Remembering the Rwandan genocide 30 years on – how did it happen?

Local media, in particular, were crucial in aiding the mass killings while world media either ignored or underplayed them. It has been three decades since the April 1994 Rwandan genocide when members of the majority Hutu ethnic group killed an estimated 800,000 minority Tutsis, moderate Hutus and members of a third ethnic group, the Twa, in one of the darkest episodes in world history. Then, government forces, together with Hutu militia groups known as the Interahamwe, a name that means “those who attack together”, set up roadblocks and barricades in Kigali and began to attack Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The size of the Tutsi population after the genocide is also unclear because many identified themselves as Hutus to avoid being killed and Rwanda has since scrapped any identification showing ethnicity in its censuses. President Kagame, who headed the Tutsi rebel army that in 1994 ousted the Hutu government and ended the genocide, has since said he was so frustrated by world inaction during the genocide that he considered attacking the local UN mission and stealing its weapons to stop the mass slaughter of civilians.