Between April and June 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the span of 100 days. This conflict between two communities – the Tutsis and Hutus – shed mostly Tutsi blood at the hands of the Hutus.
This massacre was set off when a plane was shot down above Kigali airport, carrying then Rwandan President, Juvenal Habyarimana, who happened to be a Hutu.
The blame fell on Paul Kagame (and his associates), the leader of a Tutsi rebel group, The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), for carrying out the attack.
Kagame denied the attack and claimed that Hutu extremists were responsible, as they had cunning plans to exterminate the Tutsi community.
This is the part in the story where it’s important to understand the history between the Hutus and Tutsis, specifically the part that colonization played …
In 1916, Belgian colonists arrived and soon began administering identity cards classifying people according to ethnicity. Tutsis were considered by the Belgians to be superior for their taller, leaner stature and we all know the effect that kind of flattery can have on the ego, not to mention the potential for hateful division and resentment.
For the next 20 years, the Tutsis enjoyed privileges such as better jobs, education and general opportunities than their Hutu neighbors.
Indignation and threats naturally ensued and by the late 1950’s, thousands of Tutsis were fleeing to neighboring countries, but not before at least 20,000 Tutsis were killed. In 1962, Rwanda was granted independence from Belgium and the Hutus reigned supreme while the Tutsis became the commonplace scapegoats for pretty much every crisis or suspicious act.
Tensions grew over the coming decades. Kigame’s RPF sought to return to their Rwandan homeland by overthrowiing President Habyarimana, while the Hutu President milked those threats to incite dissident Hutus to join forces with him. Tutsis inside Rwanda at that time were accused of collaborating with the RPF.
Attacks and negotiations continued to no avail. And by the time Habyarimana’s plane was shot down, a baby could’ve orchestrated the massacre that went down as Africa’s largest genocide in modern times.
From there, it only required a message rooted in fear over a rather unsophisticated radio system to make killing machines out of ortherwise ordinary people.
Before the Belgian colonization, these two tribes lived rather harmoniously. They had their differences but those differences were not pronounced…Not until an outside influence came along and pointed them out, along with all of their accompanying flaws. . And they have never been the same since. Though the violent massacre came to an end in July of 1994, the conflict and killings continue to this day.
And…to this day, no one really knows who shot that plane down. Had the Hutu extremists executed their own leader as a way to enlist members of its community to do their dirty work in hopes of wiping out an entire tribe they saw as the enemy? Or had the Tutsis begun to retaliate for a painful past they never forgot?
Or maybe it was someone or something else entirely that birthed this event long before that plane fell in April of 1994.
If you ask me, the real enemy is still at large.
