Rwandan Patriotic Front - Background

Background

The RPF was created in 1987 by the Tutsi refugee diaspora in Uganda. The first Tutsi refugees fled to Uganda to escape ethnic purges in the beginning of 1959. These resulted from the "social revolution" of 1959, led by Grégoire Kayibanda, that overthrew the Tutsi-led monarchy, and instability that continued through independence from Belgium in 1962. While 50,000 to 70,000 Tutsi arrived in the initial refugee influx, periodic ethnic violence resulted in a refugee population of about 200,000 by 1990, though only about 82,000 of these had registered as refugees with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Uganda had perhaps the harshest refugee laws in the region. Refugees were confined to designated refugee camps and refugee status was transferred between generations: the children born in Uganda from refugee parents were themselves considered refugees. However, as the refugee numbers grew the population overflowed the boundaries of the camps set up during the initial refugee crisis. The one benefit of refugee status was that it gave children access to United Nations aid, in particular UNHCR scholarships, which allowed most young people to escape the camps and find work in urban areas in Uganda and abroad. This, along with the resulting success of many Tutsi, bred resentment among Ugandan nationals, which often manifested as work-place discrimination.

During the political crisis of the late 1960s, the administration of Milton Obote passed a bill called the Control of Alien Refugees Act, which declared Rwandese to be a special class subject to arbitrary detention. In 1969, Obote ordered all "unskilled foreigners" to be removed from government jobs, affecting thousands of Banyarwanda. ("Banyarwanda" are all persons who speak the Kinyarwanda language, which includes the indigenous Banyarwanda who lived in southern border regions, the descendants of Hutus who had come as migrant laborers in the mid-1920s, and the more recent Tutsi refugees.) Obote also ordered a census of all ethnic Banyarwanda, with the intention of ensuring that they would have no influence over the political process. The census was interrupted by the 1971 coup of Idi Amin, which was greeted with relief by many Banyarwanda. While some Banyarwanda joined the security forces, others joined the anti-Amin forces gathering in Tanzania. Prominent among these was a teenage Fred Rwigyema, who was recruited by Yoweri Museveni into his Front for National Salvation.