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Beginning
on April 6, 1994, groups of ethnic Hutu, armed
mostly with machetes, began a campaign of terror
and bloodshed which embroiled the Central
African country of Rwanda. For about 100 days,
the Hutu militias, known in Rwanda as Interhamwe,
followed what evidence suggests was a clear and
premeditated attempt to exterminate the
country's ethnic Tutsi population. The Rwandan
state radio, controlled by Hutu extremists,
further encouraged the killings by broadcasting
non-stop hate propaganda and even pinpointed the
locations of Tutsis in hiding. The killings only
ended after armed Tutsi rebels, invading from
neighboring countries, managed to defeat the
Hutus and halt the genocide in July 1994. By
then, over one-tenth of the population, an
estimated 800,000 persons, had been killed. The
country's industrial infrastructure had been
destroyed and much of its population had been
dislocated. |
