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
Role of France in the Rwandan genocide Hutu militia members; it accused 33 senior French military and political officials of involvement in the genocide, including then-President Mitterrand and his then general secretary Hubert Védrine, then-Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, then-Foreign Minister Alain Juppé, and his chief aide at the time, Dominique de Villepin. A statement accompanying the release claimed that "French soldiers themselves directly were involved in assassinations of Tutsis and Hutus accused of hiding Tutsis ... French forces committed several rapes on Tutsi survivors", though the latter was not documented in the report. A BBC report commented that French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, denied French responsibility in