anatomy of murder: a history of genocide

What happened in 1994?


Between April and June an estimated 800,000 people – 10% of the population – were slaughtered in an orgy of killing that lasted for about 100 days.


Most of those killed were members of the smaller but traditionally dominant Tutsi ethnic group, while most of those who carried out the murders were from the majority Hutu population. Around 2 million Hutus fled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then known as Zaire.


Who are the Tutsis and Hutus?


Both are native to central Africa, mainly Rwanda and Burundi. They have much in common, notably language and many traditions, and inter-marriage between the tribes was common.


However, tensions between them increased markedly with colonisation. Influenced by then popular ideas of eugenics, the Germans, who took over the country at the end of the 19th century and were followed by Belgium in 1916, saw the Tutsis as more closely resembling Europeans in appearance, notably through their longer noses, and thus considered them to be an elite.


The Belgians formalised this divide with separate identity cards based on ethnicity, and the Tutsis received decades of favour in education and employment.


What was the effect of these tensions?


In 1959, more than 20,000 Tutsis were killed in a series of riots and others fled to neighbouring countries. The larger Hutu population took over power when Belgium granted the country independence in 1962, and for decades the previously dominated Tutsis were semi-officially demonised.


In the years before the genocide, Tutsi refugees in Uganda formed a group called the Rwandan Patriotic Front, or RPF. This aimed to overthrow Rwanda's Hutu president, Juvenal Habyarimana, and engineer a return to their home country.


Facing economic hardship and growing unpopularity, the president used increasingly divisive rhetoric to claim that Tutsis in Rwanda - as well as moderate Hutus who supported the RPF - were collaborating with the group. The government and RPF signed a peace deal in August 1993, but this did little to ease tensions.


What was the catalyst for the killings?


On 6 April 1994, a private jet carrying Habyarimana and the president of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamiram - also a Hutu - was shot down as it prepared to land in the Rwandan capital, Kigale. The perpetrators remain unknown, but the effect was immediate - Habyarimana's presidential guard immediately began murdering opposition leaders, and the massacre soon spread to Tutsis and moderate Hutus.


What happened then?


Within hours, the violence moved swiftly from the capital to the countryside. Encouraged by anti-Tutsi propaganda, tens of thousands of members of an unofficial militia group, the Interahamwe - meaning "those who stand together" - was mobilised to carry out massacres.


The killing soon became systematic, with Hutu civilians encouraged by the army and officials to turn on their Tutsi neighbours. Many people were killed after being stopped at roadblocks, while others were massacred in groups after hiding in churches or other buildings.


Most people were hacked with machetes, while others were shot. The mass killing only stopped when the RPF, which launched a new military assault after Habyarimana was killed, captured Kigali and the government collapsed.


What was the international response?


It was minimal. The bulk of the 2,500 UN peacekeepers in Rwanda at the time were withdrawn after 10 Belgian UN troops were killed a day after the plane crash in which Habyarimana died.


Individual countries also did nothing, with many saying later they had no idea that the situation was so bad while the massacre was taking place. In 2004, intelligence reports obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act showed that the then US president, Bill Clinton, and his cabinet were almost certainly told about a "final solution" to eliminate the Tutsi population in the early days of the killing.


In 2000 the UN security council accepted responsibility for failing to prevent the genocide. A week earlier, Belgium's then prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, made a public apology for his country's failings.


What has been the judicial response?


Soon after the genocide ended, the UN set up the international criminal tribunal for Rwanda, sitting in Tanzania, specifically to try alleged crimes during 1994.


It currently has 63 detainees in its care, 27 of whom are currently on trial. Trials have also taken place in other countries, notably Belgium, where those convicted included two Benedictine nuns who helped killed Tutsis sheltering at their convent.