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A captivating insight into a forgotten leader
SIMON PARSONS recommends a play that dissects the Rwandan genocide
OUTSTANDING: Natasha Bain (right) as Agathe Uwilingiyimana [The Playground Theatre]

Agathe
The Playground Theatre, London

 

IT’S 30 years since Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira’s plane was shot down when returning to Kigali from ongoing peace talks between the Hutu and Tutsi, leaving chemistry professor and prime minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana nominally in charge of an unstable country.

The assassination, blamed on the Tutsi minority, was the trigger for the mass slaughter of Tutsi and moderate Hutu. In the following 100 days, 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were slaughtered, a frenzied genocide that killed three-quarters of the Rwandan Tutsi population.

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