How do you mark and reflect upon a life-changing event while in lockdown? April 6th 1994 - the day when brewing ethnic hatred came to a head in Rwanda and opened the floodgates for a massacre lasting 100 dark days. 4 people whose lives had been impacted by that day, reflect on their experiences while under the Coronavirus lockdown here in New Zealand. Produced by Kadambari Raghukumar

"On Wednesday when we went under lockdown and the emergency alert came through on our phones, suddenly my mind was taken back. The emergency alert sounded like the whistle the killers were blowing when they came hunting for the people.

"It was a heavy night and I couldn't sleep. I started closing the doors and windows. Sometimes you think these things are gone, but little things can trigger that time, that period of the genocide," recalls Judith Mukakayange.

Judith, 46, has lived in Auckland for a little over two decades yet memories of when her country was ravaged by genocide remain fresh in her mind.

April 7 marks 26 years to the day when the Rwanda genocide began, a massacre in which an estimated 800,000 Tutsi were killed by Hutu extremists. Many moderate Hutus lost their lives too, the exact number has not been to established till today.

On the night of April 6 1994 a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, and his Burundian counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira was was shot down above Kigali. All on board were killed. Hutu extremists blamed the surface-to-air missile attack on Tutsi rebels who denied it and in turn blamed the Hutus.

The incident opened the floodgates to 100 days of slaughter during which an estimated 70% of the Tutsi population was killed.

Ethnic tension and power struggles between the two tribes had simmered over many decades prior to the shooting of the plane. Historically Hutus were the majority, Tutsis formed a smaller portion and made up a ruling monarchy previously while the Twa were an even smaller minority.

Animosity between Tutsi and Hutu was exacerbated by colonial Belgians who arrived in 1916. Their divisive policies fostered discrimination and favouritism, laying the foundations for ethnic divide.

By the 1950s, when anti-colonialism and pan-Africanism spread and the independence process was underway, the ethnic divide between Hutu and Tutsi had already had taken deep hold in Rwanda. By 1961, Hutu and Tutsi were well and truly pitted against each other with each grappling for power in the newly-declared republic.

Juvenal Habyarimana was Rwanda's second president, his government actively backed by France.

His assassination opened the doors to a hundred-day massacre across the hilly and densely populated country…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details