On Monday, as Rwanda marks the 20th anniversary of an orgy of ethnic killing in which at least 800,000 of their countrymen died, Belgium is hosting a conference on preventing mass atrocities.<br /><br />The genocide was sparked when a plane carrying the then Rwandan president, who was a member of the ethnic Hutu majority, was shot down on April 6, 1994. Everyone on board was killed.<br /><br />Rwandan Hutus blamed ethnic Tutsis for the attack and seeked immediate revenge.<br /><br />Hutu extremists killed neighbours, friends and family during a three-month rampage of violence aimed mainly at Tutsis.<br /><br />The Hutu forces pressured Hutu civilians to use machetes, clubs, blunt objects and other weapons to rape, maim and kill their Tutsi neighbors and destroy or steal their property. <br /><br />Alice Mukarurinda and Emmanuel Ndayisaba are friends and genocide survivors. They sat side-by-side as they described how he hacked off her arm and killed her baby.<br /><br />“They found out where I was hiding and Emmanuel cut me in the face and cut off my arm,” said Alice. “One of his friends hit me on the head and I fell down and they pulled away my baby who I was holding. My nine-month-old baby was killed,” she added.<br /><br />Emmanuel told a similar story from his perspective: “The first person I met was Alice. I cut off her arm, I cut her face and my colleague hit her on the head and she fell down and then he speared her in the shoulder, using a spear. And then one of my colleagues took her child and killed her,” he said.<br /><br />Thousands of people fled to refugee camps in neighbouring countries which grew into small cities of squalor and disease. Many of them died there from Cholera.<br /><br />Meanwhile France has pulled out of Monday’s anniversary ceremony after Rwandan President Paul Kagame accused France of training and arming the Hutu militias, the main force behind the slaughter – an accusation Paris has always denied.<br /><br />French foreign ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said: “These statements are unacceptable, unfounded. We can have a trusted and amicable relationship with Rwanda only once it is based on truth and reconciliation.”
