Today in History: Genocide Against Tutsi Officially Ends

What the report says

Nile Post reported that July 18 marks the date in 1994 when the Rwandan Patriotic Front said it had won the war after taking Gisenyi, described as the last major base of the interim government responsible for the Genocide against the Tutsi. The declaration and a unilateral ceasefire formally ended roughly 100 days of mass killing in Rwanda.

According to the report, the genocide began after the April 6, 1994 downing of a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira as it approached Kigali. The violence, launched the next day, targeted mainly Tutsi people, as well as moderate Hutu and members of the Twa community. Nile Post said more than a million people were killed, while the RPF had already captured Kigali on July 4 under the leadership of Paul Kagame.

The article also placed Uganda in the wider history of the conflict. It said Rwandan refugees who had settled in Uganda after earlier anti-Tutsi violence later joined President Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army, with figures such as Fred Rwigyema and Kagame rising to prominence. Rwandan exiles formed the RPF in Kampala in 1987, and the movement began its 1990 offensive from Ugandan territory.

Nile Post said the genocide’s aftermath reshaped the Great Lakes region, with more than two million people fleeing Rwanda, including into then-Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The report linked that displacement and the presence of defeated forces and militia in eastern Zaire to later regional instability and the Congo wars. July 18 is presented as a key moment in Rwanda’s post-genocide recovery and remembrance.