I found the debate about Rwanda to be a very useful tool in understanding the situation in Rwanda and how all major parts contributed to the genocide. My group, Paul Kagame, though played a major part in the genocide was not called on that much, because most of the questions were directed to the countries rather than the groups of people that actually were involved in the fighting part of the genocide. I was upset that I wasn’t able to answer many questions, yet I learned so much from the other groups. I was surprised that so much of the blame went on Belgium for leaving Rwanda in their time of distress. I was surprised that no one really called on the Interahamwe, the Hutu Rebel group, because they did most of the killings along with Rwandan Armed Forces. Instead most of the blame was aimed at the MRND, a Hutu group that supposedly brainwashed the Hutu people into killing the innocent Tutsi people.

I do believe that the MRND did help to get the Hutu people to become enraged, but I believe more that years of racial conflict really caused the genocide, and over years and years of fighting they just snapped and started to go out on a killing spree. The event that caused the thin wire to snap was we Hutu leader Juvenal Hirotayama’s plane was shot down. Most people believe that Paul Kagame was the one who ordered his plane to get shot down, so he could use the opportunity to become a leader of Rwanda, but there is no proof. After the genocide ended however, Paul Kagame did become vice president, later the president of Rwanda. Therefore, all of us are to blame, but some of us contributed to the genocide more than others.

I hope that in the future that we will do debates again. They really cleared things up for me that I didn’t understand, like who is to blame. I really like how all of have opinions that clash with each other. I hoped that we could have come up with a resolution together, because a whole class has more ideas than a group of two or three people. All in all the debate was a great opportunity to get ideas off your chest and see what other people think about them, I believe that we should do debates more often than not.