Word: tutsis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...issue warnings of reprisals, mutilation and death if the refugees went home. Having lost the country, they were determined to hold on to the population and feed its hatreds in the hope of turning it one day into an invading force. For the victorious rebels of the largely Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front, the only hope for consolidating power as a legitimate government lay in persuading the majority Hutu to return and live their lives in peace. The new leaders said all the right things. "We must build a country that belongs to Rwandans, not Hutu or Tutsi," declared Vice President...
...relief supply hub was accompanied by promises that the deployment was for "the sole purpose of humanitarian relief, not peacekeeping." Even his announcement that the U.S. would formally recognize the R.P.F. was circumscribed by Pentagon warnings that American troops should not get caught up in the warfare between Tutsi and Hutu...
...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...
Government officials admitted that some Tutsi fighters, flush with victory after a life in exile and years of warfare, were looting warehouses and stores and stripping houses bare in the wealthy sections of 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...
...even some relief officials, while praising the general discipline and restraint of Tutsi leaders, are wary of the expressions of good intention from an ethnic group that enjoyed all the educational and 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...