[178] The government played its part in mobilising the population, giving the regime an air of legitimacy, but was effectively a puppet regime with no ability to halt the army or the Interahamwe's activities. A Hutu revolution in 1959 forced as many as 330,000 Tutsis to flee the country, making them an even smaller minority. [132] The committee also justified its existence as being essential to avoid uncertainty following the president's death. On 12 April, more than 1,500 Tutsis sought refuge in a Catholic church in Nyange, then in Kivumu commune. [192] At the end of July 1994, Kagame's forces held the whole of Rwanda except for the zone in the south-west which had been occupied by a French-led United Nations force as part of Opration Turquoise. [250] Australian soldiers serving as part of UNAMIR estimated at least 4,000 people were killed,[251] while the Rwandan government claimed that the death toll was 338. The Hutu majority massacred the Tutsis over a 100-day period from April 7 to mid-July 1994. The first category was reserved those who were "planners, organizers, instigators, supervisors and leaders" of the genocide and any who used positions of state authority to promote the genocide. [280], In April 2021, the Rwandan government announced the study they had commissioned alleged France "did nothing" to prevent what they deemed the "foreseeable" April and May 1994 massacres in the genocide. This table features a list of imports over four years with their net weight (in kilograms) and value (in Rwandan francs). The government says this is to prevent hate speech and more bloodshed but some say it prevents true reconciliation. The well-organised RPF, backed by Uganda's army, gradually seized more territory, until 4 July 1994, when its forces marched into the capital, Kigali. As the revolution progressed, Tutsis began leaving the country to escape the Hutu purges, settling in the four neighbouring countries: Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and Zaire. [166] The militias also initiated searches of houses in the city, killing Tutsi and looting their property. [108] A 1994 study by Harvard Kennedy School researcher David Yanagizawa-Drott found that approximately 10% of the overall violence during the Rwandan genocide can be attributed to this new radio station. He was U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor from 1993 to 1998 and is the author of Freedom on Fire: Human Rights . [84], To make the economic, social and political conflict look more like an ethnic conflict, the President's entourage, including the army, launched propaganda campaigns to fabricate events of ethnic crisis caused by the Tutsi and the RPF. [166] Gerard Prunier ascribes this mass complicity of the population to a combination of the "democratic majority" ideology,[169] in which Hutu had been taught to regard Tutsi as dangerous enemies,[169] the culture of unbending obedience to authority,[170] and the duress factorvillagers who refused to carry out orders to kill were often branded as Tutsi sympathisers and they themselves killed. [118] Dallaire's request to protect the informant and his family and to raid the weapons caches he revealed was denied.[118]. As former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali told the PBS news program Frontline: The failure of Rwanda is 10 times greater than the failure of Yugoslavia. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. [360][361][362], The critically acclaimed and multiple Academy Award-nominated film Hotel Rwanda (2004) is based on the experiences of Paul Rusesabagina, a Kigali hotelier at the Htel des Mille Collines who sheltered over a thousand refugees during the genocide. [341], Meanwhile, the UN established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based in Arusha, Tanzania. .mw-parser-output .legend{page-break-inside:avoid;break-inside:avoid-column}.mw-parser-output .legend-color{display:inline-block;min-width:1.25em;height:1.25em;line-height:1.25;margin:1px 0;text-align:center;border:1px solid black;background-color:transparent;color:black}.mw-parser-output .legend-text{}0% Tutsi 45.5% Tutsi, Map showing the geographical strongholds of the Rwandan political parties at the beginning of April 1994. They were part of a 1996 mission to identify the role of international financial institutions, donors and creditors in relation to the genocide. 2023 BBC. The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 662,000 Tutsi deaths.[3]. The catalyst became Habyarimana's assassination on 6 April 1994, creating a power vacuum and ending peace accords. Lists of government opponents were handed out to militias who went and killed them, along with all of their families. [332] This law initiated the prosecution of genocide crimes committed during the genocide and of crimes against humanity from October 1990. [270] During the first few days of the genocide, France launched Amaryllis, a military operation assisted by the Belgian army and UNAMIR, to evacuate expatriates from Rwanda.