Warning: The following discusses the 1994 Rwandan genocide. During this, many horrific and violent events took place. Certain phrases and concepts may be triggering for certain individuals (e.g., rape, sexual violence, war violence, murder, etc.).
Before the influx of European settlers in Africa, different nationalities interacted together with less disputes than after. Specifically, the Belgian colonial rule influenced two native peoples who generally lived harmoniously: the Hutu and the Tutsi. Rising tensions between the two groups lead to perhaps one of the most shocking and appalling incidents within post-colonial international politics, the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In the time period of four months between April and July, an estimated total 800,000 Tutsi men, women, and children were slaughtered in a strategically planned ethnic cleansing by the http://www.britannica.com/place/RwandaHutu majority. Unfortunately, this is not the first fatal uprising in both the colonial and post-colonial era Rwanda and Belgian occupied Africa. Policies and aristocratic hierarchy put into place by the Belgian colonists were the driving force in creating the rift between the Hutu and Tutsi people in post-colonial Rwanda which lead the culminating point: the Rwandan genocide of 1994.
The original inhabitants of the Great Lakes region is highly contested, though the general consensus is that the first residents of the Rwandan region were the Twa pygmies. The Twa are an ethnic group belonging to the larger category of African pygmies. Though they are considered to be the earliest natives of Rwanda, they are the most underrepresented group socially and politically. The Twa make up about one percent of the total population and are considered inferior to both their Hutu and Tutsi neighbors. Despite tensions between the two major ethnic groups, they stand united on their opinions of the Twa pygmies with whom they refuse to interact with, whether it be through trade or marriage.
The most prominent residents of Rwanda are the Hutu people. The Hutu, or Bahutu, were not the original inhabitants of the Rwandan region; rather, they migrated from the Lake Chad region in the 11th century and, in their own way, colonized the land despite that habitation of the Twa pygmies. The Hutu account for about 85 percent of the Rwandan population and reside as the physical and population majority. Historically, the Hutu have been a primarily agricultural based society. Most Hutu citizens maintained farmland until the arrival of the Tutsi. The origins of the Tutsi is unclear. Many Hutu claim that the Tutsi migrated from the Abyssinian region, and most anthropologists will agree that the Tutsi came from a more northern region of Africa, either Egypt or Abyssinia (present day Ethiopia), in the http://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/volumes/2002/2-1/magnarella2-1.pdf16th century. The Tutsi were cattle-herders by trade which allowed for them accumulate a large quantity of wealth from neighboring ethnic groups and from European colonials. When they began populating the region, they seized dominance over the Hutu and Twa by overthrowing the Hutu king, Bahinza, and replacing him with the Tutsi king, http://www.africa.upenn.edu/NEH/rwhistory.htmMwami.
The pre-colonial environment was a fairly peaceful rule. The Tutsi dominated the land through slow migration, cultural superiority, and advanced military technology and skills. The Hutu submitted to their Tutsi overlords, who established a kingdom across the Ruanda-Urundi region, modern day Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the Congo), formerly Zaire. The pre-colonial relationship between Hutu and Tutsi is a unique structure set into place by the Mwami, who were believed to be of divine lineage. Tutsi legend tells of three children who fell from the sky and were assumed to be children of the gods. Kigwa, one of the children, was considered to be the most powerful and became the first Mwami of the Tutsi. Henceforth, Mwami have assumed rule based on their paternal lineage to http://www.africa.upenn.edu/NEH/rwhistory.htmKigwa.
During the pre-colonial society, the Mwami were the main source of Hutu malice for the Tutsi, though civilian relations were overall pleasant. The Mwami would grant the Hutu the ability to trade the use of land and cattle with other Tutsi for their service agriculturally and militarily. This system, called "ubuhake," resulted in the Tutsi population owning a majority of the resources and land, setting up an unofficial hierarchy which placed Hutu at the http://www.africa.upenn.edu/NEH/rwhistory.htmbottom.
European explorers had examined lands near the Rwandan region, but it was not until the end of 19th century that anyone entered the Mwami realm. By this time, Mwami Kigeri IV Rwabugiri had centralized the Tutsi regime and defined borders that rivaled rogue Hutu leaders and their clans. During the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, the European leaders convened to establish colonial territories. It was decided at this convention that Germany would obtain the highly desired Ruanda-Urundi region. However, it was nine years later, in 1894, that the first German diplomat, Count von Götzen, visited Mwami Kigeri IV’s court. A year after his visit, Kigeri IV died. Germany took this opportunity to conquer the weakened territories as their colonies in http://www.africa.upenn.edu/NEH/rwhistory.htm1897. There, the German empire appointed Count von Götzen as the governor of East German Africa. The German government maintained the hierarchy of a Tutsi Mwami and ruled indirectly through him and his court.
