Rwanda Forum

25 years after the genocide in Rwanda many questions still remain unanswered Wednesday, 04 September 2019 The Rwandan genocide would be the last genocide of the 20th century, and with a UN estimation of 800,000 dead, it had claimed the largest number of victims since the Holocaust. This year marks a quarter century since the genocide in Rwanda but it still remains unclear who some of the main culprits were that triggered the chain of events that led to the genocide. That it involved many actors, domestic and foreign, with a gradual political build-up among opposing military forces is however clear. And Belgium, Rwanda’s former colonial ruler that formed the backbone of the UN peacekeeping force at the time, found itself at the centre of the storm. On Monday 11 April 1994, Johan Swinnen reached the Belgian embassy from his residence in the capital Kigali and as Belgium’s Ambassador to Rwanda, he started overseeing “Operation Silver Back”, which saw the evacuation ...