Rwandan Genocide

The Rwandan Genocide was a genocidal mass slaughter of Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda by members of the Hutu majority. During the approximate 100-day period from April 7 to mid-July 1994, an estimated 500,000–1,000,000 Rwandans were killed, constituting as much as 70% of the Tutsi and 20% of Rwanda's total population. The genocide was planned by members of the core political elite known as the akazu, many of whom occupied positions at top levels of the national government. Perpetrators came from the ranks of the Rwandan army, the National Police (gendarmerie), government-backed militias including the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, and the Hutu civilian population.

The genocide took place in the context of the Rwandan Civil War, an ongoing conflict beginning in 1990 between the Hutu-led government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which was largely composed of Tutsi refugees whose families had fled to Uganda following earlier waves of Hutu violence against the Tutsi. International pressure on the Hutu-led government of Juvénal Habyarimana resulted in a ceasefire in 1993 with a roadmap to implement the Arusha Accords that would create a power-sharing government with the RPF. This agreement displeased many conservative Hutu, including members of the Akazu, who viewed it as conceding to enemy demands. Among the broader Hutu populace, the RPF military campaign had also intensified support for the so-called "Hutu Power" ideology, which portrayed the RPF as an alien force intent on reinstating the Tutsi monarchy and enslaving Hutus, a prospect met with extreme opposition.

Genocide

Genocide is the intent to systematically eliminate a racial, ethnic, religious, linguistic, cultural or national group. Well-known examples of genocide include the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, the 1971 Bangladesh genocide, the Cambodian Genocide, and more recently the Rwandan Genocide, the Al-Anfal Campaign, and the Bosnian Genocide.

Etymology

Genocide has become an official term used in international relations. The word "genocide" was not in use before 1944. Before this was established, Winston Churchill referred to it as a crime with no name. In that year, a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin, described the policies of systematic murder founded by the Nazis as genocide. The word genocide is the combination of the Greek word "geno" (meaning tribe or race) and “caedere” (the Latin word for to kill). The word is defined as a specific set of violent crimes that are committed against a certain group with the attempt to remove the entire group from existence or to destroy them.