Juvénal Habyarimana

Juvénal Habyarimana (8 March 1937 – 6 April 1994) was the second President of Rwanda. He was president for almost twenty years, from 1973 until his assassination. During his government, he favoured his own ethnic group, the Hutus. He was nicknamed "Kinani", a Kinyarwanda word meaning "invincible". Habyarimana was a dictator. He was suspected to have cheated in all of his elections.

 Death 
On 6 April 1994, Habyarimana, along with the President of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, seven passengers and three crew members were killed when his Dassault Falcon 50 was shot down with a surface-to-air missile close to Kigali.  His assassination caused tensions between Hutus and Tutsis to worsen, and helped start the Rwandan Genocide. It is one of the bloodiest events of the late 20th century. Within 100 days, somewhere between 800,000 and 1 million Rwandans were massacred.See, e.g., Rwanda: How the genocide happened, BBC, April 1, 2004, which gives an estimate of 800,000, and OAU sets inquiry into Rwanda genocide, Africa Recovery, Vol. 12 1#1 (August 1998), page 4, which estimates the number at between 500,000 and 1,000,000. 7 out of every 10 Tutsis were killed.

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Other websites

Category:1937 births
Category:1994 deaths
Category:Assassinated people
Category:Aviation deaths
Category:Presidents of Rwanda
Category:Roman Catholics