Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

TUTSI
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never-ending stream of prisoners. Each victim fed the machinery of the ongoing purge
ostensibly necessary for achieving the goals of the revolution.
Tuol Sleng operated a prison routine that was highly regimented and cruel. All prisoners—
including children who were incarcerated there—were photographed as they arrived at
the prison and imprisoned in single, small cells. They were manacled and frequently
shackled to walls, floors, or iron beds. Beatings were frequent; torture was the norm. Prisoners
were not expected to subsist in their cells for long; after making a “confession”—
whether genuine or not, nearly all prisoners owned up to something, just to stop the
torture—most were executed, either at the prison or at nearby Choeung Ek, where they
were buried in one vast “killing field.”
After the defeat of Pol Pot’s (1925–1998) Khmer Rouge forces at the hands of the invading
Vietnamese in 1979, mounds of skulls, documents, and photographs of the prisoners were
found at Tuol Sleng. Steadily since then, other records have been added to the collection,
making Tuol Sleng a major archival site for the Cambodian genocide and a testament to the
four years of genocidal terror perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge. Now a permanent museum
about the genocide, it also serves as a place of pilgrimage that families of the victims visit
throughout the year and a major site of Cambodian genocide commemoration.
Tutsi. An ethnic group inhabiting the Great Lakes region of central Africa, particularly in
Burundi, Rwanda, and eastern Congo. The Tutsi are a minority group across the region, much
smaller in number than the numerically predominant Hutu. Despite this discrepancy, the
Tutsi have dominated the region politically, socially, and economically since their arrival in
the general vicinity sometime during the fifteenth century. The Tutsi were for a long time
considered a Hamitic people with a Semitic admixture, though this is now disputed in some
quarters; furthermore, it is not certain whether their origin was in Sudan or Ethiopia.
Upon establishing hegemony over the other peoples of the region, the Tutsi built an
order that placed them at the head of society in terms of wealth (based on cattle-raising),
an aristocracy, and, at its head, a king (mwaami). Over time, there was a considerable
amount of intermarriage between the Tutsi and Hutu. The language spoken by both peoples
is Kinyarwarda. While the relationship between Tutsi and their neighbors prior to the
1950s had been essentially one based on feudal hierarchy and dominance, Tutsi-Hutu
connections were for the most part peaceful. Beginning in 1959 (the year of the Hutu
Revolution), though, frequent Hutu persecutions of Tutsi took place in Rwanda and
resulted in a mass exodus of Tutsi from Rwanda out of fear for their lives, while the Tutsi
elite committed large-scale massacres and genocide (1972) of Hutu in Burundi. Estimates
consider that up to 80 percent (and perhaps higher) of all Tutsi living in Rwanda in April
1994 were killed in the genocide that followed through until July of that year. In Burundi,
the Tutsi regime held the Hutu in subjugation, leading to Hutu rebellions in 1972 and
1988. In 1993, a Burundian Hutu politician, Melchior Ndadaye (1953–1993), was
elected as Burundi’s first Hutu president, but his effort at solving the nation’s racial problems
led to antagonism from Burundi’s Tutsi-dominated armed forces. In October 1993
Burundi experienced an attempted coup d’état, and Ndadaye was assassinated. This
sparked another round of racially motivated mass killing between Tutsi and Hutu, just
months before the much bigger Rwandan genocide broke out in April 1994.
The relationship between the Tutsi and the Hutu is inextricably intertwined across the
Great Lakes region. Since 1994 there have been renewed efforts at reconciliation and the
establishment of a harmonious future.