Changes

Jump to: navigation, search
m
{{Mediawiki:kindleoasis}}__NOTOC__
[[File:Skull_and_Belongings_of_Genocide_Victims_-_Genocide_Memorial_Center_-_Kigali_-_Rwanda.jpg|left|thumbnail|300px|A skull and belongings of a Tutsi victim, 1994.]]
In his classic work, ''On Liberty,'' John Stuart Mill provided a practical definition of what it means to have a bad moral character. Mill claimed: “Envy…Pride…Egoism, which thinks self and its concerns more important than everything else, and decides all doubtful questions in his own favor; ̶ ̶ ̶ these are moral vices, and constitute a bad and odious moral character.”<ref>John Stuart Mill, ''On Liberty'' (1859; repr., Mineola, NY: Dover, 2002), 66.</ref>It is with this definition that one can define the Hutus involved in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide as men of bad character.
[[File:map rwanda.png|thumbnail|400px|]]
According to all members of the interview group, the only order the Hutus were given was to kill. Those who participated in rape and torture did so freely of their own inclination and cannot rationalize those actions under the guise of obedience. When discussing rape, Adalbert intentionally uses a third person narrative when stating “‘''they'' [emphasis mine] raped for a little while and then handed them over to be killed right afterward.’”<ref>Hatzfeld, 97.</ref>Pancrace, another killer confined in Rimila prison, matter-of-factly remembers that, “‘Torture was a supplementary activity…a distraction, like a recreation break in a long work day.’”<ref>Hatzfeld, 129.</ref>The long day of which he speaks involved many hours of hunting Tutsi prey, hacking people to death with a machete, and looting the villages of those they had just killed in order to profit from the Tutsi goods and supplies, of which the Hutu had been so envious. The strenuous days to which Pancrace alluded usually ended with excessive alcohol consumption.
 
<dh-ad/>
As was common with the volunteer police battalions under the Third Reich, alcohol played a significant role in genocide. The majority of Germans who were conscripted to kill Jews in the ghettos of Poland;however, used alcohol as a means of desensitization and a method by which to cope with their murderous actions. Conversely, the Hutus partook of alcohol,primarily beer, in a celebratory manner. Élie, who was fifty-one when he began murdering Tutsis, unabashedly remembers gathering at the village cabarets and that “‘after the killings, there was time for friendship, and meeting with friends brought us light hearts…we shared drinks, we ate.’”<ref>Hatzfeld, 82.</ref>Reminiscent of the description of torture as a diversion from a strenuous work day, this killer also views genocide as a routine job and societal norm.

Navigation menu