Perhaps as many as a million people died in three months of anti-Tutsi pogroms. Hutus who opposed the slaughter were exterminated as well. The ministers in exile who presided over the killings are now the targets of UN investigators piecing together evidence to put them on trial for genocide â they are also at the top of the list of people the new Rwandan government wants to execute if it can lay hands on them first.
Foremost among them is the ousted president, Theodore Sindikubwabo, a paediatrician who set in motion the slaughter of Butareâs Tutsis. His prime minister, Jean Kambanda, travelled Rwanda using the language of murder understood by all. The commerce minister â once imprisoned for murdering his wife; the justice minister â herself married to a Tutsi; the youth minister â who openly encouraged children to kill; all of them are preparing a common defence, intent on obscuring the worldâs already confused view of Rwandaâs calamity.