Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda

On the evening of 6 April 1994, an aircraft carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down on approach to Kigali. The deaths of both leaders instantly destabilized an already fragile political settlement in Rwanda. Within hours, extremist elements within the military and political establishment seized upon the resulting power vacuum to initiate a campaign targeting Tutsi civilians and politically moderate Hutu leaders. The following morning marked the onset of roughly one hundred days of coordinated violence, accompanied by intense domestic conflict.

The groundwork for the slaughter reflected deep structural divides reshaped over decades. While early inhabitants, including Twa hunter-gatherers and migrating Bantu populations, had coalesced into kingdoms sharing customs and language, colonial governance altered internal relationships. Imperial German and subsequent Belgian administrations favored the Tutsi minority over the Hutu majority, relying on racial theories to consolidate power. In the early 1930s, Belgian authorities introduced compulsory identity cards recording ethnic classifications. This measure fixed previously fluid socioeconomic categories into rigid legal identities, foreclosing social mobility.