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Rwandans Moving On 20 Years After Genocide

In 1994, thousands of persons were killed in Rwanda and it has been twenty years since. Back then, the country’s population of approximately seven million … Continue reading Rwandans Moving On 20 Years After Genocide


RwandaIn 1994, thousands of persons were killed in Rwanda and it has been twenty years since.

Back then, the country’s population of approximately seven million composed of three ethnic groups, the Hutu, who were approximately 85 per cent, the Tutsi, 14 per cent, and Twa who were one per cent.

But in the early 1990s, Hutu extremists within the country’s political elite blamed the entire Tutsi minority population for the country’s increasing social, economic and political pressures.

Tutsi civilians were also accused of supporting a Tutsi-dominated rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) through the use of propaganda and constant political maneuvering, then President Habyarimana, and his group increased divisions between Hutu and Tutsi by the end of 1992.

The Hutu remembered past years of oppressive Tutsi rule and many of them not only resented, but also feared the minority.

Everything changed, when on April 6, 1994, a plane carrying President Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down. The next day, began 100 days of bloodletting, known today, as the genocide.

Twenty years after, on the day set aside to mark the Genocide, Rwandans decided to honour those that died in the massacre.

Those that experienced the genocide narrated their experiences.