The Rwandan genocide
Rwanda, officially known as the Republic of Rwanda, is a country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is a beautiful country, located in the great rift valley. However it wasn’t always this beautiful. The Rwanda genocide decimated close to a million Rwandan civilians and government officials, and the aftereffects of the mass killing are still present today.
Occurred from April 7 to July 15, 1994
85% Hutu 14% Tutsi 1% Twa
A Hutu revolution in 1959 forced as many as 330,000 Tutsis to flee the country
A military group placed Major General Juvenal Habyarimana, a moderate Hutu, in power
In the late 1900s, troops of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), mostly Tutsi refugees, entered Rwanda from Uganda.
In 1993, Habyarimana signed an agreement that included the RPF.
This power-sharing agreement angered Hutu extremists, who would soon take swift and horrible action to prevent it.
A plane carrying Habyarimana and the president of Burundi was shot down on April 6, 1994 over the city of Kigali.
Leaders of the RPF and Hutu extremists have been blamed for the plane crash
Within an hour of the plane crash, the presidential guard, the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR), and Hutu militia groups began setting up roadblocks and barriers and began slaughtering Tutsis and moderate Hutus. This would be known as the start of the Rwandan genocide
The first people killed in the genocide were Hutu Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and ten Belgian peacekeepers on April 7, which caused Belgium to redraw the rest of their troops.
Officials rewarded killers with food, drink, drugs and money
Within three months, around 800,000 people had been slaughtered.
During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, extremist members of the Hutu ethnic majority in the east-central African nation of Rwanda murdered around 800,000 people, majority of those killings were against the Tutsi minority.
Local government officials in central and southern Rwanda, where most Tutsi lived, resisted the genocide, but they were unable to hold off the killings and in the process were also killed. Other opposing officials silenced themselves or led the killing. Officials awarded killers with food, money, drugs, and drink. Government-sponsored radio stations began calling on regular Rwandan citizens to murder their neighbors. This led to 800,000 deaths in less than
