Word: tutsis
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Until last week, the world did not get to everybody either. It certainly did not get to Rwanda, a country so infected by tribal hate and civil war that it seemed beyond saving. Three months of fighting between followers of the majority Hutu government and the mainly Tutsi rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (R.P.F.) left at least 500,000 dead. Most of the victims were Tutsi civilians slaughtered by Hutu militiamen. Of those who survived the genocide, at least 2.2 million have fled the country, including a million Hutu refugees who pushed northwest into the Zaire town of Goma...
...William Perry said the 750 U.S. troops aiding Rwandan refugees in Zaire and Uganda will swell to at least 4,000 within a week. And that number could further grow if the Pentagon sets up a "way station" system to draw fearful Hutu refugees back to Rwanda, where rival Tutsi now hold power. Meanwhile, a team of U.S. soldiers will assess the conditions in Rwanda's capital to determine if food, water and other supplies could be delivered faster using facilities inside the country -- though Perry said he hadn't yet decided on sending in a large force. Perry himself...
...greatest challenge will be in persuading the Hutu to return. About 350,000 in the Tanzanian camps have so far failed to do so, despite relative peace in eastern Rwanda. The rebels claim -- with some accuracy -- that they have been held back by members of the same vicious anti- Tutsi militias that last month threatened to execute aid workers who refused to feed or house a notorious war criminal. A useful first step in luring them back would be the silencing of the interim government's radio station, which continue to air anti-Tutsi propaganda...
Without the return of the Hutu, the Tutsi victory, along with the landscape, will remain empty indeed. "Their country is like a desert," crowed former government official Jean Bosco Barayagwiza before going into hiding. "How do you rule a nation when there is nobody left to govern?" The R.P.F. has begun by choosing as the new Prime Minister Faustin Twangirimungu, a Hutu moderate like many killed alongside the Tutsi during the pogroms. This hardly indicates , a blanket Hutu amnesty: R.P.F. vice chairman Patrick Mazimhaka claims that genocide was "party policy" on the part of the Habyarimana regime. Yet he insists...
Hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees fled from advancing Tutsi-led rebels, crossing the frontier into Zaire at a rate of up to 30,000 an hour. The rebels now control three-quarters of the country, including the capital of Kigali, a virtual ghost town without water, electricity or food. The rebels say they are willing to share power with their enemy, the ethnic Hutu majority, to form a new government because as much as half of Rwanda's Tutsi population has been massacred...