Turkey's Foreign Ministry on Thursday issued a condolence statement regarding the genocide that caused the deaths of nearly a million Tutsis in Rwanda.
"Once again, we remember with the deepest sorrow the genocide against the Tutsis, one of the worst atrocities in the recent history of humanity, in which more than 1 million people were systematically and brutally murdered in 1994 in the Republic of Rwanda," a statement by the ministry said.
It was underlined that Turkey will fight to prevent all kinds of crimes against humanity from happening again.
"We sincerely share the pain of the friendly Rwandan state and its people and offer our condolences. Turkey is against all kinds of crimes against humanity, racism, xenophobia and extremist ideologies, and will continue to fight resolutely to prevent the recurrence of similar sufferings in the future," it added.
The Rwandan genocide occurred between April 7 and July 15, 1994, during the Rwandan civil war. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed militias. The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 662,000 Tutsi deaths.
The scale and brutality of the genocide caused shock worldwide, but no country intervened to forcefully stop the killings. Most of the victims were killed in their own villages or towns, many by their neighbors and fellow villagers. Hutu gangs searched out victims hiding in churches and school buildings. The militia murdered victims with machetes and rifles.
From Thursday, the East African country is marking the 28th anniversary of the genocide and observing 100 days of mourning to mark the mass slaughter.
In 2018, the United Nations General Assembly designated April 7 as "the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, recalling also that Hutu and others who opposed it were killed," according to the U.N. website.
