Civilian Participation In The Rwandan Genocide Perspective

The20thcentury is the so called “the century of massacre”. Usually, civilians aremost direct victims in the past catastrophes. Abusers are mostly consisted bypolicemen and militaries, instead of common citizens. However, the bloody incidentshappened in Rwanda,1994, which has changed people’s general impressions. In thismassacre, there are not only hit the highest record of daily casualties in the20thcentury, but also arised civilian participators.During the investment for this accident, scholars normally tend to twocommon-sense explanations. One is the intensify of ethnic conflict urged the civilianparticipation, the other one is failed state lends to anarchy which triggered “a war ofall against all”. However, here in this paper after analyzing the selected cases,through the civilian participation angle, the author here indicates that racial hatred andfears are not the main reason for this civilian-participated war, and Rwanda at thattime was not in a state of anarchy. On the contrary, the author indicates that “a war ofall against all”caused by the civilian participation are in close relations to thegovernment’s effective mobilization. Due to the force of the authority, civilians startedto turn into the main actor in this massacre. The reason for civilian’s participation, inthe deeper level, has close relations to the special geographical environment andhistorical factors of Rwanda.