ABSTRACT
The genocide that caused approximately one million deaths in Rwanda in 1994 was aided and abetted by media and cultural representations, compelling the Hutu majority to demonize and dehumanize the Tutsi minority as loathsome “cockroaches” requiring extermination.1 In 100 days from April to July 2004, between 800,000 and a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu were slain by extremist Hutu. The legacy and historical antecedents of this
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national barbarism are profound and complex. Resentment against the Tutsi, promoted by the Belgian colonialists as a superior caste, simmered for decades and informed earlier attempts by Hutu at ethnic cleansing (forced expulsions to tsetse fl y-infected marshlands) in the late 1950s and other periodic pogroms in Rwanda’s regional areas.2
