If you are new to this history, start here. This page covers what happened in Rwanda in 1994, how it came about, and where to read more.
What happened
Over about 100 days, from April 7 to mid-July 1994, extremists who controlled Rwanda’s government organized the killing of the country’s Tutsi minority. Soldiers, police, militias known as the Interahamwe, local officials, and ordinary civilians took part. Estimates of the dead range from about 800,000 to more than one million people. Most were Tutsi. Hutu who opposed the killing or tried to protect Tutsi were also murdered.
People were killed at roadblocks, in their homes, and in churches, schools, and government offices where they had been told to gather for safety. Much of the killing was done with machetes, clubs, and other hand weapons. Sexual violence against Tutsi women was widespread.
How it came to this
Hutu and Tutsi share a language, Kinyarwanda, and a culture. Belgian colonial rulers hardened the divide between them and, in the 1930s, issued identity cards that recorded each person’s ethnicity. In 1994, those cards helped killers single out victims at roadblocks.
Waves of violence against Tutsi began in 1959, and many fled into exile in neighboring countries. In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel army made up largely of Tutsi exiles, invaded from Uganda. The government and its allies answered with propaganda that cast every Tutsi as an enemy. The newspaper Kangura and the radio station RTLM called Tutsi inyenzi, cockroaches, and urged listeners to kill them.
On the night of April 6, 1994, a plane carrying President Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down over Kigali. Within hours, the killing began. It had been prepared in advance: militias were trained, weapons were handed out, and lists of people to kill were drawn up.
What the world did
A small UN peacekeeping force was in Rwanda when the killing started. After ten Belgian peacekeepers were murdered on April 7, Belgium withdrew its troops, and on April 21 the UN Security Council voted to cut the force to 270. The United States and other powers avoided calling the killing genocide, a word that would have raised pressure to act. France, a close ally of the Rwandan government, sent troops in late June in Opération Turquoise, which critics say allowed many of those responsible to escape into Zaire.
The genocide ended when the RPF defeated the government’s forces and took control of the country in July 1994.
After 1994
The UN created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in November 1994. In 1998, in the case of Jean-Paul Akayesu, it handed down the first conviction for genocide by an international court and recognized rape as an act of genocide. Inside Rwanda, community courts known as gacaca heard hundreds of thousands of cases until 2012.
Many suspects still live freely abroad. Survivors continue to wait for reparations, face denial of what happened to their families, and in some cases are attacked or killed. These are the issues this blog follows.
Words you will see
Kwibuka: “To remember.” The annual commemoration that begins every April 7.
Interahamwe: The militias that carried out much of the killing. The name roughly means “those who attack together.”
Inyenzi: “Cockroaches.” A slur used in propaganda to dehumanize Tutsi.
Gacaca: Community courts that tried genocide cases in Rwanda.
Abarokotse: Survivors.
Timeline
- 1933Belgian authorities issue identity cards that record ethnicity.
- 1959Violence against Tutsi begins. Many flee into exile.
- 1962Rwanda becomes independent from Belgium.
- October 1990The RPF invades from Uganda and civil war begins.
- August 1993The Arusha Accords set terms for peace and power sharing.
- April 6, 1994President Habyarimana’s plane is shot down over Kigali.
- April 7, 1994The killing begins across the country.
- April 21, 1994The UN Security Council votes to cut its peacekeeping force to 270.
- July 1994The RPF takes control of the country and the genocide ends.
- November 1994The UN creates the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
- 1998The tribunal hands down the first international conviction for genocide.
- 2018The UN adopts the name “genocide against the Tutsi” and marks April 7 as a day of reflection.
Read more
- Samantha Power, “Bystanders to Genocide”, The Atlantic, September 2001. How US officials followed the killing and chose not to act.
- Philip Gourevitch, “After the Genocide”, The New Yorker, December 1995, and his book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families (1998). Survivors and the aftermath.
- Linda Melvern, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide (2000), Conspiracy to Murder (2004), and Intent to Deceive: Denying the Genocide of the Tutsi (2020). How the genocide was planned and how denial works. Read a review of Intent to Deceive.
- Noam Schimmel, “How the Dogmatic Ideology of Forgiveness Can Harm Genocide Survivors”. Why survivors should never be pressured to forgive.
- Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, Human Rights Watch, 1999. A detailed account of how the killing was organized.
- Roméo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil (2003). The UN force commander’s own account.
From this blog: my five recommended books on the genocide against the Tutsi, why Scholastique Mukasonga is my favorite Rwandan writer, and my own story.
Teaching this in class? I also speak at schools.