The Rwanda Massacre: 1994

The Rwanda massacre: 1994

Everything was prepared since time and the Hutus only sought a pretext to start the conflict, this was the death of President Rwandés on April 6, 1994.

The president of Ruanda returned to the capital, after having attended a summit in Tanzania about the political crises of both countries. The plane was attacked by two Earth-Aire missiles, exploded and ended up impacting on the president’s residence. It is not clear who was the author of this attack, the most shared hypothesis is, that it was the hutus extremists who launched the missiles from Rwanda. Shortly after the murder of Juvénal Habyarimana, the killings of all who considered that they were opposed to power began, the murders were carried out in a planned, methodical and systematic way. The Militias Hutus toured the streets indiscriminately and with lists in hand, ministers, journalists, members of associations, children, elders, women.

There was an institutional vacuum and on April 7, the Military Board appointed Jean Kambanda Prime Minister with the approval of the Akazu extremist organization (mostly formed by the woman and the habyariman political family that secretly directed the country). Kambanda appoints his government among members of the Hutu Powe movement (the most radical extremists) giving free rein to all the collective hate and feeling of revenge to the tutsis.

The media developed a persuasive and inciting role to violence and hate, before, during and after genocide, urging their followers to fix the Tutsi problem at a machete’s blow and threatening the moderate Hutus.

Later during the time the genocide lasted the stations encouraged the murderers and informed them where the tutsis were.

The most bloody events occurred when the murders against all tutsis began indiscriminately, without exception, in order to exterminate them. France and Belgium evacuated their citizens and closed their embassies, without doing anything to stop the genocide. The murders continued to be produced throughout the country, the houses of the tutsis were burned and their cattle were stolen. Survivors were locked in hospitals, churches, schools, sports centers, etc … without food or water until they later killed them, at first with firearms at the hands of the police and the army and later took care of themMilitias and civilians with weapons such as machetes, agricultural tools, hunting weapons, stones, improvised weapons, etc … between April 15 and 18 were killed with this tactic tens of thousands of tutsis. In Butare (University City), all professors and the sick of the Tutsi hospital were killed. 

There was also a moral attack, they used the violation of women as a weapon of war, encouraged by the media that cataloged the women’s tutsis and wanting to pervert the General Staff of Unamir, so it encouraged rape to degrade them to degrade themand transmit AIDS before killing them, acts supported by the Minister of Family and Development of Women;In three months 200 were committed.000 violations.