ABSTRACT

On 6 April 1994, the president of Rwanda, as well as the president of neighbouring Burundi, died when the plane in which they were travelling was shot down above Kigali airport in Rwanda. To this day, it remains uncertain who was responsible for the rocket attack that brought down the aircraft. Some claim that it was the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a group of Tutsi refugees who were seeking to overthrow the president, a Hutu; others suggest it was Hutu extremists seeking a pretext to exterminate the Tutsi community. What is certain, however, is that the death of the Rwandan president almost immediately triggered a campaign of mass murder across the country, the great majority of victims being Tutsis and most of those who perpetrated the violence being Hutus (BBC 2008; Alluri 2009). In the 100 days that followed, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed, the genocide only coming to an end when the Tutsi-led RPF captured Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, and established a multiethnic government. Subsequently, some two million Hutus, fearing retaliation, fled into neighbouring countries.