Rwandan Revolution
No further threat was posed by the refugees until the 1990s, when a civil war initiated by the Tutsi-refugee Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) forced the Hutu government into negotiations.
[14] From its origins as a small toparchy near Lake Muhazi[15] the kingdom expanded through conquest and assimilation,[16] reaching its zenith under King (Mwami) Kigeli Rwabugiri between 1853 and 1895.
[19] When Gustav Adolf von Götzen explored the country ten years later,[20] he discovered that the Kingdom of Rwanda included a fertile region east of Lake Kivu.
To justify its claim, Germany began a policy of ruling through the Rwandan monarchy and supporting Tutsi chiefs; this system allowed colonisation with few European troops.
[21] Yuhi V Musinga, who emerged as king after a succession crisis following the death of his father Rwabugiri[22] and a struggle with Belgian troops, welcomed the Germans and used them to consolidate his power.
[34][35] The economic landscape had changed considerably during the war; a cash economy grew,[36] and with it the demand for labourers in the Congolese mines of Katanga and the coffee and sugar plantations of Uganda.
[44] During the late 1950s he was a Travail, Fidélité, Progrès (TRAFIPRO) food-cooperative board member,[45] edited the pro-Hutu Catholic magazine Kinyamateka,[43] and founded the Mouvement Social Muhutu (MSM).
[49] In July, Congolese newspaper La Presse Africaine published an article by an anonymous Rwandan priest detailing alleged centuries-long abuses of the Hutu by the Tutsi elite.
[53] King Rudahigwa and the Tutsi-dominated Conseil Supérieur proposed new ministries of finance, education, public works and the interior run by them, independent of Belgium,[54] through a manifesto called mise en point.
[57] The release of these competing visions for the country's future brought attention from Belgian politicians and the public to Rwanda's social problems which, up until that point, had only been the concern of sociologists and sections of the colonial administration.
[62] In 1958 the Belgian colonial ministry tried to strip Rudahigwa of his power, reducing him to a figurehead,[63] but his popularity with the regional chiefs and the Tutsi (who feared the growing Hutu movement) sparked a series of strikes and protests.
[68] Many Rwandans believed that Rudahigwa was lethally injected by the Belgians;[69] although an autopsy was never performed because of objections from the queen mother, an evaluation by independent doctors confirmed the original diagnosis of haemorrhage.
[73] UNAR immediately began a campaign promoting Rwandan nationalism, vowing to replace European history in schools with the study of Rwabugiri's conquests[74] and calling for the removal of whites and missionaries.
[80] On 1 November 1959 Dominique Mbonyumutwa, one of the few Hutu sub-chiefs and a PARMEHUTU activist, was attacked after attending mass with his wife at a church close to his home in Byimana, Gitarama Province.
[84] Made homeless, many Tutsi sought refuge in Catholic Church missions and with the Belgian authorities,[83] while others crossed into Uganda and the Congo,[83] beginning what would become a mass exodus by the end of the revolution.
[80] The initial Belgian response to the violence was muted; the colonial government had just 300 troops in Rwanda in early November, despite the threat of civil war that had escalated through the preceding months.
[83] The King's forces lacked the military expertise to win this battle, and eventually the Belgian authorities intervened in Save to prevent bloodshed, leading to Gitera's escape.
[89] Logiest was a personal friend of Ruanda-Urundi governor Jean-Paul Harroy, and had already been asked, before the start of the revolution, to come to Rwanda to evaluate Belgium's military options in the colony.
[85] He later wrote in his memoirs: "Some among my assistants thought that I was wrong in being so partial against the Tutsi and that I was leading Rwanda on a road towards democratisation whose end was distant and uncertain";[90] but he defended his actions, saying "it was probably the desire to put down the morgue and expose the duplicity of a basically oppressive and unjust aristocracy".
[85] The Belgian government empowered him to depose the King and veto his decisions, which meant Kigeli became a constitutional monarch, with Logiest replacing him as the country's de facto leader.
[93] PARMEHUTU's ascendancy was further enhanced following the November violence, when Guy Logiest appointed interim leaders primarily from that party, allowing them to set the agenda and control the administration of the forthcoming elections.
[94] Despite this, PARMEHUTU claimed it still needed more time for the Hutu people to become "sufficiently emancipated to defend their rights effectively",[95] and successfully lobbied the Belgians to postpone the communal elections scheduled for January 1960.
The United Nations Trusteeship Commission, dominated by countries allied with Communist ones and favouring the anti-Belgian, Tutsi UNAR party, lobbied for independently monitored elections.
[102] Logiest and Kayibanda then convened a meeting of the country's local leaders, at which a "sovereign democratic Republic of Rwanda" was proclaimed[102] with Dominique Mbonyumutwa its interim president.
[107] The exiles, unlike the ethnic Rwandans who migrated during the pre-colonial and colonial eras, were seen as refugees by their host countries[108] and began almost immediately to agitate for a return to Rwanda.
[110] Beginning in late 1960 armed groups of Tutsi exiles (called inyenzi or "cockroaches" by the Hutu government)[100] launched attacks into Rwanda from neighbouring countries, with mixed success.
[110] The events in Rwanda dramatically worsened Tutsi-Hutu relations in Burundi, and from that point onward the country's Tutsi-led regimes sought to avoid a similar revolution in their own territory.
Fear of such a development strongly motivated the Burundian government to massacre thousands of Hutus in 1972 in response to a Hutu uprising, with the participation of some Rwandan Tutsi refugees.
[118] Although neither side gained a decisive advantage in the war,[119] by 1992 Habyarimana's authority had weakened; mass demonstrations forced him into a coalition with the domestic opposition and to sign the 1993 Arusha Accords with the RPF.
[124] As of 2023[update] Kagame and the RPF remain in control, restoring growth in Rwanda's economy, its number of tourists and the country's Human Development Index.
