Génocidaires () are those who commit acts of

genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...

. The term was used initially in reference to

Rwandans The Banyarwanda (, plural; , singular) are a Bantu ethnolinguistic supraethnicity native to the northern African Great Lakes region, primarily the modern countries of Rwanda and Burundi. The Banyarwanda are also ethnic minorities in neighbor ...

who are guilty of genocide for their involvement in the mass killings which were perpetrated in

Rwanda Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by ...

during the 1994

Rwandan genocide The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred from 7 April to 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. Over a span of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Gre ...

in which 800,000 Rwandans, primarily

Tutsis The Tutsi ( ), also called Watusi, Watutsi or Abatutsi (), are an ethnic group of the African Great Lakes region. They are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group and the second largest of three main ethnic groups in Rwanda and Burundi (the other two be ...

and moderate

Hutus The Hutu (), also known as the Abahutu, are a Bantu ethnic group native to the African Great Lakes region. They mainly live in Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda where they form one of the principal ethnic groups alongside the Tutsi and the Great L ...

, were murdered by the

Interahamwe The Interahamwe ( or ) is a Hutu paramilitary organization active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The Interahamwe was formed around 1990, as the youth wing of the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (M ...

. In the aftermath of the genocide, Rwandans who organized and led the genocide were put on trial at the

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR; ; ) was an international court, international ''ad-hoc'' court established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in United Nations Security Council Resolution 955, Resolutio ...

. Those guilty of lesser crimes, such as participation, profiting through seizing Tutsi property, and the like, were put on trial in

gacaca court The Gacaca courts () were a system of transitional justice in Rwanda following the 1994 genocide. The term 'gacaca' can be translated as 'short grass' referring to the public space where neighborhood male elders (abagabo) used to meet to solve lo ...

s. The ICTR has indicted over 93 people for genocide. In 2020,

Félicien Kabuga Félicien Kabuga (born 1 March 1933) is a Rwandan businessman and genocide suspect who played a major role in the run-up to the Rwandan genocide. A multimillionaire,

, the main financier of the Rwandan genocide, was found in a suburb of

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, after he had evaded capture for over 26 years.

Notes

Sources

*{{cite book , last1=Jessee , first1=Erin , editor1-last=Smeulers , editor1-first=Alette , editor2-last=Weerdesteijn , editor2-first=Maartje , editor3-last=Hola , editor3-first=Barbora , title=Perpetrators of International Crimes: Theories, Methods, and Evidence , publisher=Oxford University Press , isbn=978-0-19-882999-7 , language=en , chapter=Beyond Perpetrators: Complex Political Actors Surrounding the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, date=2019 Rwandan genocide perpetrators French words and phrases

See also

Notes

Sources