Rwanda, 1994 — military coup

Killings protocol applied, with extreme care given the genocide context: the dataset dates this April 7, 1994 with a killed fate. The coded leader-level event is the killing of the acting head of state, Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, murdered on the morning of April 7, 1994 along with the Belgian UN soldiers guarding her, after President Habyarimana had died in the April 6 shoot-down; this is what the killed fate captures. Every claim is cited and attributed, and no graphic detail is included. Date and deposed-leader reconciliation: Habyarimana was killed on April 6 in the plane shoot-down, and Uwilingiyimana (constitutional head of state for the intervening hours) was killed on April 7, so the dataset's April 7 date and the leadership-level killing align on Uwilingiyimana while the record also records Habyarimana's death; the extremist seizure of power and installation of an interim government occurred at the same moment. Contested point recorded, as required: who fired the missile that downed Habyarimana's plane has never been conclusively established, with responsibility variously attributed to Hutu extremists and, in later allegations, to the RPF; this is recorded as an unresolved dispute rather than settled. Genocide context handled with extreme care and neutrality: the killings triggered a genocide in which an estimated 500,000 to one million people, mostly Tutsi, were murdered over roughly 100 days; these figures are attributed to their sources, not asserted, and the atrocities are not described in gratuitous terms. The genocide ended when the RPF captured Kigali in July 1994, later context. Neutrality maintained on an extremely grave and sensitive subject.