Hutu and 14% of residents in Rwanda and Burundi, respectively. The Twa pygmies, the smallest of the two countries' principal populations, also share language and culture with the Hutu and Tutsi. However, they are distinguished by a considerably shorter stature. The Hutu are believed to have first emigrated to the Great Lake region from West Africa in the great Bantu expansion. Various theories have emerged to explain the purported physical differences between them and their fellow Bantu-speaking neighbors, the Tutsi. One such thesis, largely based on oral tradition, posits that the Tutsi experienced some admixture with or were partially descended from
Genocides in central Africa Ituri conflict and the mass murder of Pygmies known as "Effacer le tableau". In Uganda, 300 thousand people were murdered during the regime of Idi Amin and 500 thousand during the rule of his successor, Milton Obote. Amin's genocides targeted the Acholi and Lango peoples; these two groups went on to murder other groups (mainly the Baganda) under Obote's regime. In the early 1970s, over 150 thousand Hutu people were killed by Tutsi people in Burundi by order of General Michel Micombero. Twenty years later, one million Tutsi people were murdered by Hutu people during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In