Word: tutsis
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...with each advance, the true extent of the country's destruction comes more sharply into 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...
...predominately Tutsi rebel movement that now seems destined to form the next government of bloodstained Rwanda, that is a haunting lament. As they press their advantage against government troops and murderous Hutu militia, the rebels of the Rwandese Patriotic Front are beginning to realize how little of their tiny Central African homeland will be left for them if and when the R.P.F. takes control. Mile upon mile of terraced hillsides and thatch-roofed villages lies deserted. The reek of decomposing bodies and packs of well-fed dogs serve as the only reminders that this was once one of the most...
...estimated 15,000 to 20,000 soldiers of the R.P.F., it has been a bitter homecoming. Many were born or have lived most of their life in exile, their families driven from the former Belgian colony after the Hutu ousted the Tutsi elite from power in 1959. In neighboring Burundi, Tanzania, Zaire and Uganda, they suffered the indignities of the stateless: scapegoats for the political crises of the day. Through it all, the exiles saw their homeland as a mythical country of verdant hillsides and crystal lakes, whose people and terrain they could glimpse only in textbooks. "I didn...
...R.P.F. leadership is only too aware that a military victory alone will not bring lasting peace to their homeland. Despite a number of moderate Hutu in their ranks, theirs is still seen as a Tutsi movement, representing an ethnic minority that even before the latest massacres made up just 15% of the population. Hundreds of thousands of Hutu who have fled the rebel advance to neighboring countries must be convinced that they can return home without threat of retribution...
...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...