Today, Rwanda has become a tourist hub for some visitors who are looking for adventures. It is no longer that country that has ugly imaginations churning all over the place. When you are thinking of a rare adventurous place to visit in Africa, Rwanda should come to your mind.
Here are facts you never knew about the Rwandan genocide , also known as the genocide against the Tutsi. This unforgettable experience was a genocidal mass slaughter of Tutsi in Rwanda.
- The Rwandan Genocide was a genocidal mass slaughter by the members of the Hutu majority group which the people of the Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda were the major victims.
- The genocidal mass slaughter which lasted approximately 100-days started on April 7, 1994 to July 16, 1994. An estimated number of 800,000 Rwandans were killed and several others wounded.
- The trouble began on April 6, 1994. The Rwandan president, Juvénal Habyarimana was with the Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira on air when it was shot down. This ugly incident happened when the airplane carrying the presidents was about to land in Rwanda.
- The genocidal slaughter followed up on the 7th of April 1994 as soldiers, police, and militia kick off the execution of key Tutsi and moderate Hutu leaders. Checkpoints and barricades were set up by soldiers and militants who asked for Rwandans’ national identity cards in order to differentiate their ethnicity and kill the people of Tutsi. The world was shocked when this happened and it took years for everyone to come to the realization of what happened to this people.
- The rape victims recorded were between 250,000 to 500,000 women, and up to 20,000 children were given birth to in the course of this incident and about 67% of the rape victims were infected women with HIV. The number may have exceeded this but the numbers that up were the ones that were counted.
- Most of the murder was done with machetes (in 1993 Rwanda imported three-quarters of a million dollars’ worth of machetes from China), but automatic weapons and hand grenades were also used. In many cases, use of rape by HIV+ men was also used as a weapon of genocide.
- There are between 300,000 to 400,000 survivors of the Genocide recorded, and nearly 100,000 survivors are aged between 14 and 21.
- Due to poverty, over half the children who survived stopped their schooling and over 40,000 survivors are still without shelter. Today, the people of Rwandans are getting out to be educated and forgetting their past.
- There are almost 50,000 widows in the course of the genocide.
- 75,000 of survivors were orphaned as a result of the genocide.
There is no missing link on this genocide because everything is on ground for you to see. These are what you see on landmarks, museums and properties. The past may be bitter in this part of the world but the present has become an amazing period of their lives.
