Barakabaho - Let Them Live!.....Hutu and Tutsi are the Same People.

It's the end of the school year and grades have been in for a couple of weeks now. I am taking this opportunity to provide my students a more realistic and relevant education. I brought a dvd player and movies from my private collection to pass the hot days in my steamy classroom. One of the movies I brought was Hotel Rwanda. As my class watched one of my students asked..."Why are Afrikans doing this to other Afrikans?....This post is dedicated to Hason L., an insightful young man who's question made me hopeful.

THE HEART OF THE MATTER
The fighting between Tutsis and Hutus in central Africa has been going on for decades, ever since Belgium lost control of the area in the 1950s.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/africa/jan-june99/hutus_tutsis.html
THE HUTU-TUTSI CONFLICT



Although a series of brutal conflicts have been waged between Hutus and Tutsis, including the genocidal war in Rwanda, distinctions between the two groups are less than clear.

In the troubled heart of Africa, there are a number of factors feeding the multiple crises in Rwanda, Zaire and Burundi, where millions have been killed or turned into refugees. Charlayne Hunter-Gault reports on ethnic conflict in Rwanda and Burundi.

PROFESSOR GEORGE NZONGOLA: In Rwanda, the Tutsi and the Hutu are the same people. They are all people--large grouping or communities which go from seven regions of Cameroon to Uganda--all the way to South Africa, in the same culture. People used to be Tutsi or Hutu, depending on the proximity to the king. If you were close to the king, you owned wealth, you owned a lot of cattle, you are a Tutsi. If you are far away from the king, you are a cultivator, you don't own much cattle, you are a Hutu. And with that, an individual could be a Tutsi or Hutu.

A Brief History 1400-1996
http://www.cnn.com/EVENTS/1996/year.in.review/topten/hutu/history.html

Once, Hutus and Tutsis lived in harmony in Central Africa. About 600 years ago, Tutsis, a tall, warrior people, moved south from Ethiopia and invaded the homeland of the Hutus. Though much smaller in number, they conquered the Hutus, who agreed to raise crops for them in return for protection.

Even in the colonial era -- when Belgium ruled the area, after taking it from Germany in 1916 -- the two groups lived as one, speaking the same language, intermarrying, and obeying a nearly godlike Tutsi king.

Independence changed everything. The monarchy was dissolved and Belgian troops withdrawn -- a power vacuum both Tutsis and Hutus fought to fill. Two new countries emerged in 1962 -- Rwanda, dominated by the Hutus, and Burundi by the Tutsis -- and the ethnic fighting flared on and off in the following decades.



It exploded in 1994 with the civil war in Rwanda in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. Tutsi rebels won control, which sent a million Hutus, fearful of revenge, into Zaire and Tanzania.

In Burundi, the Tutsis yielded power after a Hutu won the country's first democratic election in 1993. He was killed in an attempted coup four months later, and his successor in a suspicious plane crash in 1994, in which the Hutu leader of Rwanda was also killed.

