How the Rwandan genocide happened

On April 6, 1994, the airplane carrying Rwandan President and the Hutu president of Burundi was shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali, killing everyone on board.

Mystery still surrounds who exactly was responsible, but the attack sparked a ferocious wave of bloody reprisals as thousands of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered over the next three months – almost ten thousand people were murdered every day.

The killings were well organised by the government. Local media, print and radio played an important role too in fuelling the violence. People were encouraged to turn in their neighbours or be killed themselves.

One global impact of the Rwandan Genocide is that it served as impetus to the creation of the International Criminal Court, so that ad hoc tribunals would not need to be created for future incidents of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes