Yearbook 2004
Rwanda. In a series of ceremonies, in April Rwanda observed the ten-year commemoration of the 1994 genocide, when at least 800,000 people were killed. The anniversaries coincided with a diplomatic conflict with France, after a French investigation blamed current President Paul Kagame for the 1994 firing of the then President Juvénal Habyarimana’s aircraft. The genocide was carefully planned and prepared for a long time, but the death of the president became the igniting spark. Kagame, who at the time led the Tutside-dominated guerrilla Front Patriotique Rwandais (FPR), accused the French state of having trained and equipped the hutumilies who carried out the genocide. Kagame also investigated France’s suspected role in the genocide.
The total population in Rwanda is 12,952,229 people in 2020. Former Minister of Education Jean de Dieu Kamuhanda and former Finance Minister Emmanuel Ndindabahizi were sentenced to life imprisonment at the UN War Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and former mayor of Rusamo City, Sylvestre Gacumbitsi, sentenced to 30 years. In September, for the first time, a Catholic priest was brought before the UN Court. Athanase Seromba is charged with having massacred hutumilis up to 2,000 Tutsis seeking protection in his own parish church. In September, the trial of former commander-in-chief General Augustin Bizimungu also began.
In June, a court in Rwanda sentenced former President Pasteur Bizimungu to 15 years in prison for, among other things. upswing and embezzlement of state funds. Bizimungu, who belonged to the FPR despite being a hutu, was Rwanda’s first president after the genocide. He resigned in 2000 after criticizing FPR for unilaterally favoring the Tutsin minority. Of the few who dared to speak, the trial and verdict against Bizimungu received criticism for political governance, and according to Amnesty International, some evidence had been forced through torture.
After ten years of state ethereal monopoly, the first private radio stations were allowed since the genocide. Private radio has been a sensitive issue, since before and during the genocide there were radio broadcasts with serious propaganda against the Tutsis.
Population
The climatic conditions particularly favorable to human settlement have played a prominent role in the events of the population, divided into two phases, which first saw a coexistence followed by an overlapping of three different ethnic groups. In all likelihood, since the Neolithic the Rwanda was inhabited by the BaTwa, a pygmoid population, settled in the forest areas of the north. Between these and the Hutus, of Bantu ethnicity, who arrived in the country from the West through the Congolese forests, collaborative relationships were established: mainly farmers, the Hutus occupied the savannah areas of the West, Center and South, in which they took rudimentary cultivation of the soil and fishing in inland waters. This peaceful coexistence ended abruptly in the 13th century, with the arrival in the Rwanda of the Tutsi, Nilotic, dedicated to pastoralism and coming from the Ethiopian region, who took over the BaTwa and the Hutu. Under the Belgian administration there were no changes in the ethnic framework: only as a result of the inter-ethnic conflicts that exploded after the independence of the country did the Tutsis lose the privileged positions they had long enjoyed; they were largely eliminated and had to take refuge in neighboring states (particularly Uganda). See campingship.com for Rwanda travel guide.
The Hutus make up about 85% and the Tutsis 14% (2006) of the total population, which showed a continuous increase until the early 1990s: from 1953 to 1983 it more than doubled, then registering, in the decade 1983-93, again an increase of over 40%, to which the natural factor contributed almost exclusively. In the last years of the 20th century. the demographic situation of the Rwanda has undergone marked changes as a result of the violent civil war that broke out in 1994 (according to estimates by international organizations, about 1 million were the losses, 2 million refugees beyond national borders, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Burundi, Tanzania and other neighboring countries). The population subsequently returned to high levels of increase (higher than 20.5 ‰ in 2008), with a birth rate of around 40% and a death rate of roughly 14%. The largest densities are found along the shores of Lake Kivu and on the south-central plateau. The urban population represents 18% of the total (2008).