Every April, Rwanda is awash with purple, the color of mourning. This April, the 17th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, is no different.

The genocide in 1994 was a frenetic killing spree. 800,000 people were dead after 100 days. That’s 8,000 people dying every day, 333 people dying every hour, 5 people dying every minute.

The killing was driven by many factors. Rwanda is made up of two main people groups, the Hutus and the Tutsis.

Hutus and Tutsis speak the same language, live in the same country, share the same culture. But like so many other countries, Rwanda was wrecked by colonialism, which set up artificial differences between the two groups.

The Background

Here’s a shortened version of the lead-up to the genocide (find out more about the whole story here).

Rwanda was a colony of Belgium.  For decades under Belgian rule, Tutsis were the favored tribe. Laws were put in place to suppress Hutus. Then, in the 1950’s everything changed.

Belgium began to withdraw from the country, old laws were thrown out. The Hutus were given more power and soon turned the tables on their Tutsi persecutors.

The Tutsis spent the next few decades being exiled and oppressed by the Hutus.

There were several small massacres (is there ever such a thing?) before 1994.

However, 1994 saw an explosion of violence. It started when the Rwandan President’s plane was shot down in April of that year.

The Hutu extremists blamed the Tutsis (that fact is still contested. Many,  think  Hutu extremists shot down the plane as an excuse to start the genocide).

Soon the killings started. Radio stations were used to spread the horror… announcing names of Tutsis to be killed.

It is very important to note that not all Hutus were contributing to the killing. Rather, there were many Hutus who actively saved Tutsi lives.

Too often, Hutus have been painted in a bad light.  It should be understood that some Hutus were victims as well. Some were forced at gunpoint to take part in the rampage while other Hutus were killed for refusing to do so.

The Tutsi Response

Over the decades, A number of Tutsi exiles have ended up in neighboring Uganda. There they started an army of sorts whose aim was to overthrow the Hutu government. When the genocide began, this Tutsi army came into Rwanda to fight. Many people credit the Tutsi army (the Rwandan Patriotic Front) with stopping the genocide.

The International Community

The international community knew what was going on… but did little to stop it.

A small group of U.N. troops were already stationed in Rwanda at the time. The troops, led by Romeo Dallaire,  did try to stop the genocide, but they were ill-equipped. Their reports calling the situation in Rwanda genocide were dismissed by U.N. officials in New York, including Kofi Annan, who later became the U.N. Secretary General.

France was the only country to get actively involved, launching Operation Turquoise.

They said that Operation Turquoise was to help stop the genocide.

Some question this fact. The French were very close to Hutu leaders and brought in airplanes to fly important Hutu officials out of Rwanda.

There are also numerous reports of French soldiers helping the Interhamwe (the extremist Hutu group that carried out most of the killing) cover up the genocide by burying bodies in mass graves- and then proceeding to play volleyball over those graves.

The End

The genocide ended in mid-July, with the Rwandan Patriotic Front pushing the Hutu extremists out of the country.

Those who participated in the genocide, called genocidaires, fled to refugee camps in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Many Hutus who did not mastermind the genocide also fled because they had been told that the Tutsis would want revenge.

The international community finally decided to get involved then, giving aid to the refugee camps.

This is a worthy cause, however these same camps were havens for genocidaires.

The genocidaires surrounded themselves with innocent civilians for protection. Now an International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has been set up to prosecute the genocidaires.

The Reason

Some of you might wonder why this warrants a US Democrazy post.

We have noticed  chilling stories and images emerging from another African country, the Ivory Coast.

An estimated 1000 people have been killed in that new conflict. It is important that another genocide like the one in Rwanda is avoided at all costs.

The story of Rwanda needs to be told and never forgotten.