[kj] OT... World Destruction

[B. Oliver Sheppard]

The original point I was making (against Crack, specifically) is that he 
is eager to blame self-styled communist nations when their hands are 
muddied in these sorts of waters, like the kind of colonial monkeyfuck 
that Rwanad presents. Evil redounds absolutely to the entity 
"communism." For example, if instead of Belgium and France in the 
Rwandan scenario, it had been North Korea and Cuba, you can Crack -- and 
the tons of folks of his ilk in the USA and elsewhere -- would be eager 
to attribute it all to communist involvement.

But when it's a capitalist or Western country, suddenly there's lots 
more latitude given. The standards for proof, demands for evidence are 
way, way higher, almost Olympian. "Well, capitalism didn't cause this, 
this was an aberration from an otherwise fine system," etc.

That's how the ball got rolling in this direction.

-Oliver


Neil Perry wrote:

> Agreed, it's a murky mess. But as you say, ultimately the killing was by

> Rwandans. They chose that path.

> A good book is the rather lengthily titled

> 'We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families',

> by Philip Gourevitch.

>

> N

>

> */"B. Oliver Sheppard" <bigblackhair at sbcglobal.net>/* wrote:

>

>     Belgium and to a lesser extent France supported the codification

>     of an

>     ethnic Rwandan caste system. When Belgian troops defended the

>     one-party

>     Hutu government system in 1990 from a Tutsi uprising, an ethnic

>     national

>     ID card system was in place that made folks have to choose one

>     ethnicity

>     or another, Tutsi or Hutu, legally and formally, stamped onto

>     their IDs,

>     branded officially.

>

>     When Germany lost World War I, Rwanda became a Belgian colony

>     (spoils of

>     war) and initially used a Tutsi comprador govt. as their proxy to

>     administer the region. This government was an undemocratic

>     monarchy led

>     by King Jean-Baptiste Kigeli V.

>

>     The Tutsi monarchy enacted forced-labor schemes and heavy taxation on

>     the ethnic majority of Rwanda, the Hutus. This polarized and created

>     animosity between the ethnic groups. (Also noteworthy: Hutus and

>     Tutsis

>     were now part of the same nation-state, a state arbitrarily drawn

>     onto

>     the map of Africa by European colonial powers whose roots are

>     ultimately

>     in the Berlin Conference of 1884 wherein the European nations

>     carved up

>     the continent into various regions on their drawing board. )

>

>     In 1961, the Belgian government switched sides (I'm not even sure

>     why,

>     honestly), taking away support from the Tutsi monarchy to the

>     majority

>     Hutus, logistically supporting a coup against the Tutsi king. This

>     put

>     the Hutus in power over the Tutsi minority; the Hutu leader and

>     national

>     president was now Dominique Mbonyumutwa. Belgium set the country

>     free in

>     1962 under these new & chaotic circumstances. At this point,

>     masses of

>     Tutsis fled into neighboring Uganda or Burundi, fearing reprisals. By

>     the 1970s the Hutu government put into place ethnic quotas

>     controlling

>     the percentage of jobs Tutsis could hold, as well as the maximum

>     amount

>     of income they could have; Tutsis could hold no more than 14% of any

>     jobs at any given time. When Tutsis rebelled against this in 1990,

>     French and Belgian forces arrived in the Rwandan capital to defend

>     the

>     Hutu one-party regime, a regime that had outlawed Tutsi political

>     parties. Ceasefires between Tutsi rebels and the Hutu govt. were

>     negotiated in Belgium in 1991, harkening back to the old colonial

>     days.

>     This failed when in 1994 the Hutu president was assassinated --

>     who did

>     it is unknown. The Hutus blamed the Tutsis, and went all-out for

>     final,

>     genocidal revenge.

>

>     So, you can't say the Belgians directly caused the genocide. The

>     people

>     who did the actual, on-the-ground killing should be held responsible,

>     obviously. But the situation has been fucked around with so much that

>     it's hard to say there's no blood on Belgium or even France's hands.

>     They militarily defended an autocratic regime that had outlawed rival

>     parties, especially Tutsi political representation, and that had

>     enacted

>     legal quotas setting caps on the number of Tutsis that could have

>     jobs,

>     giving Hutus employment preferences. ("Ghosts of Rwanda" is a great

>     documentary on the subject.)

>

>     -Oliver

>

>

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