Juvénal Habyarimana
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| Juvénal Habyarimana | |
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| In office July 5, 1973 – April 6, 1994 |
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| Preceded by | Grégoire Kayibanda |
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| Succeeded by | Théodore Sindikubwabo |
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| Born | March 8, 1937 Rwanda |
| Died | April 6, 1994 Kigali, Rwanda |
| Political party | MRND |
| Spouse | Agathe Habyarimana |
Juvénal Habyarimana (March 8, 1937 – April 6, 1994) was president of Rwanda from 1973 until he died in a plane crash in 1994. His assassination ignited ethnic tensions in the region and marked the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. Responsibility for the attack remains unclear.
On July 5, 1973, while serving as defense minister, he seized power by overthrowing Grégoire Kayibanda and ousted the then-ruling Parmehutu party. Habyarimana was the leader of the Mouvement républicain national pour la démocratie et le développement party. During his 20 year rule, he favored the Hutus, the ethnic majority in Rwanda to which he himself belonged and that had ruled Rwanda since 1959. He tried to crush his opposition organized militians to kill his political opponents, both Tutsis and liberal Hutus. He organized a radio propaganda campaign to make Tutsis seem evil.
In the early 1990s a rebellion against Habyarimana's Rwandan government began when rebels from the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), a force of mostly Tutsi Rwandan expatriates who had defected en masse from the Ugandan army, crossed the border from Uganda.
On April 6, 1994, Habyarimana's private Falcon 50 jet (a gift from French President François Mitterrand) crashed near Kigali Airport, killing both Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Hutu President of Burundi. The wreckage landed in the backyard of Habyarimana's home. The circumstances of the crash are unclear. At the time, the Hutu Power media claimed the plane had been shot down on orders from RPF leader Paul Kagame. Others, including the RPF, accused militant Hutus from within Habyarimana's party of orchestrating the crash in order to provoke anti-Tutsi outrage while simultaneously seizing power. At the current time, most scholars believe that the assassination was carried out by Hutus. Recently, forensic evidence has confirmed this belief.
Following the death of Habyarimana, the paranoia and suspicion surrounding the crash blew the lid off decades of complex ethnic, social and political hatreds. It ignited a murderous spree by extremists from the majority Hutus against rival Tutsis and those Hutus who had opposed the government. Within four months, about a million Rwandans were massacred in the Rwandan genocide, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Habyarimana is survived by his wife, Agathe Habyarimana, who was evacuated by French troops shortly after his death. She has been described as extremely influential in Rwandan politics and has also been accused by several NGO's and medias of complicity in the genocide.
| Preceded by Grégoire Kayibanda |
President of Rwanda July 5, 1973 – April 6, 1994 |
Succeeded by Théodore Sindikubwabo |
