While serving as defense minister, he overthrew his cousin Grégoire Kayibanda on July 5, 1973. During his 20-year dictatorship he favored his own ethnic group, the Hutus, and supported the Hutu majority in neighboring Burundi against the Tutsi government. He was the leader of the Mouvement Républicain Nationale pour la Démocratie et le Développement party. In the early 1990s a rebellion against the Rwandan government began when rebels from the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a mostly Tutsi group, crossed the border from Uganda.
Habyarimana was killed in a plane crash along with Cyprien Ntaryamira, the president of Burundi, on April 6, 1994. Some now allege that the plane had been shot down on orders from the current President Paul Kagame, while he was leader of the RPF. Following the death of Habyarimana, Hutus who believed that his government had been too moderate took over the government and began a genocide against opponents. Within four months, 936,000 Rwandans were massacred in the Rwandan Genocide, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
France rejected an asylum appeal from the widow of late Rwandan President JuvenalHabyarimana on Thursday, saying she was at the heart of the regime responsible for her country's 1994 genocide.
PARIS --France rejected an asylum appeal from the widow of late Rwandan President JuvenalHabyarimana on Thursday, saying she was at the heart of the regime responsible for her country's 1994 genocide.
Habyarimana had no official government post, she had de facto authority in state affairs.
President JuvenalHabyarimana, nearing the end of two decades in power, was losing popularity among Rwandans when the RPF attacked from Uganda on October 1, 1990.
At first Habyarimana did not see the rebels as a serious threat, although they stated their intention to remove him as well as to make possible the return of the hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees who had lived in exile for a generation.
Habyarimana was obliged to end his party’s monopoly of power in 1991 and rival parties sprouted quickly to contend for popular support.
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