Genocide in Rwanda
Bar Graph
Timeline of events from
PBS.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghost
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Setup
• Title your graph
• Label the x axis with the dates of each
event (Each event will have a bar on the
graph)
• Label the y axis “Number of Deaths”
The lead up
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Rwanda – central Africa
Orig controlled by Germany
Belgian control after WW2
Belgians use divide and conquer strategy for rule (only
LOOSELY based on real cultural groups)
– Hutu – majority #s, subjugated
– Tutsi – minority #s, favored by Belgians
• 1959 – Hutu revolt and take power (indep. 1962)
• Preparation for genocide begins
• April 6, 1994 – plane with Hutu President (and
Burundi’s President) shot down; perpetrators not
known
APRIL 7, 1994
• Hutu gunmen systematically start tracking
down and killing moderate Hutu politicians
and Tutsi leaders. The deputy to the U.S.
ambassador in Rwanda tells Washington that
the killings involve not just political murders
but genocide.
• The U.S. decides to evacuate all Americans.
• Canadian Gen. Romeo Dallaire, head of the
U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda, is told
by headquarters not to intervene and to
avoid armed conflict.
ESTIMATED DEATH TOLL
Day 1
8000
APRIL 9, 10, 11
• Evidence mounts of massacres targeting
ordinary Tutsis. Front page newspaper
stories cite reports of “tens of thousands”
dead and “a pile of corpses six feet high”
outside a main hospital.
• Gen. Dallaire requests a doubling of his force
to 5,000.
• Nearly 3,300 Americans, French, Italians,
and Belgians are evacuated by troops sent in
from their countries.
ESTIMATED DEATH TOLL
Day 4
32,000
APRIL 15
• Belgium withdraws its troops from the U.N.
force after ten Belgian soldiers are slain.
Embarrassed to be withdrawing alone,
Belgium asks the U.S. to support a full
pullout. Sec. of State Christopher agrees and
tells Madeline Albright, America’s U.N.
ambassador, to demand complete
withdrawal. She is opposed, as are some
African nations. She pushes for a
compromise: a dramatic cutback that would
leave token forces in place.
ESTIMATED DEATH TOLL
Day 8
64,000
APRIL 19
• By this date, Human Rights Watch estimates
the number of dead at 100,000 and calls on
the U.N. Security Council to use the word
“genocide.”
• Belgian troops leave Rwanda; Gen. Dallaire
is down to a force of 2,100. He will soon lose
communication lines to outlying areas and
will have only a satellite link to the outside
world.
ESTIMATED DEATH TOLL
Day 12
100,000
April 21, 22
• The U.S. and the entire U.N. Security
Council vote to withdraw 90% of the
peacekeepers in Rwanda.
• At the urging of Human Rights Watch, the
White House issues a statement calling on
four Rwandan leaders to “end the violence.”
• It is the only time during the three months of
genocide in which high-level U.S. attention is
directed at the genocide leaders.
ESTIMATED DEATH TOLL
Day 14
112,000
April 27
• Pope John Paul II, leader of the Catholic
Church, uses the word “genocide” for the
first time in describing the situation in
Rwanda. This same day, Czechoslovakia
and Argentina introduce a draft resolution
to the U.N. Security Council that includes
the word “genocide.”
ESTIMATED DEATH TOLL
Day 20
160,000
May 1
A Defense Department discussion paper,
prepared for a meeting of officials having
day-to-day responsibility on the crisis, is filled
with cautions about the U.S. becoming
committed to taking action. The word
genocide is a concern.
“Be careful. Legal at State was worried about
this yesterday – Genocide finding could
commit [the U.S.] to actually ‘do
something.’”
ESTIMATED DEATH TOLL
Day 25
200,000
May 5
A Pentagon memo rejects a propsal from Gen.
Dallaire and State Department officials to diminish
the killings by using Pentagon technology to jam
the extremists’ hate radio transmissions.
“We have...concluded jamming is an ineffective and
expensive mechanism ...International legal
conventions complicate airborne or ground based
jamming and the mountainous terrain reduces the
effectiveness of either option...It costs
approximately $8500 per flight hour...it would be
wiser to use air to assist in the [food] relief effort.”
ESTIMATED DEATH TOLL
Day 29
232,000
May 17
Six weeks into the genocide, the U.N. and U.S. finally
agree to a version of Gen. Dallaire’s plan: nearly
5,000 mainly African U.N. forces will be sent in and
the U.N. requests that the U.S. provide 50 armored
personnel carriers (APCs).
Bureaucratic paralysis continues. Few African
countries offer troops for the mission and the
Pentagon and U.N. argue for two weeks over who
will pay the costs of the APCs and who will pay for
transporting them.
It takes a full month before the U.S. begins sending
the APCs to Africa. They don’t arrive until July.
ESTIMATED DEATH TOLL
Day 41
328,000
May 25
Seven weeks into the genocide, President Clinton
gives a speech that restates his policy of
humanitarian action anywhere in the world would
have to be in America’s national interest.
“The end of the superpower standoff lifted the lid
from a cauldron of long simmering hatreds. Now
the entire global terrain is bloody with such conflicts,
from Rwanda to Georgia. Whether we get involved
in any of the world’s ethnic conflicts in the end
must depend on the cumulative weight of the
American interests at stake.”
ESTIMATED DEATH TOLL
Day 49
392,000
June 22
Eleven weeks into the genocide, with still no
sign of a U.N. deployment to Rwanda, the
U.N. Security Council authorizes France to
unilaterally intervene in southwest Rwanda.
French forces create a safe area in territory
controlled by the Rwandan Hutu government.
But killings of Tutsi continue in the safe area.
ESTIMATED DEATH TOLL
Day 77
616,000
July 17
By this date, Tutsi RPF forces have captured
Kigali. The Hutu government flees to Zaire,
followed by a tide of refugees. The French
end their mission in Rwanda and are
replaced by Ethiopian U.N. troops. The RPF
sets up an interim government in Kigali.
Although disease and more killings claim
additional lives in the refugee camps, the
genocide is over.
ESTIMATED DEATH TOLL
Day 100
800,000
What does 800,000 people “look”
like?
–1268x the size of St. Mary’s student
body
– approx. 26,666x the size of your
class