The voice of the Friends

The Genocide in Rwanda

Rwanda is one of the smallest countries in Africa. It’s position is right at the center of the Great Lakes region. It was a Belgian colony up until 1962, when it became independent. It had been always considered one of the most beautiful and tranquil countries in the area and it was called the Switzerland of Africa.

In Rwanda there are two ethnic groups, namely two different peoples: the Hutu and the Tutsi.

The Hutu and the Tustin have often had problems in living together and in 1959 the clashes, forced 200.000 people to flee to Burundi.

Kids of Rwanda
On the 6th of April 1994 the president of Rwanda Habyarimana, who belonged to Hutu, was killed while he was coming back home on a plane.

The president’s death sparked off a chain of hatred, violence and revenges which were already going on among the population. Gangs of extremists Hutu, supported by the government, spread terror all around the country.

The genocide, the systematic killings, of an ethnic group, lasted 100 days and caused the death of nearly one million people.

Refuges The main European countries and U.N. left Rwanda nearly immediately. A huge wave of refuges, fearing for revenges, fled to Tanzania and Congo, and formed enormous camps (nearly 2 million people) near the city of Goma, where soon there were big epidemics of cholera.

Today Rwanda is still a wounded country by what happened 10 years ago: many of the refugees have come back home to find their houses and villages knocked down. The relationships between Hutu and Tutsi are still very tense. The war in the near Congo keeps causing troubles to Rwanda people who cannot yet live in peace.