The genocide in Rwanda
Around 800,000 killed in a hundred days while the world watched
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The genocide is legally established by the UN tribunal for Rwanda, which convicted among others the former prime minister and a radio executive — the station RTLM had for months urged killings and read out names. The distinction between Hutu and Tutsi had been largely formalised under Belgian colonial rule through identity cards. The international failure to act later became a principal driver behind the doctrine of the responsibility to protect.
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In a hundred days in 1994, around eight hundred thousand people were killed in Rwanda, most of them Tutsi, by neighbours and militias. Other countries knew what was happening but did not intervene. It is among the darkest events in modern history.
Sources
- Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story (Human Rights Watch, 1999)
- ICTR: Prosecutor v. Akayesu (ICTR-96-4-T), dom 2. sept. 1998
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