ABSTRACT
What would ultimately be recognized as genocide in Rwanda began with the downing on 6 April 1994 of an airplane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira. The event precipitated organized violence against Rwandan Tutsis by the Hutu-based Rwandan state authorities, who sought to wipe out the Tutsi population base as a way of preventing implementation of the interethnic power-sharing arrangement included in the 1993 Arusha Peace Agreement. The 800,000 civilian victims were slaughtered for no other reason than that they were ethnic Tutsi; Hutus with moderate political beliefs were also killed. The killings were conducted mainly by members of militias known as the interahamwe or impuzamgambi, which were associated with the Hutu-based ruling party, the Mouvement Révolutionnaire National pour le Développment (MRND), and the far-extremist Coalition pour la Défense de la République (CDR), respectively.1
