Rwanda Genocide (1994)

In 1994, in the space of just 100 days, over 800,000 people were slaughtered during the Rwanda genocide.

The population of the country at the time consisted of three ethnic groups: the Hutu (85% majority), the Tutsi (14%), and the Twa (1%).

Following years of growing tensions, President Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane was shot out of the sky. It is still not definite who was responsible, but Hutu extremists seized the event to begin a meticulously organised campaign of murder against the Tutsi minority, as well as some of their own moderates, including the prime minister.

The speed and savagery of the killings shocked the world. Militias hunted down political opponents, neighbours turned on each other, and men even killed their Tutsi wives. Radio and media propaganda spurred civilians on to “weed out the cockroaches”, publishing lists of people to murder and how to find them.

Nuns and priests even slaughtered people who attempted to hide in their churches.

When a Tutsi-led military, backed by Ugandan forces, finally regained control of the country, an estimated million people were dead, and a further two million refugees had fled the borders.

Some two million Hutus – both civilians and some of those involved in the genocide – fled across the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo, at the time called Zaire, fearing revenge attacks. Others went to neighbouring Tanzania and Burundi.

The United Nations and Belgium had forces in Rwanda, but the UN mission was not given a mandate to stop the killing.

A year after US troops were killed in Somalia, America was determined not to get involved in another African conflict. The Belgians and most UN peacekeepers pulled out after 10 Belgian soldiers were killed.

The French, who were allies of the Hutu government, sent a special force to evacuate their citizens and later set up a supposedly safe zone, but were accused of not doing enough to stop the slaughter in that area.