Hutu Power

Hutu Power, or Hutu Supremacy, is an ethnic supremacist ideology that asserts the ethnic superiority of Hutu, often in the context of being superior to Tutsi and Twa, and the supposed right of Hutu to dominate and kill these two groups and other minorities. Espoused by Hutu extremists, widespread support for the ideology led to the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi, the moderate Hutu who opposed the killings, and the Twa, who were considered traitors. Hutu Power political parties and movements included the Akazu, the Parmehutu, the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic and its Impuzamugambi militia, and the governing National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development and its Interahamwe militia. Hutu supremacy is most common in Rwanda and Burundi, where Hutu comprise most of the population. It was the main ideology of the Third Rwandese Republic. In 1957, 9 Hutu intellectuals including future Hutu president and military dictator Grégoire Kayibanda composed the Bahutu Manifesto, calling for a double liberation of Hutus from the European colonizers and the Tutsis, who they regarded as Hamitic invaders and oppressors. The Manifesto became the blueprint for future Hutu nationalist movements. In the years following the victory of Hutus in the Hutu Revolution and the formation of a Hutu dictatorship, Rwanda saw a surge in ethnic tensions and violence, which finally formulated in the form of Hutu Power. In 1990, Hassan Ngeze wrote the Hutu Ten Commandments, a document that served as the basis of the Hutu Power ideology. The Commandments called for the supremacy of Hutus in Rwanda, exclusive Hutu leadership over Rwanda's public institutions and public life, complete segregation of Hutus from Tutsis, and complete exclusion of Tutsis from public institutions and public life. Hutu Power ideology reviled Tutsis as outsiders bent on restoring a Tutsi-dominated monarchy, and idealized Hutu...