"The most horrible and systematic human massacre we have had occasion to witness since the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis." British Philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1964, as quoted in A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide by Linda Melvern, 2000.
This quote speaks to the fact that the Rwandan Genocide was one of the worst mass murders since the holocaust. This is written by a British citizen and was written a couple years after the genocide. At this point in history the world was regretting its decision not to get involved in the Rwandan genocide. The United Nations and the United States had tried especially hard to stay out of the genocide and did not even want to recognize it as a genocide because then, morally, they would have had to do something. The Rwandan genocide was really unnecessary and could have been prevented if the area that is now Rwanda was never colonized and if Belgium had never recognized the Tutsis as the master race over the Hutu people. So, it is now apparent that this all goes back to imperialism and when Europe decided to divide up Africa during the Berlin Conference. The human greed led to this mass murder and the human greed watched and let it happen. The reason that the United States did not get involved in the Rwandan Genocide was because of the nineteen soldiers in Somalia and because it was not in the countries common interest. That sounds like greed if nothing else.
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