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Article: Refugees' Return Sparks Housing Shortage in Rwanda; Hutus Are Being Pressured to Go Home, but Tutsis Have Taken Over Many Properties
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- February 18, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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Francoise Yribagiza, 30, a Tutsi refugee whose parents fled Rwanda
in 1963, found a deserted, war-ravaged country when she set foot in
her ancestral homeland for the first time in September 1994.
After living in Burundi her entire life, she was elated to be
home. She found a tidy, two-room shack on the edge of Kigali,
Rwanda's capital, that she has painted herself and decorated with
faded portraits of European maidens.
There is only one problem: The house is not hers. It was
abandoned by a Hutu family that was among 2 million people who fled
Rwanda after civil war and tribal massacres devastated this nation
during the spring and summer of 1994. The Hutus, Rwanda's ethnic
majority, ...