Rwanda: The Untold Story is a 2014 documentary film by the British Broadcasting Corporation that was broadcast on BBC2 at prime-time on 1 October 2014. [1] [2]
Rwanda: The Untold Story is a 2014 documentary film by the British Broadcasting Corporation that was broadcast on BBC2 at prime-time on 1 October 2014. [1] [2]
The documentary follows two American academics, Allan Stam and Christian Davenport, who had travelled to Rwanda in 1998 to listen to alleged witnesses of the genocide. It also featured former close associates of Kagame who spoke from hiding abroad. [3]
According to the BBC, the documentary questioned the role of Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front forces in during the genocide and his role in the shooting down the presidential plane that sparked the genocide while claiming to have ended it. [4] [5]
The documentary alleged that instead of 800,000 Tutsi deaths, there were only around 200,000. It further posited that at least 800,000 Hutus had been killed at the hands of the Rwandese Patriotic Front. [6]
Following the outrage by Rwandans, which included a march to the local BBC office and Nyanza Genocide Memorial Centre, [7] Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority suspended the broadcast of local-language BBC programs. [8] [9]
The Rwandan Parliament decided to charge BBC with "genocide denial" [10] [11] and an inquiry advised Rwanda to take criminal action against the BBC. [12] The BBC insisted it was their duty to make the documentary. [13]
Juvénal Habyarimana was a Rwandan politician and military officer who was the second president of Rwanda, from 1973 until his assassination in 1994. He was nicknamed Kinani, a Kinyarwanda word meaning "invincible".
Paul Kagame is a Rwandan politician and former military officer who has been the President of Rwanda since 2000. He was previously a commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel armed force which invaded Rwanda in 1990. The RPF was one of the parties of the conflict during the Rwandan Civil War and the armed force which ended the Rwandan genocide. He was considered Rwanda's de facto leader when he was Vice President and Minister of Defence under President Pasteur Bizimungu from 1994 to 2000 after which the vice-presidential post was abolished.
Roméo Antonius Dallaire is a retired Canadian politician and military officer who was a senator from Quebec from 2005 to 2014, and a lieutenant-general in the Canadian Armed Forces. He notably was the force commander of UNAMIR, the ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping force for Rwanda between 1993 and 1994, and for trying to stop the genocide that was being waged by Hutu extremists against Tutsis. Dallaire is a Senior Fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) and co-director of the MIGS Will to Intervene Project.
The Rwandan Patriotic Front is the ruling political party in Rwanda.
The Interahamwe is a Hutu paramilitary organization active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The Interahamwe was formed around 1990 as the youth wing of the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development, the then-ruling party of Rwanda, and enjoyed the backing of the Hutu Power government. The Interahamwe, led by Robert Kajuga, were the main perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, during which an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi, Twa, and moderate Hutus were killed from April to July 1994, and the term "Interahamwe" was widened to mean any civilian militias or bands killing Tutsi.
The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred from 7 April to 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. Over a span of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were systematically killed by Hutu militias. While the Rwandan Constitution states that over 1 million people were killed, most scholarly estimates suggest between 500,000 and 662,000 Tutsi died. The genocide was marked by extreme violence, with victims often murdered by neighbors, and widespread sexual violence, with between 250,000 and 500,000 women raped.
Pasteur Bizimungu is a Rwandan politician who served as the third President of Rwanda, holding office from 19 July 1994 until 23 March 2000.
Hotel Rwanda is a 2004 biographical historical drama film co-written and directed by Terry George. It was adapted from a screenplay by George and Keir Pearson, and stars Don Cheadle and Sophie Okonedo as hotelier Paul Rusesabagina and his wife Tatiana. Based on the Rwandan genocide, which occurred during the spring of 1994, the film depicts Rusesabagina's efforts to save the lives of his family and more than 1,000 other refugees by providing them with shelter in the besieged Hôtel des Mille Collines. Hotel Rwanda explores genocide, political corruption, and the repercussions of violence.
Paul Rusesabagina is a Rwandan human rights activist. He worked as the manager of the Hôtel des Mille Collines in Kigali, during a period in which it housed 1,268 Hutu and Tutsi refugees fleeing the Interahamwe militia during the Rwandan genocide. None of these refugees were hurt or killed during the attacks.
On the evening of 6 April 1994, the aircraft carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira, both Hutu, was shot down with surface-to-air missiles as their jet prepared to land in Kigali, Rwanda; both were killed. The assassination set in motion the Rwandan genocide, one of the bloodiest events of the late 20th century.
Human rights in Rwanda have been violated on a grand scale. The greatest violation is the Rwandan genocide of Tutsi in 1994. The post-genocide government is also responsible for grave violations of human rights.
Presidential elections were held in Rwanda on 9 August 2010, the second since the Rwandan Civil War. Incumbent President Paul Kagame of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) was re-elected for a second seven-year term with 93% of the vote.
Jane Phillipa Corbin, Lady Maples is a British journalist and film-maker who has made over a hundred documentaries mainly for the BBC and its current affairs programme Panorama. She specialises in covering Central Asia, the Middle East and terrorism and has investigated many of the major human rights issues and global political and military events over the past three decades.
Emmanuel Karenzi Karake is a Rwandan Lieutenant-General who is the former Secretary General of the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS).
Louise Mushikiwabo is the fourth and current Secretary General of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. She previously served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Rwanda from 2009 to 2018. She also served as Government Spokesperson. She had previously been Minister of Information.
Rwandan genocide denial is the pseudohistorical assertion that the Rwandan genocide did not occur, specifically rejection of the scholarly consensus that Rwandan Tutsis were the victims of genocide between 7 April and 19 July 1994. The perpetrators, a small minority of other Hutu, and some fringe Western writers dispute that reality.
Rising From Ashes is a 2012 independent documentary film about the development of a national cycling team in Rwanda, a country still affected by 1994 Rwandan genocide where an estimated 500,000–1,000,000 Rwandans were killed.
The role of France in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi has been a source of controversy and debate both within and beyond France and Rwanda. France actively supported the Hutu-led government of Juvénal Habyarimana against the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front, which since 1990 had been engaged in a conflict intended to restore the rights of Rwandan Tutsis both within Rwanda and exiled in neighboring countries following over four decades of anti-Tutsi violence. France provided arms and military training to Habyarimana's militias, the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, which were among the government's primary means of operationalizing the genocide following the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6, 1994.
Since the end of the Rwandan Civil War, many forms of censorship have been implemented in Rwanda.
The double genocide theory posits that, during the Rwandan genocide, the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) engaged in a "counter-genocide" against the Hutus. Most scholars of Rwanda, such as Scott Straus and Gerald Caplan, say that RPF violence against Hutus does not fully match the definition of "genocide", considering that it instead consisted of war crimes or crimes against humanity.