Rwanda on Monday commemorated the 1994 genocide that claimed the lives of at least 800000 people, mostly from the Tutsi community, who were massacred by the Hutu militia.
This year’s event is overshadowed by the ongoing crisis in the eastern DR Congo, where the Rwanda-backed M23 militia has gone on a rampage against the authorities, seizing two major towns of Bukavu and Goma.
Locally known as ‘Kwibuka’, meaning Remembrance Day in Kinyarwanda, this year’s event marked the 100th anniversary since the eastern African country began commemorating the day in 1994.
On April 7, 1994, a day after the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi died in a missile attack on their aircraft, the moderate Hutu prime minister of Rwanda, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, and her husband were killed by Rwandan soldiers; in the 100 days that followed, Hutu extremists slaughtered hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsi and Hutu moderates.
Source: Africanews
