Theories
The usual accounts of the genocides in Rwanda portray them as the result of pre-existing ethnic hatreds fanned by cynical politicians for their own ends.
But there are a number of other sources that resulted in the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. Some of them are:
- Rwanda's history of Tutsi domination of Hutu.
- Tutsi large-scale killings of Hutu in Burundi and small-scale ones in Rwanda.
- Tutsi invasions of Rwanda.
- Rwanda's economic crisis and its exacerbation by drought and world factors (especially by falling coffee prices and World Bank austerity measures).
- Hundreds of thousands of desperate young Rwandan men displaced as refugees into settlement camps and ripe for recruitment by militias.
- Competition among Rwanda's rival political groups willing to stoop to anything to retain power.
Along with these factos the most interesting is population pressure, which resulted in scarcity of resources, as described in Nature and sources of conflict.
Population pressure
The population pressure in Rwanda is probably the major source for the genocide. As the resources, the land for farms, is limited, the conflicts between those who had resources and those who didn't have any, or little, escalated dramatically during the genocide.
There are six categories of people getting killed for non-ethnic reasons (examples from Kanama, an area where Hutu killed Hutu):
- The Single Tutsi, a widowed woman, was killed. Not because she was Tutsi, but probably because she had inherited much land, she had been incolved in many land disputes, she was the widows of a polygamous Hutu husband, and her deceased husband had already been forced off his land by his half-brothers.
- Large landowners over the age of 50, hence at a prime age for father/son disputes over land.
- Younger people who had aroused jealousy by being able to earn much off-farm income and using it to buy land.
- "Troublemakers" known for being involved in all sorts of land disputes and other conflicts.
- Young men and children, particularly ones from improverished backgrounds, who were driven by desperation to enlist in the warring militias and proceeded to kill each other.
- Malnourished people, or especially poor people with no or very little land and without off-farm income. They evidently died because of starvation, being too weak, or not having money to buy food or pay the bribes required to buy their survival at roadblocks.
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