On October 1, 2014, BBC broadcasted its documentary Rwanda's Untold Story. The documentary features two academics, Christian Davenport and Allan Stam, who put forward a controversial argument that 200,000 Tutsi were killed during the genocide (a figure that is much lower than conventional estimates). Several claims were made in the documentary, but the 200,000 estimate stood out, triggering outrage from diverse sources. Rwandan genocide survivor groups, in an open letter to BBC, call the documentary a "blatant denial of the Genocide against the Tutsi". In another open letter, 38 prominent international signatories, refer to the 200,000 estimate as "an absurd suggestion and contrary to all the widely available research reported". Professor Filip Reyntjens, who also features in the documentary, writes in a recent African Arguments piece that "the figures provided by Professors Stam and Davenport on Tutsi and Hutu killed in 1994 do not appear to be based on solid research. At least the data they have published (not in a scientific journal or book, but merely on their website) are insufficient to support their claim, which flirts with genocide minimisation or denial." Let's look at the factual data. To establish a reliable death toll among Tutsi, one needs to [...]
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