Editor's Pick

ON 6 APRIL 1994, Hutu extremists in Rwanda began a genocidal campaign that killed more than eight hundred thousand people, most of whom belonged to the minority Tutsi community. Around 2 million Rwandans fled the country, and over three hundred thousand children were separated from their families.

Although the Hutu and Tutsi had distinct histories and cultural practices, centuries of intermarriage and a common language made these identities fluid. However, German and Belgian colonists, who indirectly ruled Rwanda in the early twentieth century by propping up an absolutist Tutsi monarchy, accentuated the differences and inequalities between the two groups. A Hutu uprising in 1959, and a coup two years later, brought a violent end to Tutsi rule—twenty thousand Tutsi were killed, while over a hundred and fifty thousand fled the country.

Ethnic tensions periodically flared up, with massacres of the Tutsi being carried out in 1963, 1967 and 1973. In 1990, the Front Patriotique Rwandais, a militant group created by Tutsi exiles in neighbouring Uganda, invaded the country. Three years later, the Rwandan president, Juvénal Habyarimana, signed a peace treaty with the FPR that provided for power-sharing and the repatriation of Tutsi refugees.

Hutu extremists opposed the treaty and ratcheted up anti-Tutsi propaganda. On 6 April 1994, a plane carrying Habyarimana was shot down—it was unclear whether the FPR or Hutu extremists were responsible. The killings began that night. The next morning, members of the presidential guard assassinated the caretaker prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, a moderate Hutu who had been demonised for her role in the peace talks. An interim government, made up of Hutu extremists, was sworn in. The Rwandan army and the Hutu militias Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi carried out massacres throughout the country, in which over two hundred thousand Hutu civilians participated. The genocide ended in July, after the FPR again invaded the country and expelled the interim government.