Flower in the Gun Barrel Tutsi was defined as a Tutsi if he owned more than ten cows. A Hutu owned less than ten cows and usually worked in the fields. Creating an ethnic class and empowering the Tutsi as "upper class" created hatred and jealousy between these newly imposed "tribes". In 1959, the Belgians left Rwanda and Hutus quickly took over the government. There was a series of battles between the Hutu and the Tutsi between 1959 and 1994, during which Tutsis would often take sanctuary in churches in order to survive. Knowing this, the Hutu government in 1994 forged partnerships with several Catholic
History of Burundi that provided for a president, non-ethnic government, and a parliament. Burundi's first Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye, of the Hutu-dominated Front for Democracy in Burundi (FRODEBU) Party, was elected in 1993. Ndadaye was assassinated three months later, in October 1993, by Tutsi army extremists. The country’s situation rapidly declined as Hutu peasants began to rise up and massacre Tutsi. In acts of brutal retribution, the Tutsi army proceeded to round up thousands of Hutu and kill them. The Rwandan Genocide in 1994, sparked by the killing of Ndadaye’s successor Cyprien Ntaryamira, further aggravated the conflict in Burundi by sparking additional massacres