Role of the international community in the Rwandan genocide was a Hutu revolution in which the Tutsi elite was overthrown and a Hutu government was put in place in 1961 with the support of European powers. President Habyarimana, who came to power in 1973, increased divisions between the Tutsi and Hutus in the year of 1992. In the year of 1994, President Habyarimana, a moderate Hutu, was shot down in a plane on April 6 and this was the spark that began the 100 days of genocidal violence against Tutsis and moderate Hutu. It is estimated that about 800,000 - three-quarters of the Tutsi population in Rwanda - were
Sainte-Famille Church genocide of 1994 thousands of Tutsi and Hutu took refuge in the church and many were massacred, following the death of President Juvénal Habyarimana. Witnesses said that the priest in charge of the church, Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, armed himself and helped Hutu militias take people from the church to be killed. Munyeshyaka was responsible for many of the killings, agreeing to "let the militia pick off those they wanted every now and then." Wenceslas Munyeshyaka hated the Tutsis and called them the "inyenzis". Following this incident and similar ones in other churches, many of the Rwandan people converted to Islam.