Rwandan Genocide Debate

It was different stepping outside of character and looking at the Rwanda genocide is a different countries point of view. The debate was crazy! A lot of countries were pointing fingers and blaming other countries for their own mistakes. France, the MNRD, and the U.N. and U.S. were blamed several times. Danny, Matt and I as Belgium believed that France was promoting violence by “training” the Hutus to fight. The debate on the topic was that France believed they were helping the Hutus defend themselves. The MNRD was blamed the most. Almost all the other groups, especially the RPF believed that they were brainwashing the Hutus, telling them that they must kill the Hutus. We ended the debate with talking about how the U.N. and the U.S. didn’t do anything to help the Rwandans in the genocide. The U.S. said that they were scared to get involved with the genocide because they were still frightened with the way it turned out when they helped Somalia in their genocide. The U.N. said that they didn’t have the support or supplies. When they went to the U.S. for help, they refused to help. The U.N. also said they did not have enough facts to consider it genocide.

The debate from my point of you was actually really fun. I learned a lot the effort it takes for countries and groups to get along, agree and communicate about tragedies. Even though I didn’t agree with the way Belgium handled things in the genocide. I still had to try to convince the other groups that Belgium was innocent. I didn’t think the debate would have been as chaotic as it was. As myself then as Belgium I believe that Belgium actually had a lot to do with the genocide being so violent. They owned Rwanda and when the genocide began they simply sat back and hardly did anything. I still believe that France was guilty as well. France said that they were helping the Hutus defend themselves. They trained the Hutus to fight and are responsible for the Tutsi lives lost in the Rwandan genocide. I also thought that the MNRD was being blamed for a lot more than actually did. A radio station can’t possibly make a group of people turn on another group in their country without other causes. The debate helped me realize what SIMUN will be like and how much preparation and hard work it will take.