The Rwandan genocide, otherwise known as the genocide against the Tutsi, took place from 7 April to 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan civil war.
In this hundred days time frame, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group were majorly targeted and killed, and a majority of the killings and violence were perpetrated by the Hutus.
This genocide was triggered by the assassination the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu man, when his plane was shot down on 6 April 1994 above Kigali airport.
The ethnic friction between the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis has always existed in Rwanda, and it’s only gotten worse over the years, especially after the Belgian colonists considered the Tutsis to be superior to the Hutus and gave them better education and employment opportunities.
This led to an increase in the resentment the Hutus had for the Tutsis, and in 1959, there were a series of riots that resulted in the killing of over 20000 Tutsis.
At the end of the Belgian rule and with Rwanda regaining her independence, the Hutus came into power, and the Tutsis bore the weight of every wrong that occurred.
This was the situation that led Tutsi in Uganda, aided by a few Hutus, to form the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), led by Mr Kagame, with the aim of returning to their homeland and overthrowing the government.
After months of negotiations and a series of attacks, a peace accord was signed between Habyarimana and the RPF in August 1993. However, it didn’t quench the fire, and so when Habyarimana’s plane was shot down at the beginning of April 1994, it triggered the Hutus who felt the Tutsi carried out the attack.
It remains yet to be known who killed the president – and with him, the president of Burundi and many chief members of staff, but the effects were immediate and horrific.
In Kigali, the presidential guard declared retribution and immediately, the slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus began. Military officials, politicians and businessmen, and the early organisers sent recruits to carry out the massacre. These organisers soon joined in the blood spillage and made their way through the Tutsi population with machetes or blew them up in churches where they had taken refuge.
The Government-sponsored radio stations started demanding that ordinary Rwandan civilians murder their Tutsi neighbours to get rewards like food, drugs and money. In about three months, over 800,000 people had been murdered. The murderers also used rape as a weapon, intentionally spreading HIV/AIDS among the Tutsi women.
This caused the RPF to fight for itself and the Tutsis, and thus along with genocide, a civil war was taking place.
Tides changed, and by July, the RPF had control over Kigali and the majority of Ugandan states. This victory led over 2 million Hutus to flee to other neighbouring countries.
The RPF then set up a coalition government, with a Hutu, Pasteur Bizimungu, as president and a Tutsi, Paul Kagame as defence minister and vice president.
The UN and international community remained on the sidelines through the war and were passive.
After the genocide, a new constitution was written, one that didn’t make room for ethnicities but regarded every Rwandan as one and same. The country also spent years getting justice done and reconciliation, trying those they held responsible for the genocide, rebuilding their economy and promoting national unity.
In November 1994, the UN created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR; formally known as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Genocide and Other Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of Rwanda and Rwandan Citizens Responsible for Genocide and Other Such Violations Committed in the Territory of Neighbouring States between 1 January and 31 December 1994).
This body could only impose terms of imprisonment and not capital punishment. They ruled that genocide included “subjecting a group of people to a subsistence diet, systematic expulsion from homes and the reduction of essential medical services below the minimum requirement.” They were also of the opinion that “rape and sexual violence constitute genocide…as long as they were committed with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a particular group, targeted as such” as was seen in the intent of the Hutus to wipe out the Tutsi. This action made the tribunal to be one of the first international bodies to formally recognise rape as a weapon of war and sexual violence as a war crime.
