Rwanda: The genocide against the Tutsi

play videoVideo Duration 25 minutes 00 seconds play-arrow25:00How colonial identity, extremist politics and ‘hate radio’ helped turn Rwanda’s genocide into organised mass murder.

This episode on the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda examines one of the few mass atrocities universally recognised under international law. It traces how colonial rule hardened fluid social categories into fixed Hutu and Tutsi identities, and how post-independence politics turned these into a racialised hierarchy of fear.

It also explores how economic crisis, civil war and the Arusha peace process created space for extremists, who used newspapers, churches and “hate radio” to prepare people for mass murder.

Through testimony and archive footage, the film follows how local officials, militias and neighbours organised killings at terrifying speed, and how international actors failed to intervene. It also looks into how courts, memorials and political power have since shaped Rwanda’s official narrative of the genocide.