Word: rwandan
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Your article correctly states that under a monarchy both Rwanda and Burundi "had achieved a measure of cohesion rare in Africa at the time." It fails, however, to draw the obvious conclusion that disintegration occurred in 1969 when Belgium, not the Rwandan people, expelled His Majesty King Kigeli V, and that reintegration is contingent on his restoration. Interestingly, last month the King addressed supporters in Montreal who consisted of Hutu and Tutsi joined in a common cause. KENNETH GUNN-WALBERG Philipsburg, Pennsylvania...
...were biologically superior as well. This engendered a level of resentment previously unseen in the region. "Tutsi and Hutu have killed each other more to upbraid a vision they have of themselves and the others than for material interests," historian Gerard Prunier wrote in his account of the 1994 Rwandan holocaust. "That is what makes the killing so relentless...
Independence ushered in a new, bloodier era. With the dissolution of the monarchies and removal of an external Belgian military force, the struggle for power became more overtly ethnic at all levels of society. At this point, Rwanda and Burundi took different paths. In 1959 Rwandan Hutu launched a murderous uprising and forced the creation of a majority-controlled republic, which survived until 1994. In Burundi, by contrast, the Tutsi remained in control. Both armies were dominated by the ruling tribe and did not hesitate to suppress uprisings by the opposing ethnic group. Peasant revolts in Burundi...
Hutu and Tutsi have lived in eastern Zaire for generations, many of them immigrating to the region to till the sparsely populated hillsides in the 1930s, and still more being driven across the border by violence at the time of Rwandan independence in 1959. Since then Hutu of Rwandan ancestry have outnumbered both Tutsi immigrants and indigenous tribes. This imbalance, along with a government decree stripping Rwandan immigrants and their descendants of Zairian citizenship, spawned tension that flared into fighting in 1993. That conflict pitted Hutu against indigenous Hunde tribesmen and was marked by gruesome rituals, with Hunde sometimes eating...
Unarmed Tutsi civilians, most of them landholders, are bearing the brunt of the ethnic cleansing. Despite decades of peaceful coexistence with local Hutu, at least 50,000 Tutsi have been forced to flee since 1995, most to squalid refugee camps just across the Rwandan border. In the Masisi highlands, two small groups of Tutsi remain. Desire Gaspira, 40, a veterinary nurse born in the area, is among them. "Before, Tutsi and Hutu worked together," he said last month. "We drank together. We were brothers. Now we are enemies." In nearby Goma a Tutsi aid worker explained the dilemma facing...