Why Rwanda offers vital lessons on ethnic animosity

Rwandan President Paul Kagame and first lady Jeannette Kagame lit a flame of remembrance at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, on April 7, 2022. [Xinhua]

This month marks exactly 30 years since the start of the three-month-long genocide in Rwanda that saw the mass murder of well over one million people as the world watched.

The genocide, which came on the heels of the downing of a plane carrying then President Juvenal Habyarimana, an ethnic Hutu, on April 6, 1994, led to killing of mainly ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus, including then Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana.