25 Years Later, Rwanda Grapples With Legacy of Genocide and Questions of Blame

It was a paroxysm that inscribed new chapters in the annals of genocide and turned a spotlight on the failure of international peacekeepers to come anywhere close to living up to their name.

Twenty-five years ago, on April 7, 1994, the dominant Hutus of Rwanda turned with well-planned violence on the Tutsi minority whom they held to be traitors. One hundred days later, when the killing finally stopped, the death toll stood at as many as one million, mostly Tutsis but also including some moderate Hutus who had opposed the bloodletting.

The scale of the fatalities was shocking, but more was to come as the torrent of killings washed into the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, igniting years of strife in Africa’s Great Lakes region. And, along this bloodstained way, sexual violence became woven into the horrors of war. Women suffered untold rapes and gang rapes, accelerating the spread of AIDS. The offspring of these assaults were stigmatized as “children of the killers.”