RWANDA: How Did The Genocide Start?

It happened after the deaths of the Presidents of Burundi (Cyprien Ntaryamira) and Rwanda (Juvénal Habyarimana) in a plane crash caused by a rocket attack On 6 April 1994, catch fire several weeks of intense and systematic massacres.

The killings turned into over 1 million people who perished, shocked the international community and were clearly acts of genocide. Members of the presidential guard started killing Tutsi civilians in a section of Kigali near the airport because they thought they must have killed the president. Less than half an hour after the plane crash, roadblocks manned by Hutu militiamen often assisted by paramilitary police or military personnel was set up to identify Tutsis.

Over the next few days and weeks, road blocks were set up around Rwanda. Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered like northing over the next three months almost ten thousand people were murdered every day the prime minister was also killed.

The killings were seriously organized by the government, Local media print and radio also played an important role too in fuelling the violence. People were encouraged to turn in their neighbors or be killed themselves.

The Hutu’s used Rwandans’ national identity cards to systematically verify their ethnicity and kill Tutsi. The situation forced the Hutu civilians to arm themselves with machete, clubs, blunt objects and other weapons to rape, injure and kill their Tutsi neighbors and destroy or steal their property.

Thousands of Tutsis tried to escape the killing by hiding in churches, hospitals, schools, and government offices. These places, which historically have been places of refuge, were turned into places of mass murder during the Rwanda Genocide. The most worst were held on April 15-16, 1994 at the Nyarubuye Roman Catholic Church, located about 60 miles east of Kigali where over hundred thousand people were killed on the same place.

To seriously humiliate the Tutsi , there copes where unburied they were left and eaten by rats and dogs and many Tutsi bodies were thrown in lakes and rivers in order to send the Tutsis “back to Ethiopia” a reference to the myth that the Tutsi were foreigners and originally came from Ethiopia.

The Rwandan genocide has a lasting and thoughtful impact not only to Rwanda but also to its neighboring countries. Over 150,000 to 250,000 women were raped increasing cases of HIV/AIDS infections, including babies born of rape to newly infected mothers, many households were headed by orphaned children or widows, severe depopulation of the country crippled the economy.

Many Hutus were forced to flee to the neighboring countries majorly Democratic republic of Congo, Uganda, Kenya among other countries. Large Rwandan Hutu and Tutsi populations continued to live as refugees throughout the region. And today, Rwanda has two public holidays honoring the genocide. The national commemoration period begins with Genocide Memorial Day on April 7 and end with Liberation Day on July 4.

The week following April 7 is designated an official week of mourning. However the Rwanda genocide has its significance it has a global impact in that it created an international criminal court to eliminate the need for ad hoc tribunals to prosecute those accused in future incidents of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The genocide comes to an end only when the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) took over the country. The RPF, were a trained military group consisting of Tutsis who had been exiled in earlier years and many where in living in Uganda. The RPF helped in stopping the genocide.