Rwandan Class Debate

This Thursday, we had our class debate on the genocide in Rwanda. After studying on the subject from the point of view of Paul Kagame, I really do believe he was doing the right thing. For one, unlike many of the other groups think, he didn’t start the genocide at all. The problem started in Belgium. When Belgium created the identity cards to separate ethnic groups, they made tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi people even more prominent. The Tutsi people, who were already in power, were forced out of control by Belgium and put under a Hutu government. The Hutu government, headed by President Juvenal Habarimana, the FAR, and MRND, ruthlessly forced the Tutsi people out of their own country into exile in Uganda. The Tutsi exiles couldn’t live in Uganda forever and had to invade their own country just to be able to live in their homes. Hutu people took this action the wrong way and sent the FAR and Interhamwe to slaughter the returning Tutsi people. The Tutsi exiles couldn’t just let their people die and were forced to fight back resulting in the Rwandan Genocide. This is what I think truly happened to the Tutsi people.

This experience to debate helped me learn a lot about how SIMUN may work in the future it was also a fun way to learn. I thought it was interesting to simulate what a real world UN meeting would be like. Everything from “yielding” the floor to someone, to a moderator to control what goes on was 100% real. I liked the point of view I was looking from in this debate, as I believe Paul Kagame was doing the right thing. I hope the class can do these sorts of activities again because it was a much more interesting experience than learning about the conflict in lecture form. We were all able to express ourselves better in this form of learning. This helped the class get much more involved than what we normally are. I know all of us would like todo this again and I can't wait until it happens.