Hutu en Tutsi: Eeuwen Strijd
Peter Verlinden
177 pages
published in 1995
Published in 1995 after the Rwandan genocide had just ended, Hutu en Tutsi: Eeuwen Strijd tries to explain the context and history in which it took place. The writer, Peter Verlinden is a Belgian journalist who had been covering events in both Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi for several years before. This is not a book about the genocide itself, which is only briefly touched upon in the last few chapters, but an explainer of what made it possible. With only 177 pages to cover the whole history of Rwanda it’s of necessity more of a sketch than a complete picture. As the title Hutu en Tutsi: Eeuwen Strijd (Hutu and Tutsi: Centuries of Conflict) indicates Verlinden argues that the genocide was only the latest in a long line of conflicts between the two ethnic groups and should be seen as such, not as some inexplicable outburst of violence. The genocide, together with what was happening at the same time in former Yugoslavia was what broke the short lived optimism brought on by the end of the Cold War. The idea that now the civilised world (sic) would be able to intervene in conflicts and resolve them was proven wrong by the inability or unwillingness of the UN to stop the genocide as it was happening.