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Frederick 1

Ryleigh Frederick
Macy Dunklin
UWRT 1104
12 November 2018
Rwanda and Democratic Republic of The Congo
Spicy hook
Defining genocide
● Genos​, the Greek word for race, and the Latin suffix ​cide,​ meaning “killer”

When writer, Tonya L. Wertz-Orbaugh, was challenged to write about the Holocaust she
dove into her research. Overwhelmed by the sea of information she faced, it was her own
determination to gather every speck of knowledge on the topic, that ultimately held her back.
When asked to compose my own piece on a genocide of my choice, I too, was engulfed in
information. My earliest research explored the 500,000 to a million Rwandans massecured from
April to July of 1994, just 100 days. I later learned it was this genocide that lead to the First
Congo War two years later, and the beginning of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s own
genocide. The link between these two nations’ tragedies sparked an interest that was only fueled
by the lack of coverage on their relationship. There’s seemingly infinite amount of sources
focused on each country individually, but so few that detail dominos connecting them. I was
determined to understand exactly how the Rwandan genocide was connected the that of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, or rather why?

More background on both genocides and the wars

On the most surface level of relationships, Rwanda and DR Congo are linked by the
literal distance between them, or lack thereof. The countries border each other and share the
waterbody, Lake Kivu.
shared border equals:
● Shared history, same colonizers, who turned ethnic groups against each other
● Made it easy for rwandan refugees to travel to drc
Their shared history sets the countries up to have the same two opposing perspectives/groups in
the inter-group violence. And with Rwandan refugees that fled to DR Congo, they literally have
the same groups. Making the DR Congo genocide, more comparable to a Rwandan genocide 2.0
than its own genocide.

Historian and author, Paul Bartrop, considers the connection between genocides and war.
Though he debunks the misconception that genocides require a war in order to materialize,
Bartrop explains how the first world war set up the twentieth century as an “Age of Genocide.”
Frederick 2

● “war had a relationship to genocide right from the outset of the twentieth century, in
which ordinary people became conscious not only of the idea of massive man-made death
but also of the ease with which it could be achieved.”
● “Put differently, now that people knew they could achieve millions of deaths in war, it
was much easier to imagine doing the same thing in a time of peace”
● “once the Great War’s legacy of mass killing began to take hold, all it took was the
transfer of the idea of massive military death to the possibility of massive political or
ideological death, and the terrible potential of the twentieth century could be achieved.”
● (Bartrop 519–532).
If the first war carried this influence, one can only imagine the second war’s contribution. World
War I allowed people to see that genocide was a possibility, but World War II proved it wasn’t
just a possibility

civil war and genocide.


● “Despite it being a rare event, 36 cases of genocide or politicide occurred between 1955
and 2000, 80% of which took place during a civil war.”

Conclusion

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