TRANSCRIPT:
Anastasie Nyirabashyitsi and Jeanette Mukabyagaju think of each other as dear friends.
They have lived for 19 years in a community of genocide perpetrators and survivors 40 kilometres outside the Rwandan capital of Kigali.
Nyirabashyitsi is a Hutu woman, while Mukabyagaju is a Tutsi survivor who lost most of her family in the Rwandan genocide thirty years ago.
"This is not something that happened overnight. It took sometime for me to even think that I can interact with a Hutu woman. That I can actually live with them. I lost my parents when I was 16 years old. This was a crucial time for me as a young girl who needs parents. So I can confess to you it was not easy and it took some time to heal."
More than half the residents of this reconciliation village are women, and their projects — which include a basket-weaving cooperative as well as a money saving program — have united so many of them that it can seem offensive to inquire into who is Hutu and who is Tutsi.
It was not always so.
Dr Eyal Mayroz is a senior lecturer of peace and conflict studies at the University of Sydney.
Dr Mayroz says the 1994 genocide was driven by deep ethnic tensions.
These tensions were encouraged by its initial coloniser Germany, who took over after the Berlin Conference of 1884, and later by the Belgians, who took control of Rwanda during world war 1.
The doctor says Rwanda was ruled in such a way that the Tutsi were favoured over the Hutu for key positions, and seen as ethnically and racially superior.
"Historically, the Tutsi were in control when they were the minority, they were in control. But towards the end of the cold colonisation, the Belgium's favourite the status favouring the Hutu. And so after the independence, the Civil War led to a series of very violent clashes."
The Belgians introduced permanent classifications of the population, assigning Rwandas into three ethno-racial groups, with the Hutu representing about 84 percent of the country, and the Tutsi about 15 percent.
Dr Mayroz explains.
The differences between these two main groups of Hutu and Tutsi were quite fluid and what happened? If you were pastoralists, then you're a Hutu. If you had cows, you were Tutsi. And if you move from one to the other, that was possible until the Belgiums as colonists decided to issue ID cards and in the ID cards to right ethnic identity. And that kind of fits these identities."
After the Second World War, a movement to address what was widely seen as a power imbalance began to grow, fuelled by the Catholic Church who saw the Hutu as underprivileged.
By 1959, tensions boiled over in a Hutu uprising, prompting thousands of Tutsis to seek refuge outside Rwanda over the next few years.
Some formed armed groups from exile, leading to more Tutsis leaving the country, reprisal killings, and decades of political and civil unrest.
Claudine Kuradusenge-McLeod is a lecturer in peace, human rights and cultural relations at the American University.
"They had a hand in establishing some of the foundations, but they are not the only one to blame, which I feel like a lot of people like to blame Belgium for the actions that took place in the 90s."
What was to come was a violent civil war, which began in 1990 and lasted 3 years, only ending with an agreement known as the Arusha Peace Accords.
But Dr Kuradusenge-McLeod says that despite the signing of the peace treaty in 1993, ethnic tensions remained high.
In 1994, a plane carrying the Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana - and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Hutu president of Burundi - was shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali, killing everyone on board.
McLeod says the Tutsi were blamed for downing the plane.
"There were calls for regular Rwandans, regular Hutus to take arms and to go and avenge the president or go and do what needs to be done, and that was broadcast everywhere."
The incident is widely seen as the tipping point for the massacre.
An estimated 800,000 Tutsis were killed in the days and weeks afterwards by extremist Hutus in villages across the country, and at checkpoints manned by the Presidential Guard.
Some moderate Hutus who tried to protect members of the Tutsi minority were also targeted.
President Paul Kagame’s rebel group, the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front, stopped the genocide after 100 days, seizing power and ruling Rwanda ever since, unchallenged.
Changes have also been introduced to address the tensions.
Rwandan authorities have heavily promoted national unity among the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi and Twa, with a separate government ministry dedicated to reconciliation efforts.
Rwandan ID cards no longer identify a person by ethnicity, and lessons about the genocide are part of the curriculum in schools.
At a ceremony to mark the 30th anniversary of the genocide, Paul Kagame has said all of these things have been essential for peace.
"Our journey has been long and tough. Rwanda was completely humbled by the magnitude of our loss. And the lessons we learnt are engraved in blood. But the tremendous progress of our country is plain to see and it is a result of the choices we made together to resurrect our nation."
