Rwanda was a small, humble country in Africa, but in the 1990s it shocked the world with a massacre. At the time, Rwanda had a population of 7 million, making it the most densely populated country in the world and one of the poorest in the world.
Rwanda has two major ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. The Hutu make up 85 per cent of the country's population and are indigenous farmers. The Tutsi, who make up 14% of the country's population, are conquerors. Originally from the north, the Tutsis have ruled the Hutus since the 15th century because of their strong military power and centralized state. By analogy, the Tutsi are equivalent to the Manchus of the Qing Dynasty, and the Hutu are equivalent to the ruled Han Chinese.
After Rwanda's independence, the Tutsi as an ethnic minority still had an overwhelming dominance, and the main senior officials of the government were almost all Tutsi. As a result, the Hutu people, who gradually woke up and realized the injustice, gradually developed sharp contradictions with the Tutsi people, and a large-scale civil war broke out.
After a compromise between the Tutsi and Hutu, The Hutu Juvenal Habyallimana became President of Rwanda. However, in 1994, President Juvenal Habijalimana died in an unexpected air crash. The Hutus believed the president's death was the work of disgruntled Tutsi, and a massacre ensued.
On 7 April 1994, the day after the death of President Juvenal Habyallimana, the Presidential Guard, composed of Hutu soldiers, killed Rwanda's female Prime Minister, Tutsi Uvirinji Imzana and three ministers.
After that, all the Hutu media in Rwanda began broadcasting to the whole population, demanding that they kill the Tutsi to avenge the president and the enslavement and bullying they had suffered for four hundred years.
In the following three months, some 800,000 to 1 million people died under the guns, machetes and sharpened sticks of Hutu soldiers, militiamen, civilians, the vast majority of the victims were Tutsi, but also some Hutu who sympathized with the Tutsi, 1/8 of rwanda's population disappeared, and 250,000 to 500,000 Rwandan women and girls were raped.
The Self-proclaimed Police of the World, the United States, ignored the atrocities committed by the Hutus. Because a few years ago, the U.S. military suffered a setback in Mogadishu, Somalia, and more than a dozen U.S. soldiers were killed. The U.S. government, distraught, decided not to wade through this muddy water. The French and Belgians, who have considerable influence in Rwanda, also turn a blind eye and keep Tutsi refugees out of the barracks.
As a result, the Tutsis suffered a genocidal massacre in isolation, and most of the men were killed.
As a result of the genocide, the country's demographic structure has changed considerably, with children under the age of 14 accounting for about 40 per cent of the country's population, many women widowed, and polygamy beginning to resurrect in this impoverished country.
The reason why rwanda has committed such atrocities is not only because of the inherent contradictions in the country, but also because of the inaction of the world's major powers. To reflect on this astonishing atrocity, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 7 April of each year as the International Day of Reflection on the Rwanda Massacre on 23 December 2003. In 1998, President Clinton of the United States, who visited Rwanda, also apologized to the Rwandan people.