Abstract
Over 1 million Tutsis were brutally murdered by their fellow compatriots over a period of three months, as a reaction to the demise of President Habyarimana in early April 1994 in a plane crash. Several warnings had been issued by NGOs and the RPF but because they were not taken seriously and only ten percent of the U.N. troops remained in the land to enforce peace. The Hutus were safely able to carry out their plan because it appeared that the world would not take exception to their actions and that they would not be sanctioned. As one killer remarked "this job was meeting no opposition, because it really had to be done." (Hatzfeld 2005, p. 231). Encouraged by their government and supported by the national army and militia groups (e.g. the Interahamwe) the Hutus were attempting to exterminate all Tutsis from the country. The genocide started off by killing Hutu opposition. Tutsi politicians or even well-off Tutsis, were on top of the killing list, revealing that it was a carefully worked out plan. Very few people managed to survive by hiding in forests, hills, and marshes and only a relatively small group of rich Hutu and Tutsi were able to seek refuge in the famous Hotel des Mille Collines. At a killing rate five times as high as that of the Jews by the Nazis in 1945, with five out of every six Tutsis killed, the brutality and importance of this event is undeniable. To understand how such genocide was able to erupt and what drove normal peasants to commit such atrocities, one must consider several aspects of the history and background of the Rwandan people.
