Full Description
The mass slaughter of the Tutsi minority and moderate Hutu in Rwanda over approximately 100 days from April to July 1994, in which between 500,000 and 800,000 people were killed. Organised by Hutu extremists using the army, the Interahamwe militia, and radio propaganda (Radio Mille Collines), the genocide was carried out largely with machetes at the community level. The international community failed to intervene; the United States and UN were criticised for deliberately avoiding the word “genocide” to escape the obligation to act under the Genocide Convention.
Critical Perspective
The Rwandan Genocide was not an explosion of ancient tribal hatreds but a product of modern politics and colonial history. Belgian colonial policy had transformed the relatively fluid Hutu-Tutsi distinction into a rigid, racialised identity system with identity cards. Post-independence politics had repeatedly used anti-Tutsi violence as a political tool. And the genocide was planned and organised — it was not spontaneous. The failure of international intervention was not ignorance but a deliberate political choice.
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