And now, you have someone to blame for your pernicious caste system as well! Is there anything left? Or are we done with everything now? <g>
My friend, the seer and the knower of all things:
In Rawanda, it is the minority Tutsi and majority Hutus.
In Northern Ireland it is Protestant vs Catholics. It is not the pernicious caste system. What is it?
We the rotten, putrid Mushrooms want to know why it is happening in Rawanda and Ireland.
In 1994, close to one million people were killed in a planned and systematic genocide in the Central African country of Rwanda. How did this carnage occur when the world declared after World War II that it would "never again" tolerate such violence?
Who was responsible? Why did the international community fail to respond? How can we prevent the spiraling communal conflicts of the global era?
Divide and Rule policy is the cause of massacre
Throughout their colonial rule, first Germany and then Belgium favored Rwanda's minority Tutsi ethnic group in education and employment. In 1959, the majority ethnic group, the Hutus, overthrew the ruling Tutsi monarch. The Hutus killed hundreds of Tutsis and drove tens of thousands into exile in neighboring countries. The children of these exiles later formed a rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and began a civil war in October 1990. The war, along with several political and economic upheavals, exasperated ethnic tensions culminating in April 1994 in a genocide in which roughly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. The Tutsi rebels defeated the Hutu regime and ended the genocide in July 1994, but approximately 2 million Hutu refugees?many fearing Tutsi retribution?fled to neighboring Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zaire, now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DROC). According to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, in 1996 and early 1997 nearly 1.3 million Hutus returned to Rwanda. Even with substantial international aid, these civil dislocations have hindered efforts to foster reconciliation and to boost investment and agricultural output. Although much of the country is now at peace, members of the former regime continue to destabilize the northwest area of the country through a low-intensity insurgency. Rwandan troops are
currently involved in a crisis engulfing neighboring DROC.
Northern Ireland
In recent years there has been an increase in tit-for-tat church and lodge burnings.
In the 1991 census, 38.4% of the population regarded themselves as Catholic, 50.6% as Protestant while 3.8% professed no religion and 7.3% refused to say.
Catholics are in the majority in some parts of Ulster - Derry city, County Fermanagh, County Armagh and parts of Belfast - while making up less than 10% of the population in other areas: Larne and the County Antrim coast, Bangor and North Down, east Belfast.
Protestants are overwhelmingly Presbyterian and have religious, cultural and familial links with Scotland.
An important part of the Unionist community?s culture are the Orange Lodges - being a meeting place for ordinary Protestant men. The nationalist community is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. In recent years there has been an increase in tit-for-tat church and lodge burnings. |
