Ethnic cleansing of Rohingya in Myanmar has strong parallels with the genocide of ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda, one of the worst atrocities of modern times.
From April-July 1994, Hutu militias backed by the Hutu-majority government and military, massacred up to one million minority Tutsis. The genocide was the culmi-nation of long-time ethnic conflict in Rwanda, a small equatorial republic straddling central and eastern Africa.
It was triggered by the killing of then Rwandan Hutu president Juvenal Habyarimana in an April 6 rocket attack on his aircraft. Hutus blamed the Tutsi rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) for the attack.
Then RPF leader Paul Kagame, who is now the nation’s president, alleged it was Hutu extremists who staged the assassination as a pretext for genocide. The International community stood aside as mass killings took place before the U.N. belatedly intervened to overthrow the murderous regime.
Lighter-skinned and taller than Hutus, Tutsis are widely considered to originally have been immigrants from Ethiopia. Belgian colonists (1916-61) treated Tutsis as superior to Hutus. Better employment and educational opportunities for Tutsis frustrated Hutus.
