is a good recount and it's inspiring how you shade light on such disregarded events.
That’s true. The colonizers had done the same even before the specific events you mention and continued the same way afterwards.
From the historian Stefaan Minnaert (6 September 2013):
“Following the First World War, Rwanda had just passed from German occupation to Belgian occupation. The population has suffered terribly from looting and the requisitioning of labour, food and firewood. The economy came out of it completely deregulated. This has had implications for public health. The weakened population was decimated by *the famine of 1916 to 1917* and by a series of diseases.
Musinga (c.1882-1944) himself narrowly escaped the *death* penalty. In March 1917, *the Belgians* put him in *prison* for treason. Accused of collaborating with the Germans, *he risked being hanged.* Never before had a King been humiliated in this way by foreigners! Musinga's *detention* was short-lived, as without him the country would be ungovernable.”
Like I said, after they had murdered King Mutara, they did to his successor what they had done to his predecessor: They forcibly exiled King Kigeli in 1960 as part of their plan to install their local genocidal subordinates in power. There’s a video on y-tube where Kigeli explains how they went about it.
Man, this was a brutal occurrence, absolute horror... I'm so sorry for all those people. May they rest in peace.
Disturbing and well presented indeed. However you utterly fail to mention the Canadian UN troops under Gen.Dallaire who also were there. The orders to not act included them and led to many cases of PTSD.
The fact that you needed Ids to even tell them apart days a lot
that is because the belgians made ID cards based on two things. If you looked ahum ethiopian enough you were tutsi. However, if you had enough cattle wealth but not the right features the belgians would still ID you as tutsi
Isn't it always like that? Germans MEASURED SKULLS to decide who lives, it made no sense but otherwise they'd have not much to go on.
My parents' relationship began the same week as the genocide. I didn't know anything about it until one day at SAT prep, November 11, 2016. We got nothing done that day, just talked about the election, and at the end of class the program coordinator got us all in one room and gave an absolutely terrifying speech in which he referenced the Rwandan Genocide- effectively implying we were on the path to people hacking up Latinos and Muslims with machetes. Most of us were too young and too American to know what he was talking about, but I went home and Googled "rwandan genocide" and 8 years later this is still literally the worst thing I have ever heard. This was the first video I ever watched from you and you are the perfect presenter for information as bone-chillingly horrifying as this.
The comparison with Yugoslavia is not very accurate. The UN forces in the former Yugoslavia were not effective for most of the war. The Dutch peacekeeper were unable to prevent the massacre of Srebrenica. Also the breakup of Yugoslavia, took almost 5 years the deaths were 140,000. Compare to half a million to 1 million deaths that happened in Rwanda in just 3 months. It took a long time to increase the number of peacekeepers in Bosnia, and to enable them to use force. When Vukovar in Croatia collapsed, and all the people at the local hospital, wounded, sick or not were executed, there were no peacekeepers. Probably 2 - 3 hours drive from Italy or Austria and connected by highways. The Rwanda genocide lasted 3 months. I believe UN forces in Sarajevo started using force against the Serbs only once some French soldiers were killed by snipers and some attacked. It took 3 - 4 years for the USA to get involved in Bosnia. So that criticism of the UN you make is a bit unfortunate and is an opinion/editorializing claim that I don't see supported by historical evidence.
I think that because the problems in Yugoslavia lasted for so long and the UN peacekeeping Force failed that's why it attracted the attention of NATO
I agree the mere fact that only 3 months violence happened and then stopped in Rwanda was not seen as enough to justify NATO going in there and I don't believe NATO even had capacity and infrastructure to pull something off like that in the 1990s
Western nations definitely had power to try and stop this massacre, but to imply it was not done based on prejudice, and ethnic or racial motives is despicable coming from you.
Rwanda is not 2 hours away from London or Paris, contrary from Sarajevo. Any troops on the ground would be acting on foreign soil, in unknown terrain, having to fight combatants that would be indistinguishable from innocent civilians. It's not like a policeman catching a burglar. You need actual UN or multinational approval for this, which was not reached even after the massacres died down.
And even then with troops on the ground, you think that would have gone like a normal war like in Yugoslavia? How did the UN soldiers who actually stood between the victims and the butchers fare, funny you don't mention them. They got hacked to literal pieces, and some actually eaten.
It astonishing how many people have this view of western soldiers being 'parents' of severly misbehaved African 'children' in this situation. They really think sending armed troops to a foreign country with the 'shoot at will' order against foreign civilians would be 'a good way to tackle the situation'.
I’m not sure your point. It would have been easier to put down because Rwanda as a whole did not have anywhere near the weaponry and firepower of a Soviet state. People were literally being hacked to death with machetes, that’s easy to stop with a few M16s let alone more advanced weaponry. The US military was literally invading Latin American countries for much minor infractions 90 years earlier, and most European countries were just a few decades removed from being colonial regimes well practiced in putting down rebellions. They could have done something to this stop this.
@@pisceanbeauty2503 ok with what and who, sun tze?
@@penzorphallos3199 why is it up to the west or even the uk to do anything
I was in Rwanda when this happened. It is impossible to understand how bad it really was, without first hand experience.
The Belgians are very much guilty of letting it happening.
One thing incredibly disturbing about this particular genocide is the extremely meticulous and clearly and openly pre-meditated way it was gone about. I'm sure plenty of planning, manipulating and instigating occurred with other genocides, some of which I'm already aware of in detail, but the way this video progresses, really makes this one feel different. Extra twisted and cold-blooded. Seems as if the perpetrators actively made an effort to let their victims know what was coming, and kept this moving as efficiently and mechanically as they could.
I know what you mean. Others started with segregation and a "veil" of control, whereas this was just like, all out guns blazing.
@@Stopthisrightnow560 Yeah. Straight out of a horror movie/war movie cross-over. Except in this case, very real.