Word: hutu
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...trouble in Rwanda started last October when a violent civil war left between a violent civil war left between 100,000 and 500,000 civilians dead. Members of the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) overthrew the mainly Hutu civil government and militia in three months of bitter fighting. During the last few weeks of fighting the Tutsi rebels drove the Hutu army west (towards Zaire), pushing an estimated 1.75 million Rwandan refugees ahead of them. The exiled Hutu Government fled into the French controlled safe zone in southwestern Rwanda. From this haven, the deposed Hutu leaders broadcast messages...
...officials say strife in Rwandan neighbor Burundi, also torn by Hutu-Tutsi tribal tensions, now threatens the main food supply to refugee camps in Rwanda and Zaire. Relief workers fear that starvation in some parts of Rwanda could spark a new exodus of 800,000 Hutus across the border. U.N. officials, equally worried, say such a mass movement of refugees might also be prompted by the planned Aug. 22 departure of French troops...
...there were good reasons why the Hutu refugees were reluctant to hurry back. The government was by no means promising a blanket amnesty for those who killed at least half a million Tutsi civilians during the past three months. Two weeks ago, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice announced that they would prosecute tens of thousands of people in trials that could begin within a month. Twagiramungu said there are more than 22,000 former bureaucrats suspected of complicity in the slaughtering -- and that does not include thousands of militiamen, soldiers and presidential guards who could also face...
...Kigali. "Some of this is to be expected," said Vice President Kagame. But he promised that "everything will be given back to the owners when they return." He insists that his goal is a multiethnic, meritocratic society, without the identity cards and propaganda barrages that have turned Tutsi and Hutu against one another for the past generation...
...economic advantage for decades. "The R.P.F. ideology is self-serving, designed for Western ears," says Alex DeWaal, co-director of Africa Rights in London. "Playing down ethnicity promotes the interests of a relatively wealthy and well-educated minority and hides the enduring contempt many Tutsi commanders feel for the Hutu...