Rape during the Rwandan genocide Appeal to the Conscience of the Hutu" conveyed "contempt and hatred for the Tutsi ethnic group, and for Tutsi women in particular as enemy agents, and called on readers to take all necessary measures to stop the enemy, defined as the Tutsi population". Rape during the Rwandan genocide Violence during the Rwandan genocide of 1994 took a gender-specific form when, over the course of 100 days, up to half a million women and children were raped, sexually mutilated, or murdered. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) handed down the first conviction for the use of rape as a weapon
Hutu of Rwandan national unity, but has been criticized as an attempt at historical revisionism. Still others suggest that the two groups are related but not identical, and that differences between them were exacerbated by Europeans, or by a gradual, natural split, as those who owned cattle became known as Tutsi and those who did not became Hutu. Mahmood Mamdani states that the Belgian colonial power designated people as Tutsi or Hutu on the basis of cattle ownership, physical measurements and church records. There is an ongoing debate as to whether the Hutu and Tutsi are really separate groups or not;