HistoryHuman's living in Rwanda is thought to have begun shortly after the last ice age. By the 16th century, the people had been organized into a number of kingdoms. In the 19th century, Mwami (King) Rwabugiri of the Kingdom of Rwanda
made many military conquest's that resulted in the kingdom controlingmost of Rwanda. A merging of anti-colonial and anti-Tutsi sentiment resulted in Belgium granting national independence in 1961.The elections resulted in a representative government lead by President Gregoire Kayibanda, who was a majority Hutu. Political tensions became worse when Juvenal Habyarimana, who was also Hutu, became President in 1973. In 1991, the Rwandan Patrotic Front (RPF), a rebel group with more than 10,000 Tutsi refugees, invaded the country, starting the Rwandan Civil War. The assassination of the president was the start of the 1994 genocide, in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and a moderate amount of Hutus were killed. |
The Tutsi RPF captured Rwanda, and there was a counter-genocide of Hutus by Tutsis. Millions of Hutu fled as refugees, they were put into large refugee camps in Democratic Republic Of The Congo, where there were already refugees from other countries. These were broken up by an RPF-sponsored invasion in 1996 that replaced the new Congolese president as the result of the First Congo War. A second invasion to replace the new Congolese president initiated the Second Congo War, the deadliest war since World War ll and one involving many African nations including Rwanda.
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