Word: militia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...death of the President blew the lid off simmering ethnic and political rivalries in the tiny Central African country. Hutu government soldiers and militia blamed the mainly Tutsi rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front for shooting down the plane; the rebels and others suspected hawkish extremists within Habyarimana's presidential guard. The same night, the massacres in the streets of Kigali began as Hutu sought revenge. Eight weeks and several hundred thousand lives later, the true cause of the crash is still a mystery...
...focus. Late last week rebels seized the town of Kabgayi, releasing up to 20,000 Tutsi who had been held captive by government soldiers. At one camp, a local priest reported that 50 Tutsi were dying each day, some taken out and killed under cover of darkness by Hutu militia, others dying from untreated bullet and machete wounds. "Our people have too much hatred," rebel soldier Patrick Kayilanga, 24, said last week in Kigali. When rebels took the city's main airport recently, Kayilanga discovered that both his parents and 10 brothers and sisters had been massacred. Now, he says...
...persuade them, R.P.F. leaders talk of prosecuting only the ringleaders -- the "burgomasters" and government officials whose orders triggered the massacres. Many of the militia were acting only on threat of death and should be shown clemency, they say. "These people have been taught to hate, taught to kill," asserted Kagame. "They can be re-educated...
...rebels killing the Hutu as they flee the country. In the huge camps of northwestern Tanzania, a number of refugees are telling stories of massacres that they claim are committed by the R.P.F. Those tales are difficult to confirm -- and the rebels argue that they have been planted by militia in the camps as a way of deflecting blame from their own misdeeds -- but the effect is the same. The Tutsi have a long way to go before convincing all Hutu that their intentions are genuine and that the cycle of death will not continue...
...others still harbor a fierce hostility toward their attackers. In the rebel-held town of Gahini, Rayontina Mukansonera, 19, describes being raped repeatedly by Hutu militia before escaping in the confusion following the rebel advance. "They showed no mercy," she says, matter-of-factly. "Someone who destroys your life deserves to die also." For the R.P.F., healing the ethnic wounds of this brutal war will take more than words alone...