At the initiative of the United Nations, April 7 is marked as the International Day of Remembrance of the Rwandan Genocide: the 1994 massacre of Hutu Tutsi members of the country's ethnic majority. In a hundred days, about a million people died, at least 250,000 women were raped, and the country's infrastructure was completely destroyed.
The difference between the two ethnic groups is not significant: both Hutus and Tutsis speak the same language and have the same religious and cultural traditions. In addition, they are not localized in separate communities, mostly lived side by side, in joint settlements, married each other. The differences between them were more in the "professional" plane. Traditionally, the Tutsis were mostly warriors and pastoralists, and the Hutus were farmers and priests. The more educated and wealthy Tutsi colonizers were more willing to use for administration, while the Hutus made up the majority of the region's poorest population. They suffered from a shortage of agricultural land in an extremely overpopulated country (the average rural Rwandan family consists of 8 people who support themselves on a 0.2-hectare farm). The aggravation of the economic situation was facilitated by the narrow agrarian specialization of the country; in the "banana republic" of Rwanda, the role of bananas is coffee, the main export product. Due to the flourishing of the world coffee market, the country's economy has been growing for a long time, which has contributed to public peace. But in the late 1980s, due to changes in the global economic situation and a severe drought, incomes fell sharply. Therefore, belonging to the Hutu became equal to social outsider.
When a plane carrying Rwandan President Gabiariman was shot down by rocket launchers near the Kigali International Airport on April 6, 1994, it was immediately announced on the radio that the president had been killed by Tutsis. This information was the reason for the development of aggression of the majority of the Hutus against the minority of Tutsis. Moderate Hutus (a tenth of the victims) who refused to kill were also affected.
Most of the Hutus, possessed by aggression, formed death squads, whose forces, with the support of the army, committed the most brutal killings by various means: weapons, knives, axes, machetes. Both central and local authorities actively encouraged aggression: they carried out propaganda on the radio, purchased murder weapons, and set a monetary reward for each Tutsi killed. The media played a huge role in promoting the genocide. Later, a terrible pattern was established: the better technically the reception of "Free Radio of a Thousand Hills" was provided, the more people died in a certain region of the country. Neighbors killed neighbors, doctors - patients, teachers - students, teachers - students; dozens of Tutsi settlements were destroyed. When the rioters came to mixed families (and there were many of them, because the most common way to join the privileged class was to marry a Tutsi woman), if the children were registered as hutu, they were not touched - only one of the parents was killed. If the children were recorded as Tutsis, they were killed as well.
A special means of terror was gang rape, which was usually accompanied by other physical torture and took place in front of spectators. Due to the deliberate involvement of genocide participants in the mass rape of HIV-infected Hutus, an AIDS outbreak has also occurred in Rwanda. A large number of unburied bodies provoked the immediate spread of epidemic diseases in the country.
The killings did not stop until July 1994, when the Rwandan National Front took control of the capital, Kigali, and other key cities in the country. Fearing persecution, 2 million Hutus left Rwanda. Most of them died in overcrowded refugee camps due to unsanitary conditions.
A difficult and long process of reconciliation has begun in Rwandan society.