* a Rwandan woman seemingly moments away from being killed by Tutsi militia during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide — she stayed on the phone with As It Happens up to the point when the attackers knocked on her door.

Finding the population of Butare resistant to murdering their fellow citizens, the government flew in militia from Kigali by helicopter, and they readily killed the Tutsi.

In Burundi, Tutsi civilians have been targets of mass killings and acts of genocide organized by the state and by armed militia groups ( see Burundi genocide ( 1993 )).

They travel through retreating masses of refugees and militia to reach safety behind Tutsi rebel lines.

Burundi and Rwanda dispute sections of border on the Akanyaru / Kanyaru and the Kagera / Nyabarongo rivers, which have changed course since the 1960s, when the boundary was delimited ; cross-border conflicts among Tutsi, Hutu, other ethnic groups, associated political rebels, armed gangs, and various government forces persist in the Great Lakes region.

Burundi and Rwanda dispute sections of border on the Akanyaru / Kanyaru and the Kagera / Nyabarongo rivers, which have changed course since the 1960s, when the boundary was delimited ; cross-border conflicts among Tutsi, Hutu, other ethnic groups, associated political rebels, armed gangs, and various government forces persist in the Great Lakes region.

Proponents of this account point to Rwanda as an example since the Tutsi / Hutu distinction was codified by the Belgian colonial power in the 1930s on the basis of cattle ownership, physical measurements and church records.

All the people of Rwanda were expected to pay tribute to the Mwami ; it was collected by a Tutsi administrative hierarchy.

Beneath the Mwami was a Tutsi ministerial council of great chiefs, the batware b ' intebe, while below them was a group of lesser Tutsi chiefs, who for the large part governed the country in districts, each district having a cattle chief and a land chief.

The Tutsi king was the ultimate judge and arbiter for those cases that reached him.

The Germans believed the Tutsi ruling class was a superior racial type who, because of their apparent " Hamitic " origins on the Horn of Africa, were more " European " than the Hutu.

Before the colonial period about 15-16 % of the population was Tutsi ; many of these were poor peasants, but the majority of the ruling elite and monarchy were Tutsi.

Another way in which Tutsi power was weakened by Germany was through the introduction of the head-tax on all Rwandans.

Each peasant was required to devote a certain percentage of their fields to coffee and this was enforced by the Belgians and their local, mainly Tutsi, allies.

Each citizen was issued a racial identification card, which defined one as legally Hutu or Tutsi.

Yuhi was replaced by Mutara III, another Tutsi.

Anyone with ten or more cattle was considered a member of the Tutsi class.

Hutu militants used the term inyenzi ( cockroaches ) as a pejorative to describe Tutsi rebels for what was perceived as infiltrating the country.

After the assassination of Rwagasore, his UPRONA party was split into Tutsi and Hutu factions.

A Tutsi Prime Minister was chosen by the monarch, but, a year later in 1963, the monarch was forced to appoint a Hutu prime minister, Pierre Ngendandumwe, in an effort to satisfy growing Hutu unrest.

He was immediately assassinated by a Tutsi extremist and he was succeeded by another Hutu, Joseph Bamina.

Nevertheless, the monarch soon replaced him with another Tutsi prince.

Bamina was soon also assassinated and the Tutsi monarch installed his own personal secretary, Leopold Biha, as the Prime Minister in his place.

Tutsi refugees formed a disproportionate number of NRA officers for the simple reason that they had joined the rebellion early and thus had accumulated more experience.

This term owes its origins to Fuliiru village, which in 1924, received the first group of Tutsi migrants before their dispersion in the highlands of South Kivu, where they were later joined, from 1959 to 1962 by successive waves of Tutsi refugees fleeing persecution.

Tutsi refugees formed a disproportionate number of NRA officers for the simple reason that they had joined the rebellion early and thus had accumulated more experience.

This argument states that the Tutsi rebels of RANU had joined with Museveni as part of a long-planned conspiracy.

Large numbers of Tutsi refugees in Uganda had joined the victorious rebel National Resistance Movement during the Ugandan Bush War and created a separate movement.

In 1990 he joined the primarily Tutsi Rwandese Patriotic Front ( RPF ) when his brother, a colonel in the Rwandan Armed Forces, was assassinated, possibly on the orders of the government.

After Habyarimana's private plane was shot down on April 6, 1994, RTLM joined the chorus of voices blaming Tutsi rebels, and began calling for a " final war " to " exterminate " the Tutsi.

Prime Minister Twagiramungu called a special security meeting on 23 August that reached a climax after three days when Sendashonga, Minister of Finance Marc Ruganera and Vice Prime Minister Alexis Kanyarengwe ( all Hutus who had been publicly identified by the DMI as being potential traitors ) were joined by Tutsi minister of women's affairs Aloysia Inyumba in confronting Kagame, especially over his recent selection of 117 Tutsis out of the 145 newly appointed bourmestres.

The Tutsi, noted Maquet, considered themselves as superior, with the more numerous Hutu and the least numerous Twa regarded, by birth, as respectively, second and third in the hierarchy of Rwandese society.

* 1959 – In Rwanda, Hutu politician Dominique Mbonyumutwa is beaten up by Tutsi forces, leading to a period of violence known as the wind of destruction.

* The wind of destruction began in Rwanda in 1959, following the beating up of Hutu politician Dominique Mbonyumutwa by Tutsi forces.

* November 1 – In Rwanda, Hutu politician Dominique Mbonyumutwa is beaten up by Tutsi forces, leading to a period of violence known as the wind of destruction.

Two political parties emerged: the Union for National Progress ( UPRONA ), a multi-ethnic party led by Tutsi Prince Louis Rwagasore and the Christian Democratic Party ( PDC ) supported by Belgium.

Reforms instituted by the Belgians in the 1950s encouraged the growth of democratic political institutions but were resisted by the Tutsi traditionalists, who saw them as a threat to Tutsi rule.

Encouraged by the Pan-Africanists, Hutu advocates in the Catholic Church, and by Christian Belgians ( who were increasingly influential in the Congo ), Hutu resentment of the Tutsi increased.

A UN special commission reported racism reminiscent of " Nazism " against the Tutsi minorities, and discriminatory actions by the government and Belgian authorities.

In 1963, a Tutsi guerrilla invasion into Rwanda from Burundi unleashed another anti-Tutsi backlash by the Hutu government ; their forces killed an estimated 14, 000 people.

In 1969 another purge of Hutus by the Tutsi military occurred.