1994: "The Graves Are Only Half Full, Who Will Help Us Fill Them Up?"

The stage was set for the bloody genocide. The Hutu "Zero Network" had killed over 2,300 people in the months before the actual genocide began. With extremism on the Hutu side, Tutsis were now threatened. On April 6, 1994, General Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down. Even though there was a lack of evidence, Hutu extremists blamed the Tutsi resistance forshooting rockets at their president's plane. Therefore, Hutus were committed to cause destruction toward every Tutsi. Starting in Rwanda's capital, Kinyarwanda, Hutus killed all the Tutsis they saw. In the countryside, more Tutsis met their fate after the local Hutu chiefs made death lists of those who were Tutsi. Hutu extremists also hunted those involved in thecoalition government, which were mostly moderate Hutus, that leaned toward cooperation with the Tutsis and their political views. Most of the killings were conducted by militias supporting the MRND movement. These militias emerged as a result from the multiparty agreement during the early 1990s. By July 1994, with just a month into the violence, a shock of over 500,000 people were murdered. Literally, these people were brutally massacred by militias, who used machetes as their primary weapon. Mass graves were dug to bury large quantities of Tutsis together. Thousands of corpses went downstream by the Kagara River to neighboring countries like Tanzania, at a surprising rate of 80 new bodies found an hour. By taking these shocking facts into consideration, this genocide marks itself as one of the bloodiest genocide.