Belgian colonists viewed Africans in general as children who needed to be guided, but noted the Tutsi to be the ruling culture in Rwanda-Burundi.

The Tutsi RPF minister of rehabilitation, Jacques Bihozagara, held a press conference in which he noted, " There are rumours that if the IDPs return home they will be killed ...

Likewise Hutu who obtained cattle would come to be considered Tutsi, thus climbing the ladder of the social strata.

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

The attack on Congolese Tutsi refugees at the border of Burundi was considered a test of the president's capacity to maintain law and order and stability in the country.

The Church has been considered to have played a significant role in fomenting racial divisions between Hutu and Tutsi, in part because they found more willing converts among the majority Hutu.

By the fifteenth century, many of the Bantu-speakers, including both Hutu and Tutsi, had organized themselves into small states.

During the Second Congo War, Tutsi militias among the Banyamulenge in the Congo province of Kivu desired to annex themselves to Rwanda ( now dominated by Tutsi forces under the Kagame government ).

It warned Hutu to prepare to " defend " themselves against the Tutsi.

A statement accompanying the release claimed that " French soldiers themselves directly were involved in assassinations of Tutsis and Hutus accused of hiding Tutsis ... French forces committed several rapes on Tutsi survivors ", though the latter was not documented in the report.

In response the Tutsi appear to have attempted to distance themselves from their ethnicity as Rwandans and lay claim to a territorial identity as residents of Mulenge.

As they moved, they continued this practice, so that some Tutsi Banyarwanda in South Kivu call themselves the Banya-tulambo and Banya-minembwe, after the places they were located.

The Belgian administrators believed in the racial theories of the time and convinced themselves that the Tutsi were racially superior.

The only Western country which evacuated any Tutsi was Belgium ; these were a very few Tutsi who had succeeded in including themselves into the evacuated groups by negotiation or infiltration.

Human Rights Watch reported that the Lendu began thinking of themselves as kin to the Hutu, while the Hema identify themselves with the Tutsi.

After defending themselves for a few days using stones, the Tutsi were overrun on April 21.

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.

Some now discarded Hamitic theories have become viewed as racist ; in particular a theory proposed in the 19th century by Speke, that the Tutsi were supposedly Hamitic and thus inherently superior.

When the Roman Catholic missionaries came to Rwanda in the late 1880s, they contributed to the " Hamitic " theory of race origins, which taught that the Tutsi were a superior race.

In the colonial era, under German and then Belgian rule, Roman Catholic missionaries, inspired by the overtly racist theories of 19th century Europe, concocted a destructive ideology of ethnic cleavage and racial ranking that attributed superior qualities to the country's Tutsi minority, since the missionaries ran the colonial-era schools, these pernicious values were systematically transmitted to several generations of Rwandans …

In the mid-18th century, this Tutsi royalty consolidated authority over land, production, and distribution with the development of the ubugabire — a patron-client relationship in which the populace received royal protection in exchange for tribute and land tenure.

The colonial powers, first Germany and then Belgium, allied with the Rwandan court, allowing it to conquer the remaining autonomous kingdoms along its borders and racializing the system of minority Tutsi dominance created under Rwabugiri.

Due to the eugenics movement in Europe and the United States, the colonial government became concerned with the differences between Hutu and Tutsi.

From the late 1940s, King Rudahigwa, a Tutsi with democratic vision, abolished the " ubuhake " system and redistributed cattle and land.

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

In this war, militarized Tutsi elements in the South Kivu area of Zaire, known as Banyamulenge to disguise their original Rwandan Tutsi heritage, allied with the Tutsi RDF forces against the Hutu refugees in the North Kivu area, which included the Interahamwe militias.

The Twa pygmies, the smallest of the two countries principle populations, also share language and culture with the Hutu and Tutsi.

One such thesis, largely based on oral tradition, posits that the Tutsi experienced some admixture with or were partially descended from migrants of Caucasoid stock, who usually were said to have arrived in the Great Lakes region from the Horn of Africa and / or North Africa.

Like the Tutsi, the Hutu largely belong to the E1b1a haplogroup ( 83 %), which is associated with the Bantu expansion from West Africa.

They defined " Tutsi " as anyone owning more than ten cows ( a sign of wealth ) or with the physical feature of a longer nose, or longer neck, commonly associated with the Tutsi.

The Tutsi, in general, demonstrate a close ethnic kinship with neighboring Bantu populations, particularly the Hutu.

Since the 2000 Arusha Peace Process, today in Burundi the Tutsi minority shares power in a more or less equitable manner with the Hutu majority.

During the 1980s, school principals reported that, although secondary school admissions were proportional to the groups within the country and were made by competition within ethnic groups ( in accordance with quotas mandated by the Habyarimana government ), the students of Tutsi origin ( 14 % of intake ) comprised nearly 50 % of graduates, on average.

"... the Chamber finds that in most cases, the rapes of Tutsi women in Taba, were accompanied with the intent to kill those women.

Intergroup conflict can be highly competitive, especially for social groups with a long history of conflict ( for example, the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, rooted in group conflict between the ethnic Hutu and Tutsi ).

Belgium defined " Tutsi " as anyone with more than ten cows or a long nose, while " Hutu " meant someone with less than ten cows and a broad nose.

* 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.

As some Tutsis had feared, the tax also made the Hutus feel less bonded to their Tutsi patrons and more dependent on the European foreigners.

The Belgian government continued to rely on the Tutsi power structure for administering the country, although they became more directly involved in extended its interests into education and agricultural supervision.

Belgian rule created more of an ethnic divide between the Tutsi and Hutu, and they supported Tutsis political power.

Although the majority of pasture lands remained under Tutsi control, the Hutu began to feel more liberation from Tutsi rule.

Hutus killed an estimated 20, 000 to 100, 000 Tutsi ; thousands more, including the Mwami, fled to neighboring Uganda before Belgian commandos arrived to quell the violence.

In 1988, Hutu violence against Tutsis throughout northern Burundi again resurfaced, and in response the Tutsi army massacred approximately 20, 000 more Hutu.

Following an uprising by the ethnic Tutsi, sometimes referred to as a whole as Banyamulenge ( although this term only represents people from one area in eastern Zaire — other ethnic Tutsi Kinyarwanda-speaking people include the Banyamasisi and the Banyarutshuru, as an example ) people in eastern Zaire in October 1997, a huge movement of refugees began which brought more than 600, 000 back to Rwanda in the last two weeks of November.

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.

Since the nation's independence, more extremist Tutsi came to power and oppressed the Hutus, especially those who were educated.

Traditionally, the Tutsi had held more economic power and controlled the military.

Hutu activists began killing Tutsi, forcing more than 100, 000 to seek refuge in neighbouring countries.

(" Banyarwanda " are all persons who speak the Kinyarwanda language, which includes the indigenous Banyarwanda who lived in southern border regions, the descendants of Hutus who had come as migrant laborers in the mid-1920s, and the more recent Tutsi refugees.

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.

In October 1996, Mobutu's continued support of the Hutu militants led to an uprising by the ethnic Tutsi Banyamulenge people in eastern Zaire ( supported politically and militarily by Rwanda ), which marked the beginning of the First Congo War, and led to a return of more than 600, 000 Hutu refugees to Rwanda during the last two weeks of November.

In 2005, Alison Des Forges wrote that eleven years after the genocide, films for popular audiences on the subject greatly increased the " widespread realization of the horror that had taken the lives of more than half a million Tutsi ".