KIGALI, Oct. 1 (Xinhua) -- Rwanda is stepping up unity and reconciliation efforts with the establishment of unity and reconciliation clubs at villages, an official said Tuesday during the launch of a month-long campaign to foster national unity and reconciliation.
The campaign aims to establish more unity clubs at villages across the country, and hold discussions on achievements and challenges of national reconciliation since the end of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, said Fidele Ndayisaba, executive secretary of the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission.
Through the campaign, citizens are expected to embrace the values of unity, which would promote Rwanda's recovery from the genocide, Ndayisaba said at the event, which was held in northern Rwanda's Musanze District and attended by local residents, officials from the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission and others.
The 1994 genocide was sparked when a plane carrying ex-Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana who was a Hutu was shot down, killing all on board. Rwandan Hutus blamed ethnic Tutsis for the attack and sought immediate revenge.
Hutu extremists used deadly weapons to rape, maim and kill their Tutsi neighbours. The genocide claimed the lives of almost 1 million Rwandans in an approximately 100-day period.
By 2016, at least 92.5 percent of Rwandans felt unity and reconciliation had been achieved and that citizens lived in harmony, according to the "Rwanda Reconciliation Barometer" report released by the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission.
