“Genocide is not a single act of murder, it is millions of acts of murders.”
“Genocide is never spontaneous, it is always intentional.”
Plans to eliminate the Tutsi began in 1990, where the Hutu’s started planning neighborhood attacks and massacres. April 6, 1994, the President of Rwanda was shot down in plane. 40 minutes later, neighborhood raids and killings began. Thus beginning the 100 days of genocide.
In these 100 days, over a million people were killed. Two million people became refugees and 2/3s of the population were displaced. 500,000+ women were raped-often times purposely by HIV infected males, in another attempt to eradicate the Tutsi population. They sought and killed women and children because they are the future generation.
During this time 85% of the Tutsi population were killed. “Many families had been totally wiped out with no one to remember them or even document their death.” It turned family against family, neighbor against neighbor. The people that killed each other used to share life with the people they killed. One day they were sharing a meal, then the next they raped and killed you. They knew who they were killing.
Machetes were cheaper to import so the majority of the people died from machete. There were stories of people being shot, beat to death, tortured, thrown against walls (a little 15month old girl), a girl shot in her mother’s arms, even starvation. “Streets were littered with corpses-dogs were eating the rotting flesh of their owners.”
“The country smelt of the stench of death.”
Outside aid was relatively nonexistent. Embassy’s vacated their people and the Rwandans were left to die. UN admitted they should have and could have sent more aid that they would have been stopped a lot earlier and many lives would have been saved.
“When they said never again after the Holocaust, was that meant for some people and not for others?”
“It is impossible for us to forget the past…we also need to learn from it.”
Quotes and information taken from the Genocide Museum of Kigale