A TimeLine
1926 : Belgians decide that the population of Rwanda should be classified as either Tutsi or Hutu.
1950s: The reduced status of the Hutus under the Belgian supported Tutsi monarchy creates a Hutu resistance movement.
1959: The Hutu-Tutsi divide widens as ethnic politics intensify. Belgium dispatches paratroopers to rescue the Tutsi power structure. Clashes between Hutus and Tutsis commence in the north and quickly spread throughout Rwanda. An estimated 10,000 Tutsis are killed, with perhaps 200,000 more fleeing the country.
January-October 1961 : Hutu-led political forces proclaim a Republic and abolish the Tutsi monarchy. A new constitution is drafted. The first Tutsi exile guerrilla group is formed. Tutsi exiles operate from sanctuaries in Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zaire.
July 1, 1962 : Rwanda gains independence from Belgium.
1963: Tutsi exile guerrillas invade Rwandan territory in three waves on November 25, December 20, and December 27.
1964: Rampaging Hutus, in response to Tutsi rebel incursions, kill 5,000 to 14,000 Tutsis and drive another 200,000 (out of a total of 600,000 Tutsis in the country) into exile in Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zaire.
July 1973 : Major General Juvenal Habyarimana (a Hutu) leads A bloodless military coup and proclaims himself President. Portions of the 1962 constitution are suspended, the legislature is dissolved, and a more centralized administration is created.
1979: The Rwandan Patriotic Front is founded by Tutsi exiles in Uganda.
October-November 1990 : The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invades Rwanda from its bases in Uganda. Government forces repulse the RPF invasion. There are reports that the government has arrested Tutsi businessmen, teachers, and priests as collaborators with the rebels. The government labels resident Tutsis with no connection to the RPF as rebel "accomplices." In fact, many Tutsis initially support the government against the RPF, but the regime decisively rebuffs them.
June 1991 : Habyarimana signs a new Constitution which provides for multi-party politics, the creation of a prime ministership, a limited Presidential term (a candidate could seek a maximum of two terms of five years each), and separate executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government.
1991-1992: The RPF conducts repeated, small-scale incursions into Rwanda. A cease-fire is negotiated in July 1992.
1992: Habyarimana maneuvers to split two key opposition parties (one of which was composed of both Hutus and Tutsis), thus polarizing the political situation and promoting tribalism. August 1992 : The regime and RPF rebels agree on sweeping political reforms and the formation of an interim government that will include substantial RPF representation.
1993: Habyarimana's regime begins to train militia cadres political movement and the Committee for the Defense of the Republic (CDR), a Hutu extremist organization opposed to accommodation with the Tutsi rebels. Deployed throughout the Rwanda, the militias commit massacres at the behest of both local Hutu officials and central Hutu authorities.
March 1993 : Habyarimana denies that any massacres have taken place since he took office. Habyarimana blames violence on the insurgency exclusively, and denied ethnicity was a factor in Rwanda's problems. Ethnic problems will end when the war ends, the President says.
August 1993 : At Arusha in Tanzania, a new comprehensive accord is concluded between Habyarimana and the RPF. A coalition government is promised, featuring a Hutu Prime Minister, and a 21-member cabinet with five Tutsis. The military forces and RPF troops are to merge, creating a new Rwandan army.
April 1994 : Military clashes occur in the Rwandan capital of Kigali between RPF elements and the Rwandan military. Presidents Habyarimana of Rwanda and Ntaryamira of Burundi (both Hutus) are killed when their plane is shot down by a missile over Kigali, Rwanda. The Presidential Guard in Kigali and army and militia elements in other parts of Rwanda attack Tutsis and Hutus who are believed to be political opponents of the regime. With the targeting of moderate Hutus for extermination, the RPF for the first time is able to recruit appreciable numbers of Hutus into its ranks.
June 1994 : France dispatches 2,500 troops to Rwanda to establish a "safety zone" where Hutus can take refuge from the RPF. Hutu radio broadcasts exhort Hutus within French safe-haven zone to flee before advancing RPF forces, causing 250,000 to go into exile in Zaire.
July 1994 : The victorious Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) forms a government committed to the principals enunciated in the Arusha Accord signed in August 1993: societal reconciliation, national unity, and access to political power for all ethnic groups.
Mid-1994: Due to civil war and genocide, Rwandan society is in a state of complete collapse. At least 500,000 people killed between April and July, approximately two million refugees abroad and one million internally displaced people, the cessation of business and agricultural activities, the death or flight of the educated and talented, and the breakdown of routine government activity including legal, educational, and health operations.
April 1995 : Hutus of the former Rwandan army in exile in Zaire stage cross-border raids into Rwanda.

http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/pehsc/index_files/fpframe_files/Lessons01/less_3.html#w


BARAKABAHO!!!
We must put an end to the perceived differences existing among Afrikan people; that are initiated, influenced, encouraged and instigated by the common enemy of all Afrikan people.