Some of these can be dated back to over a century ago, when colonial powers entrenched a division between Hutus and Tutsis, a division further exacerbated in the decades that were to follow.
Neighbours turned against neighbours, friends against friends and even relatives against relatives. Most of the victims were killed with elementary weapons such as machetes, clubs and axes and it is estimated that , people took actively part in the killings.
The obvious question, then, is how such a high number of seemingly ordinary people could become ruthless murderers and commit crimes which shock the human conscience?
Rwanda was colonized by Germany in before Belgium took over control in In colonial administration, Europeans generally considered Tutsis as a superior group, and thus collaborated with the Tutsi monarchy to rule Rwanda. Where being Tutsi was commonly equated with a life of superiority and domination, being a Hutu was associated with a life of inferiority and subordination.
Tutsis were predominantly herdsmen, whilst the majority of Hutus were farmers. Indeed, Tutsis and Hutus are often described as belonging to the same ethnic groups as they share language, culture and region. Moreover, intermarriage was not uncommon and social mobility between Hutus and Tutsis was possible.
Hutus acquiring larger amounts of cattle could become Tutsis, whereas Tutsis with a decreasing number of cattle could become Hutus. Despite these assertions, the conflict is commonly portrayed as an ethnic conflict, where group identities were artificially entrenched by colonial powers.
The identities of Hutus and Tutsis were further constructed and reinforced by Belgian colonialists when they introduced identity cards in , assigning the ethnicity of Hutu, Tutsi or Twa to each Rwandan. A formerly ranked, but flexible system which offered some level of social mobility , became a rigid system divided by largely-artificial ethnic delineation.
This historical context is highly relevant, as much of the propaganda surrounding the genocide drew upon the distinctions and policies implemented during colonial rule. In the decades to follow, these perspectives, strongly influenced by the colonial period, became reinforced and deeply entrenched in the fabric of Rwandan society. The seed for protracted social conflict, leading to the eventual genocide, was sown and the Rwandan media was well aware of how to use it to its advantage.
Generally, group formation, per se , is not the source of conflict, but conflict is likely to arise if distinct groups are extremely exclusive and group members perceive their security to be under threat. This was to become evident in Rwanda by the early s. In the years following independence, thousands of Tutsis fled from violence directed against them. The advance of the RPA led to extensive propaganda campaigns of the Rwandan media, exaggerating perceived differences between Tutsi and Hutu.
The media draw attention to the colonial period and spread fears that Hutus could once more be the victim of suppression if Tutsis were to take over control in Rwanda.
This contributed to a post-colonial precedent of anti-Tutsi propaganda, which was already a feature in massacres in , and This was certainly true in Rwanda, where government propaganda claimed the invading RPF intended to massacre the Hutu population.
Sometimes popular music was mixed with incitement to murder. In addition, however, a pivotal cluster of researchable issues centres around the question of when, how and why policy inaction begins and ends. Just as they do with regard to the programmes that they do adopt and implement, governments and networks can be forced to consider terminating their policies of inaction.
When do signals about the growing costs and risks of inaction become so strong that hitherto blindsided policymakers and unresponsive institutions start paying attention to issues they could not or would not deal with previously? To what extent do the same actors and mechanisms—such as pro-reform and anti-termination coalitions, negative feedback and escalation of commitment play a part in causing policies of laissez-faire to give way to policies of intervention, for example.
Historical—comparative studies of how and why poverty, housing, the use of alcohol and various forms of recreational drug use became subjects of state regulation fit this mould De Swaan Also, why were some states and non-state actors noticeably earlier than others in stopping to treat the internet as a fundamentally benign self-governing space?
Hofmann et al. Breen and Doyle From the preceding pages, readers may have formed the impression that inaction is more often than not a negative phenomenon triggered by the tricks our brains play upon us, insidious pathologies of organisational life or the flawed functioning of political institutions and processes. This certainly has not been our intent. There is, we think, no a priori reason to value action over inaction. As we noted, inaction is sometimes purposefully pursued and enacted, and for a variety of reasons.
In that sense alone, it cannot be treated as not just a product of inadvertence and dysfunction. However, what is really needed is systematic evaluative research. Just as policy-as-action can be assessed as a success, failure or somewhere in-between in view of programmatic, process and political criteria AUTHOR , so can policy-as-inaction once we have managed to unearth it.
Again, comparative studies of active and inactive responses to similar policy challenges, e. We hope that by pursuing these three pathways of inquiry, policy scholars will begin to open up questions about the flip side of its standard object of analysis policy-as-inaction that all too often remain un-asked and un-investigated. The knowledge they will gain and disseminate as a result may sometimes be awkward but it is, we believe, potentially important in our ongoing quest to keep speaking truth to and about power.
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The anti-Asian sentiment in America is nothing new. Xenophobic anti-Asian rhetoric abounds in the U. Hollywood caricatures persist.
Stereotypes that sexualize and dehumanize Asian women are pervasive. Monolithic depictions of Asian people as meek, polite, law-abiding, servile , and high-achieving dominate the media. It expresses discomfort by physically inching away from someone who does not look like you. It is people standing by, watching without intervening, as an elder is beaten on concrete in broad daylight. That dystopian couple, silence and inaction, builds walls that keep communities from opportunities.
It penalizes those who choose to raise families and creates barriers for those returning to the workforce.
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