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Article: Rwandan exodus: extreme violence was the catalyst for millions of Rwandans to flee their country.(refugees)
- Article from:
- Canada and the World Backgrounder
- Article date:
- December 1, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 Canada & the World. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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There's something very blood-curdling about the machete. Death by bullet or starvation, something we've become accustomed to seeing in news reports from Africa, is hideous enough. But, the idea of being chopped to pieces by someone wielding a machete makes most of us shudder a little more. And, that's just what happened in Rwanda in the spring of 1994. Hundreds of thousands of people were hacked to death in one of the worst massacres of modern times.
The simplest explanation for what happened in Rwanda would be that one ethnic group attacked another with which it had been enemies for centuries. It wasn't that simple. In the first place, the combatants - the Hutus ...