Tutsi rule. The Tutsi aristocracy or elite was distinguished from Tutsi commoners, and wealthy Hutu were often indistinguishable from upper-class Tutsi. When the Belgian colonists conducted censuses, they wanted to identify the people throughout Rwanda-Burundi according to a simple classification scheme. They defined "Tutsi" as anyone owning more than ten cows (a sign of wealth) or with the physical feature of a longer nose, or longer neck, commonly associated with the Tutsi. The Belgians believed that some Tutsis had facial characteristics that were generally atypical of other Bantus. They sought to explain these purported divergent physical traits by postulating admixture with
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