Word: militiaization
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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...
...Hutu militiamen were renegades, their drinking and raping and viciousness tolerated by army officers. As relief workers struggled to get food to the spreading camps, the Hutu, equipped with cars and radios, kept track of where the next food distribution would occur and raced to get there first. The militia, many of them drunk or stoned on marijuana, stopped convoys to demand bribes and a portion of the supplies, wildly firing their weapons...
Elma Ahmic, 17, is haunted by memories of the brutal destruction of her village near Vitez, 37 miles north of Sarajevo, on April 16, 1993. A unit of the Bosnian Croat militia called the Jokers first shelled the mostly Muslim town, then moved in to finish off the men. Relations with local Croats had been good, she said, but after the arrival of the militiamen, "about 20 people surrounded our house, shouting, 'Get out of here! This is Croatia, not Turkey!' My father came out and asked them what they wanted. They took my father and killed him. They shot...
...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...
...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...