Hotel Rwanda masses of refugees and militia to reach safety behind Tutsi rebel lines. The film is set in 1994 during the Rwandan Genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people, mainly Tutsi, were killed by Hutu extremists. During that year, Rwanda's population of seven million was composed of two major groups: Hutu (approximately 85%), and Tutsi (14%). In the early 1990s, Hutu extremists within Rwanda's political elite blamed the entire Tutsi minority population for the country's economic and political problems. Tutsi civilians were also accused of supporting a Tutsi-dominated rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. On 6 April 1994, a plane carrying
Hutu Power public life, complete segregation of Hutus from Tutsis, and complete exclusion of Tutsis from public institutions and public life. Hutu Power ideology reviled Tutsis as outsiders bent on restoring a Tutsi-dominated monarchy, and idealized all things Hutu. The Commandments declared that any form of relationship between Hutus and Tutsi women was forbidden; and that any Hutu who "marries a Tutsi woman", "befriends a Tutsi woman", or "employs a Tutsi woman as a secretary or a concubine" was a traitor to the Hutu people. It denounced Tutsis as dishonest in business whose "only aim is the supremacy of his ethnic group";