Outline Of The Rwandan Genocide
...square kilometres in size, bordered by Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Tanzania. Though mainly flat, the country has a large mountain range on its northwest coast – the Virunga Mountains – that are home to the famous Rwandan Mountain Gorillas. In 1994, this seemingly insignificant country put itself on the world map, but for all the wrong reasons.
Over a period of just one hundred days, over 800,000 Rwandans were killed in one of the worst genocides of the 20th Century. Tutsis and their Hutu supporters (the two ethnic groups in Rwanda) were massacred by Hutu militias, who encouraged ordinary citizens to kill their Tutsi neighbours. Between April and July 1994, while Europe and America looked on, this African nation was plunged into a state of severe panic and fear.
Ethnic Tension: Tutsis and Hutus
Though considered two different ethnic groups, the Tutsis and Hutus speak the same language, inhabit the same regions, have the same customs and traditions, and have intermarried for generations. In fact, there are very little physical differences between the two groups at all. In 1916 when Belgian colonists arrived in Rwanda, they distinguished between the two groups and consequently began to treat them differently. They believed that the minority Tutsis were superior and offered them better jobs and education, leading to ethnic tension. It is believed by some historians that the two were never defined by ethnicity, but by class or caste. Traditionally, the Hutu herded cattle and grew crops, whereas the Tutsi herdsmen became the landowners, a leading position that may have led to the belief held by the Belgians.
Ethnic tension grew, culminating with the loss of over 100,000 Tutsis during a Hutu rebellion from 1956 to 1959. During the early sixties, after independence was achieved in 1962, hundreds of thousands of Tutsis fled to...
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