ON THIS DAY

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April 22, 1994

Rawandan Genocide: 35,000 Tutsis slaughtered by Hutus

The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred from 7 April to 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. Over a span of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were systematically killed by Hutu militias. While the Rwandan Constitution states that over 1 million people were killed, most scholarly estimates suggest between 500,000 and 662,000 Tutsi died, mostly men. The genocide was marked by extreme violence, with victims often murdered by neighbors, and widespread sexual violence, with between 250,000 and 500,000 women raped.

On April 22, 1994 a convoy full of soldiers attacked. On that day, more than 35,000 Tutsis were killed, some of whom were burned with petrol to death and became ashes, which (ash) was later buried in dignity after the Genocide. About 42,008 bodies were buried at the local Genocide Memorial.

The genocide was rooted in long-standing ethnic tensions, exacerbated by the Rwandan Civil War, which began in 1990 when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a predominantly Tutsi rebel group, invaded Rwanda from Uganda. The war reached a tentative peace with the Arusha Accords in 1993. However, the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana on 6 April 1994 ignited the genocide, as Hutu extremists used the power vacuum to target Tutsi and moderate Hutu leaders.

Despite the scale of the atrocities, the international community failed to intervene to stop the killings. The RPF resumed military operations in response to the genocide, eventually defeating the government forces and ending the genocide by capturing all government-controlled territory. This led to the flight of the génocidaires and many Hutu refugees into Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), contributing to regional instability and triggering the First Congo War in 1996.

The legacy of the genocide remains significant in Rwanda. The country has instituted public holidays to commemorate the event and passed laws criminalising "genocide ideology" and "divisionism".

Photographs of genocide victims displayed at the Kigali Genocide Memorial

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