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The Hutu (), also known as the Abahutu, are a Bantu peoples ethnic group native to the African Great Lakes region. They mainly live in Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda where they form one of the principal ethnic groups alongside the Tutsi and the Great Lakes Twa.
Others suggest that the two groups are related but not identical, and they also suggest that the differences between them were exacerbated by Europeans, excerpt from or they were exacerbated by a gradual, natural split, as those who owned cattle became known as the Tutsi and those who did not own cattle became known as the Hutu. Mahmood Mamdani states that the Belgian colonial power designated people as Tutsi or Hutu on the basis of cattle ownership, physical measurements and church records.
The debate over the ethnic origins of the Hutu and Tutsi within Rwandan politics predates the Rwandan genocide, and it continues to the present day, with the government of Rwanda no longer using the distinction.
... generations of gene flow obliterated whatever clear-cut physical distinctions may have once existed between these two Bantu peoples – renowned to be height, body build, and facial features. With a spectrum of physical variation in the peoples, Belgian authorities legally mandated ethnic affiliation in the 1920s, based on economic criteria. Formal and discrete social divisions were consequently imposed upon ambiguous biological distinctions. To some extent, the permeability of these categories in the intervening decades helped to reify the biological distinctions, generating a taller elite and a shorter underclass, but with little relation to the gene pools that had existed a few centuries ago. The social categories are thus real, but there is little if any detectable genetic differentiation between Hutu and Tutsi.
Tishkoff et al. (2009) found their mixed Hutu and Tutsi samples from Rwanda to be predominately of Bantu origin, with minor gene flow from Afro-Asiatic communities (17.7% Afro-Asiatic genes found in the mixed Hutu–Tutsi population).
Additionally, a small portion of Hutu speak French language, the other official language of Rwanda and Burundi, as a lingua franca, although the population is dwindling given the poor relations between Rwanda and France.
In Rwanda, this led to the "Social revolution" and Hutu and Tutsis conflicts. Tens of thousands of Tutsis were killed, and many others fled to neighboring countries, such as Burundi, Uganda, and forming the Banyamulenge Tutsi ethnic group in the South Kivu region of the Belgian Congo. Later, exiled Tutsis from Burundi invaded Rwanda, prompting Rwanda to close its border to Burundi.
In Burundi, Ikiza was conducted against the Hutu population in 1972,René Lemarchand, Selective genocide in Burundi (Report – Minority Rights Group; no. 20, 1974), 36 pp.Rene Lemarchand, Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide (New York: Woodrow Wilson Center and Cambridge University Press, 1996), 232 pp.
Christian P. Scherrer, Genocide and crisis in Central Africa: conflict roots, mass violence, and regional war; foreword by Robert Melson. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002.Weissman, Stephen R. " Preventing Genocide in Burundi Lessons from International Diplomacy ", United States Institute of Peace
and an estimated 100,000 Hutus died. In 1993, Burundi's first democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye, who was Hutu, was believed to be assassinated by Tutsi officers, as was the person constitutionally entitled to succeed him.International Commission of Inquiry for Burundi: Final Report. Part III: Investigation of the Assassination. Conclusions at USIP.org This sparked a counter-genocide in Burundi between Hutu political structures and the Tutsi military, in which an estimated 500,000 Burundians died. There were many mass killings of Tutsis and moderate Hutus; these events were deemed to be a genocide by the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry for Burundi.International Commission of Inquiry for Burundi (2002)
While Tutsis remained in control of Burundi, the conflict resulted in genocide in Rwanda as well. A Tutsi rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, came back to Rwanda (their country of origin) from Uganda, which started hatred against the Tutsi people in 1990. A peace agreement was signed, but violence erupted again, culminating in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, when Hutu extremists killed an estimated 1,000,000 Rwandan Tutsis.
About 30% of the Twa pygmy population of Rwanda were also killed by the Hutu extremists. At the same time, the Rwandan Patriotic Front took control of the country and is still the ruling party . Burundi is also currently governed by a former rebel group, the Hutu CNDD–FDD.
, violence between the Hutu and Tutsi had subsided. However, the situation in both Rwanda and Burundi was still tense, with tens of thousands of Rwandans still living outside the country (see Great Lakes refugee crisis).
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