The Cause

Ethnic tension within Rwanda was nothing new because the Hutus, which were the major people in Rwanda, believe they were superior to the minority of Tutsis. The spark that ignited the genocide was “the death of the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana” (Gale). This brought up all kinds of feelings. The new Hutu government took this as an opportunity to eliminate the Tutsis as retaliation for the assassination. Over the next one hundred days, before the takeover by the RPF, “an estimated 800,000 - 1m people were killed” (Gale). Despite the history of civil violence, “the scale and speed of the slaughter left its people reeling” (BBC). The RPF have been accused of shooting down the president’s plane but have denied the accusations. But during the RPF’s founding, President Habyarimana decided to use their aim to overthrow his government as a way to bring Hutu’s back to his side. If the Tutsis believed that it was the RPF that shot down his plane than that could be one major factor in the genocide.