Background of Attack
The Rwandan Genocide started on April 9, 1994, immediately following Habyarimana's assassination. Armed Hutus were deployed throughout the countryside. They set up check points to cull fleeing Tutsis from the rest of the evacuating crowds. Hutus who refused to participate in the genocide were attacked. At night, the residents of Butare watched the firelight from the hills in the west, and could hear gunfire from nearby villages. When armed Hutus gathered at the edges of Butare, citizens of Butare defended its borders.
In response to the revolt, the interim government of Rwanda sent Pauline Nyiramasuhuko from Kigali, the capital, to intervene in her home town of Butare. She ordered the then-governor to organize the killings. When he refused, he was killed, and Nyiramasuhuko called in militias from Kigali.
On April 25, 1994, thousands of Tutsis gathered at the stadium where the Red Cross was providing food and shelter. Nyiramasuhuko is said to have orchestrated a trap in the stadium. The Hutu paramilitary group Interahamwe, led by Arsène Shalom Ntahobali, Pauline's 24-year-old son, surrounded the stadium. Refugees were raped, tortured, killed, and their bodies were burned. Nyiramasuhuko allegedly told militiamen, "before you kill the women, you need to rape them". In another incident, she ordered her men to take cans of gasoline from her car and use them to burn a group of women to death, leaving a surviving rape victim as a witness.
She left Rwanda in 1994 following the Genocide and went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She was arrested in 1997 in Nairobi, Kenya, along with her son, Arsène Shalom Ntahobali, the former Prime Minister Jean Kambanda, and eight others.
Read more about this topic: Pauline Nyiramasuhuko
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