Nearly 21 years ago, an airplane carrying Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down, killing all on board. The crash ignited a four-year-old Rwandan civil war into what would become the Rwandan Genocide, a mass slaughter of Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda by members of the Hutu majority.During the approximately 100-day period from April to July 1994, an estimated one million Rwandans were killed, as much as 20-percent of the country's total population and 70-percent of the Tutsi then living in Rwanda.
Perpetrators came from the ranks of the Rwandan army, the National Police, government-backed militias and the Hutu civilian population.
Immaculee Ilibagiza was a teenage Rwandan Tutsi in 1994. Her entire family was murdered during the tragedy. In the years since, Ilibagiza has traveled the world telling her personal story of a world gone mad. She comes to Michigan this Friday and Saturday to present the seminar, "Treasures of Our Faith: A Weekend of Healing and Hope" at Fowler’s Most Holy Trinity Church.
Current State’s Peter Whorf talks with Immaculee Ilibagiza about those dark days and what’s happened since.
