Rwandan Genocide (1994)

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Tutsi Genocide in Rwanda 1994

An agreement between the government and FPR was signed in August 1993 at Arusha, Tanzania, that called for the creation of a broad-based transition government that would include the FPR.

Extremist Hutu were strongly opposed to this plan. In April 1994 a plane carrying Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryama, president of Burundi, crashed, killing both men; it was thought that the plane had been shot down by extremist Hutu. A wave of anarchy and mass killings followed over the next several months, in which as many as a half million civilians, mostly Tutsi, were slaughtered. The FPR responded by resuming their fight, declaring victory in July, and establishing a transitional government. Hundreds of thousands of Rwandans--both Hutu and Tutsi--fled, most of them into eastern Zaire (now called Congo [Kinshasa]). The great majority returned to Rwanda in late 1996 and early 1997.

Once, Hutus and Tutsis lived in harmony in Central Africa. About 600 years ago, Tutsis, a tall, warrior people, moved south from Ethiopia and invaded the homeland of the Hutus. Though much smaller in number, they conquered the Hutus, who agreed to raise crops for them in return for protection.

Even in the colonial era -- when Belgium ruled the area, after taking it from Germany in 1916 -- the two groups lived as one, speaking the same language, intermarrying, and obeying a nearly godlike Tutsi king.

Independence changed everything. The monarchy was dissolved and Belgian troops withdrawn -- a power vacuum both Tutsis and Hutus fought to fill. Two new countries emerged in 1962 -- Rwanda, dominated by the Hutus, and Burundi by the Tutsis -- and the ethnic fighting flared on and off in the following decades.

It exploded in 1994 with the civil war in Rwanda in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. Tutsi rebels won control, which sent a million Hutus, fearful of revenge, into Zaire and Tanzania.

In Burundi, the Tutsis yielded power after a Hutu won the country's first democratic election in 1993. He was killed in an attempted coup four months later, and his successor in a suspicious plane crash in 1994, in which the Hutu leader of Rwanda was also killed.



Last Update: December 16, 2000
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