- A former German colony, Rwanda was home to both Hutus and Tutsis when Belgian forces occupied the country in 1916 during World War I. Although they spoke the same language and shared many of the same traditions, the Belgians favored the Tutsi. They issued identity cards that divided the the population by ethnic group and provided the Tutsi with better opportunities for education and employment. This created a resentment among the Hutu people which erupted in violent riots in 1959, during which an estimated 20,000 Tutsis were killed. When Belgium returned control of Rwanda to its people in 1962, the majority Hutu took control of the country.
- Prior to the arrival of the European colonists, the minority Tutsi were in a higher social position than the majority Hutu community. The Tutsi migrated to the land now known as Rwanda in the 13th century, adopted the Hutu language - Kinyarwanda - and intermarried with the Hutu. However, the conquering Tutsi imposed a feudal structure that placed them at the top of the political and social spectrum. The Tutsi were aristocratic cattle headers, while the majority of Hutus worked as peasant tillers of the soil.
- Rwanda is located on the western edge of the Rift Valley in Central Africa and borders the countries of Burundi, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania. Known as the "land of a thousand hills" its landscape is lush and mountainous. Since 2000, the country has been ruled by President Paul Kagame, the leader of the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the rebel army which ended the genocide in 1994. Approximately two million Hutu refugees and militias fled to Zaire where many still live today. Although there is peace in Rwanda, tensions between the two groups still exist.
- Despite a high level of intermarriage, there is one distinct difference between Tutsis and Hutus - Tutsis tend to be taller and thinner and Hutus smaller and more squat. One theory for this difference is the divide in wealth over the last century. Parallels can be drawn with the average recorded height difference between poor and wealthy Europeans - 4.7 inches - in the same time period.
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