The Rwandan Genocide is said to be one of the most notorious modern genocides that wreaked widespread slaughter over just 100 days beginning in 1994, according to the University of Minnesota’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies:
“During this 100 day period between April and July 1994, nearly one million ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed.”
The study’s background that illustrates how such a tragic event could happen, the Rwandan Genocide must first be seen as the product of Belgian colonialism.
“It was during colonial rule that Rwanda’s ethnic groups: Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa became racialized. It was the rigidification of these identities and their relationship with political power that would lay the foundation for genocidal violence. When Rwanda gained independence in 1962, the ethnic majority, Hutus, were left in power. Hutu rule resulted in widespread discrimination against Tutsi, laying the groundwork for the 1994 genocide.”
Before the genocide took root, a civil war began between the government’s armed forces and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), led by Tutsi exiles in Uganda broke out in 1990.
“The context of an ongoing war led to anti-Tutsi propaganda, painting Tutsis as dangerous traitors. In 1994, when the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down, the genocide began, in which 800 000 Tutsi and many moderate Hutus were massacred.”
