For the ATS members who wish to know how the genocide happened and its aftermath, read the following excerpt from the following article:
news.bbc.co.uk...
The genocide was sparked by the death of the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, when his plane was shot down above Kigali airport on 6
April 1994....
...Exactly who killed the president - and with him the president of Burundi and many chief members of staff - has not been established. Whoever was
behind the killing its effect was both instantaneous and catastrophic.
In Kigali, the presidential guard immediately initiated a campaign of retribution. Leaders of the political opposition were murdered, and almost
immediately, the slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus began. Within hours, recruits were dispatched all over the country to carry out a wave of
slaughter....
...Encouraged by the presidential guard and radio propaganda, an unofficial militia group called the Interahamwe (meaning those who attack together)
was mobilised. At its peak, this group was 30,000-strong.
Soldiers and police officers encouraged ordinary citizens to take part. In some cases, Hutu civilians were forced to murder their Tutsi neighbours by
military personnel. Participants were often given incentives, such as money or food, and some were even told they could appropriate the land of the
Tutsis they killed...
www.gendercide.org...
...Within 24 hours of Habyarimana's jet being downed, roadblocks sprang up around Kigali, manned by the so-called interahamwe militia (the name means
"those who attack together"). Tutsis were separated from Hutus and hacked to death with machetes at roadside (although many taller Hutus were
presumed to be Tutsis and were also killed).
"Doing murder with a machete is exhausting, so the militias were organized to work in shifts. At the day's end, the Achilles tendons of unprocessed
victims were sometimes cut before the murderers retired to rest, to feast on the victims' cattle and to drink. Victims who could afford to pay often
chose to die from a bullet." (Wrage, "Genocide in Rwanda.")
Meanwhile, death-squads working from carefully-prepared lists went from neighbourhood to neighbourhood in Kigali. They murdered not only Tutsis but
moderate Hutus, including the prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana. The prime minister was guarded by a detachment of Belgian soldiers; these were
arrested, disarmed, tortured, and murdered, prompting Belgium -- as intended -- to withdraw the remainder of its U.N. troops from Rwanda.
With breathtaking rapidity, the genocide expanded from Kigali to the countryside. Government radio encouraged Tutsis to congregate at churches,
schools, and stadiums, pledging that these would serve as places of refuge. Thus concentrated, the helpless civilians could be more easily targeted --
although many miraculously managed to resist with only sticks and stones for days or even weeks, until the forces of the Rwandan army and presidential
guard were brought in to exterminate them with machine-guns and grenades.
By April 21 -- that is, in just two weeks -- perhaps a quarter of a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus had been slaughtered. Together with the mass
murder of Soviet prisoners-of-war during World War II, it was the most concentrated act of genocide in human history: "the dead of Rwanda accumulated
at nearly three times the rate of Jewish dead during the Holocaust."
During the war of 1994, and particularly as a result of the genocidal massacres which precipitated it, it was principally the men of the
targeted populations who lost their lives or fled to other countries in fear.
This targeting of men for slaughter was not confined to adults: boys were similarly decimated, raising the possibility that the demographic imbalance
will continue for generations. Large numbers of women also lost their lives; however, mutilation and rape were the principal strategies used against
women, and these did not necessarily result in death.
"testimonies from survivors confirm that rape was extremely widespread and that thousands of women were individually raped, gang-raped, raped with
objects such as sharpened sticks or gun barrels, held in sexual slavery (either collectively or through forced "marriage") or sexually mutilated.
These crimes were frequently part of a pattern in which Tutsi women were raped after they had witnessed the torture and killings of their relatives
and the destruction and looting of their homes. According to witnesses, many women were killed immediately after being raped. Other women managed to
survive, only to be told that they were being allowed to live so that they would "die of sadness." Often women were subjected to sexual slavery and
held collectively by a militia group or were singled out by one militia man, at checkpoints or other sites where people were being maimed or
slaughtered, and held for personal sexual service..."
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