About the Genocide

Over the course of a 100-day period, between April 6th and July 4th in 1994, an estimated 1,000,000 people were systematically slaughtered in the Genocide against the Tutsi. Conservatively, this equates to six people being murder, every second, of every minute, of every day, for 100 days. It is an unimaginable figure.

Why did this happen?

Although 85% of Rwanda is made up of people from the Hutu tribe, the Tutsi minority has long been in control of the country. In 1994, a plane carrying then-president Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down and all on board perished. Convinced this was the work of the Tutsi-led rebel group, Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), Hutu extremists organized militias with one focus: to kill every Tutsi and Tutsi sympathizer in Rwanda.

How did this happen?

Over 100 days, Hutu extremists led organized sweeps of neighborhoods in Kigali, the country’s capital. Tutsi people and moderate Hutus were drug from their homes and murdered. Many of the militia members used crude, homemade weapons. Eventually, the killing spread across the country. No area was spared, no village safe. Tutsis would seek refuge in churches. The church doors would be locked from the outside and burned to the ground.

During the genocide, militias made up of HIV-positive men were sent out with express orders to infect as many Tutsi women as possible. Women were raped then forced to watch as their families were murdered. Afterward, the militia would often tell the women, “We are going to let you live so you may die of sadness.” The goal was to insure the killing continued long after the war ended. It is estimated that as many as 500,000 women were raped during the genocide and, of those, 67% were infected with HIV.

How did it end?

On July 6, 1994, the Tutsi-led RPF, with help from the Ugandan army, overtook Kigali and regained control of the country. Many Hutu people fled to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Following the genocide, the UN established the International Crime Tribunal for Rwanda to prosecute leaders within the genocide movement but trials were lengthy and expensive.

In Rwanda, community courts, or gacaca, were established to prosecute genocide suspects:

“Until 2012, 12,000 gacaca courts met once a week in villages across the country, often outdoors in a marketplace or under a tree, trying more than 1.2 million cases. Their aim was to achieve truth, justice and reconciliation among Rwandans as "gacaca" means to sit down and discuss an issue.”

Trauma Remains…

Even now, 26 years after the Genocide against the Tutsi, the trauma of what happened in 1994 overwhelms many Rwandan people. In a 2016 study of genocide survivors living in Finland, 73% of survivors reported still being traumatized by their experience in the genocide, and 38% extremely traumatized.

Trauma counseling has become a integral part of the whole-woman healing we believe in. Not only do we offer daily group and individual counseling sessions to the women we employ, we offer a lay counselor training program to help train community leaders outside of our own village, so they have the tools to bring healing to their own communities. You may read more about our counseling program here.

Further Study

If you would like to learn more about the Genocide against the Tutsi, we highly recommend:

HELPFUL BLOG POSTS

Carl Wilkens - Rwanda, Post Genocide and Reconciliation

Rebirth

Amazing Love



To Read

I’m Not Leaving by Carl Wilkens - an in-depth look into Carl’s own experience as the last remaining American caught in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza - the unbelievable story of a Rwandan native forced to hide in her Hutu pastor’s tiny bathroom…with seven other starving women…for an impossible 91 days. Hers is a tale of indescribable courage and forgiveness.

Untamed: Beyond Freedom by Celine Uwineza - in her book, Uwineza recounts her own heart-wrenching experience of surviving the genocide as a ten-year-old child. Celine discusses, in frank detail the trauma she experienced and her 20-year journey to healing.

To Watch

Sometimes in April - a powerful war-time drama depicting how family members often turned on one another once the genocide broke out in 1994. This movie follows two brothers who find themselves on opposite sides of what became one of the darkest moments in African history.

Ghosts of Rwanda - this compelling PBS documentary is often hard to watch, but it provides insight into how the genocide began and why the rest of world stood by as nearly 1 million Tutsi and Tutsi sympathizers were murdered.

Left to Tell Interview with Immaculee Ilibagiza - Immaculee takes 60 Minutes back to her village to recount her experience of survival during the Genocide against the Tutsi.

Interview with Speciose:

 

Interview published with explicit permission from Speciose.