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" CLAUDETTE" 1 grew up in the hills of southern Rwanda believing that she knew her ethnic identity. Like her parents and siblings, Claudette carried an identity card that classified her as a member of the Hutu ethnic group, the group that comprised nearly 85 percent of Rwanda's population. As a Hutu, Claudette lived free from the discrimination that plagued her Tutsi neighbors. She gained easy entrance to secondary school, while her Tutsi friends had to compete for a limited number of available spots. Like other southern Hutu, she was critical of the government for being dominated by northerners, but she did not live in fear of ethnic violence like her Tutsi neighbors, whose families had suffered attacks in the 1960s and who were distressed by the anti-Tutsi rhetoric that had been spreading through the country since 1990.

In April 1994, Claudette's world suddenly collapsed around her. When President Juvenal Habyarimana was killed in a mysterious plane crash, his supporters launched a campaign of mass violence against their perceived enemies, initially targeting political opponents regardless of ethnicity, but then, as the violence spread from the capital, focusing almost exclusively on Tutsi. Throughout the country, soldiers and civilian militia drove Tutsi out of their homes, gathered them in supposed sanctuaries—churches, schools, and government offices—and systematically slaughtered them. In every community," civil defense" patrols were organized to search for Tutsi who had evaded extermination, including not only those in hiding, but also those who might be attempting to pass for Hutu. Rumors began to spread in Claudette's community …