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US researchers are challenging the conventional view that the 1994 massacre of some 800,000 Rwandans was a "genocide", drawing an angry response from the government who accused them of insulting survivors.
An aide to Rwandan President Paul Kagame said the research was a "malicious" attempt to distort the truth just days ahead of memorials on Wednesday to mark the 10th anniversary of the start of the killings.
The research also questioned the commonly held view that the majority of victims were from Rwanda's ethnic Tutsi minority, rather than the Hutu majority, in another challenge to a government dominated by Tutsis.
"People simply have the basic facts wrong, and worse, many don't even appear interested in assembling the necessary information," said Christian Davenport, a political science professor from the University of Maryland who carried out the study.
"We consider this more of a totalitarian purge, a politicide, rather than ethnic cleansing or genocide," Davenport said in a statement.
According to the conventional view, extremists from the Hutu majority organised a genocide in an attempt to exterminate Tutsis, who they perceived as challenging their long-standing domination of the government.
Bands of militia coupled with soldiers and paramilitaries hunted down and killed Tutsis and Hutu moderates in 100 days of slaughter that began on April 6, 1994, when a plane carrying the Rwandan president was shot down.
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