Rwanda's strife has wider consequences

Q: What is the history of Rwanda's genocide?

A: Hutus in the densely populated, desperately poor country overthrew a Tutsi monarchy three years before independence from Belgium in 1962 and took power. Ethnic tensions simmered and rebels, most of them ethnic Tutsis, invaded from their base in neighboring Uganda in 1990.

President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, had been negotiating peace with the rebels when his plane was shot down on April 6, 1994. Rwanda recognizes the next day as the start of the genocide unleashed by Hutu extremists on Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.

The killings spread across the country and lasted 100 days, until a Tutsi, Paul Kagame, led his rebel army to victory and became president. Tutsis now dominate the nation's government and army.

Q: How have Rwandans and the international community sought justice for those held responsible for the genocide?

A: The Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was set up by the U.N. in 1994 to try those responsible for the killings and had its first conviction in 1997.

The judicial system in Rwanda also is trying suspects. And in 2004, after a two-year test phase, Rwanda turned to community courts in a bid to speed up trials for the thousands of people accused of taking part in the government-orchestrated massacre. Under the community-court system, local people are elected and trained to serve on nine-judge panels. The maximum sentence is life in prison.

Q: What have been some of the wider consequences?

A: The flight of Rwanda's Hutu fighters over the border and into the Congolese forest has fed instability in Congo.

Rwanda first invaded Congo in 1996, attacking refugee camps that served as havens for ethnic Hutu officials and militias who orchestrated the genocide.

Congo's government ordered Rwandan troops to leave in 1998, but Rwanda invaded again days later, propping up a new Congolese rebel group at the start of Congo's 1998-2002 war, a conflict that drew in a half-dozen African nations.

A U.N. Security Council panel said earlier this month that Rwanda and Congo are fighting a proxy war, with Rwanda helping ethnic Tutsi rebels fight the Congolese government and Congo collaborating with ethnic Hutu rebels and other forces against Rwanda.