Obviously, the post-World War I era of African colonialism looked considerably different from the pre-colonial society that had existed. The European conflicts had a devastating effect on the colonial outposts these countries had “acquired.” After the invasion of Belgium by Germany, Belgium invaded German Rwanda in 1914 and took control of small areas. Within the Treaty of Versailles (1918-1919), it was decided that Rwanda, Burundi, and Zaire, would henceforth be ruled by the Belgian government.
The Belgian government, again, maintained the Tutsi-run regime and increased the ranking of Tutsi by establishing them as the aristocratic class. In part this ranking was based on the physical comparison of the Hutu and the Tutsi. The Hutu tended to be shorter with wider faces and darker skin while the Tutsi were taller, with smaller European-looking features, and lighter skin. The stereotypical Tutsi appearance and their traditionally Roman wardrobe could attribute to them becoming the preferred ethnicity by the Belgians. During the Belgian rule, many laws were put into place that established the Tutsi as the aristocratic civilians, one of these laws being the http://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/volumes/2002/2-1/magnarella2-1.pdf"10-Cow Rule." This established that any male who owned 10 or more cows, the Rwandan symbol for wealth, was determined to be ethnically Tutsi while anyone with less was pronounced Hutu. This distinction served as the qualifier for another Belgian law: Rwandan identity cards. These cards read either "Hutu," "Tutsi," or "Twa," and ethnicity was determined by the 10-Cow Rule and was passed down paternally, regardless of one’s maternal http://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/volumes/2002/2-1/magnarella2-1.pdfheritage.
Rising tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi became very evident in 1957 when nine Hutu leaders drafted and signed Les Manifeste des Bahutu, which demanded the destruction of the ubuhake system and the removal of Tutsi power along with solidarity among Hutu citizens. The manifesto described the Tutsi as the “colonizer” of Hutu land, and furthered the hatred between the two groups. In 1959, the Hutu extremist group, PARMEHUTU, revolted against and overthrew Mwami Kigeri V and the Belgian rule. The uprising resulted in violent and bloody ethnic clashes that killed thousands of Tutsi, including the remaining government officials, and displaced nearly 130,000 who fled to neighboring states such as http://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/volumes/2002/2-1/magnarella2-1.pdfBurundi, Zaire, and Uganda. The PARMEHUTU became the political entity of Rwanda, which was declared independent in 1962 by the United Nations. The people of Rwanda instated Grégoire Kayibanda, a signatory of Les Manifeste des Bahutu, as the first president. Kayibanda was an advocate for Hutu power and continued his dismantling of the system, and in that, began to institute policies that placed the Hutu above the Tutsi.
After the Hutu power switch, multiple uprisings from Tutsi militias were struck down. The Tutsi population in Burundi formed a coalition to retake the Rwandan government that helped start the civil war in 1990. At this time, the colonial identification cards continued to be distributed; however, the term was changed from "ethnic" identification to "racial" identification by the Hutu government. At the beginning of the war, a Hutu journal, Kangura, was released that fostered animosity among the groups. The December 6, 1990 issue released the “Ten Commandments of the Bahutu.” These so-called commandments included declarations that reprimanded the entire Tutsi population. These included:
5. That the strategic positions, be they political, administrative, economic, military, or pertaining to national security, must be entrusted exclusively to the Hutu.
6. That the education sector (schoolchildren, students, teachers) must be predominantly Hutu. [...]
8. That the Bahutu must cease to have pity for the Batutsi.
Those noted are just a few of the offensive commandments which were printed and distributed to the Rwandan population, though the other seven include misogynist, classist, and moral attacks on the Tutsi population as a whole.
At the apex of the Rwandan civil war stands the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. Using the Belgian identification cards as the basis for declaration, nearly 800,000 Tutsi civilians were killed. Hutu officials would stand, armed, at checkpoints examining cards; Hutu were permitted, Tutsi were removed and slaughtered, raped, or both. In addition, many Hutu, who objected to the murders of the Tutsi or even sympathized with the Tutsi, were also killed. At its climax, nearly http://twofortheroad.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/rwanda-past-and-present/?_r=010,000 Tutsi civilians and sympathizers were killed each day. Meanwhile the same colonial entities that were so eager obtain the Great Lakes land watched and did nothing, as men, women, and children were killed and their bodies left scattered in the streets of Rwanda. In fact, little was done by the international community as an entire country was torn apart.
Even before imperial colonists conquered their land, tensions among the Hutu and Tutsi had been present, However, the two ethnic groups lived harmoniously in what one could call a symbiotic relationship. It was not until the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 that the Ruanda-Urundi land was assigned to fall under the rule of Germany and then redistributed to the Belgian crown under the Treaty of Versailles. The German and Belgian decision to uphold and strengthen the ubuhake system and their enactment of the 10-Cow legislation enhanced the disparities between the Hutu and Tutsi. Not only did colonialism strengthen the contempt that both groups had for one another, it enhanced it and used it to its own advantage. Ultimately, it provided the Hutu with a system of eradicating the Tutsi population through the use of Belgian-distributed ethnic/racial identification cards as the entire world watched and remained silent.
