Chaos erupted in April 1994 when the airplane carrying the then president of Rwanda.
The Tutsi minority of Rwanda held power for a long time until 1959 when the majority group, Hutus, which was 85% of the Rwandan population had their candidate elected as president. With this change in power, thousands of the Tutsi people were exiled.
Chaos erupted in April 1994 when the airplane carrying the then president of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana, who was a Hutus was shot down. The shooting down of the airplane remains a mystery till this day, but a good number of the Hutus believed the Tutsi had killed their president.
What followed was a massacre of unprecedented proportion. The Tutsi people were mercilessly slaughtered in retaliation.
The Hutus killed their Tutsi neighbors including children, men killed their wives who were of Tutsi origin. Even some priests and nuns joined in killing the Tutsi who they considered as cockroaches. Within three months, close to a million people have been mmassacred.
The conflict, which continued until 2003, resulted in an estimated five million deaths, and some armed groups remain active in regions bordering Rwanda to this day
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