In the country of Rwanda there are two groups; the Tutsis and the Hutu. There is a lot of tension between these two groups, but they are actualy very very similar. They live in the same area, speak the same language and have the same traditions.
The reason behind this tension is thought to be because of the way the Tutsis were treated. When Rwanda first became a country it was controlled by Belgium. The leaders of the country at this time classified people by their ethnicity and because a Tutsi is usually skinnier and taller than the average Hutu, they were treated better. They got better educational opportunities and better jobs. Naturally the Hutu were upset with this and with their large population, they killed roughly 20,000 Tutsis in the year 1959. I can see being upset, but after awhile, shouldn't you just start over and try to forgive each other? You really can't control what your ancestors did or didn't do. During this killing, a good majority of the Tutsis fled to surrounding countries to escape the murdering. In 1962, Belgium finally gave in and Rwanda gained their independance, and of course, the Hutu took over.So all of these events pretty much lead up to the 1994 genocide. The event that really kicked this off was President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane was shot down. He was a Hutu and their people were really angry. But some people say that some extreme Hutus did it for an excuse just to start this chaos, but the killer is still unknown to this day.The plane came down April 6, 1994, and the very next day, Rwandan troops and the Hutu Interahamwe militia begin the execution of Tutsis and moderate Hutus. That's really horrible. The guy isn't even dead for a day and they're already assuming and slaughtering people. Over the a one hundred day time span, there are roughly 800,000 Rwandans murdered.
This whole big thing came to an end on July 18, 1994 when a cease fire was ordered by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF.) I think that was a really smart move because by then, there's really no telling how many more people would have been killed. They then chose Pasteur Bizimungu to be their new president and Faustin Twagiramungu to be their new prime minister.In the months following, the United Nations agreed to set up the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda which is an international court. The ICTR was made to try the biggest suspects in the 1994 genocide. The most recent conviction was in December of 2008. They convicted Theoneste Bagosora who is thought to be the guy that came up with the whole thing. I really hope they catch all of the people who were involved in this, and I hope justice is given.
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