Rwandan Revolution posed by the refugees until the 1990s, when a civil war initiated by the Tutsi-refugee "Front Patriotique Rwandais" (FPR) forced the Hutu government into negotiations. This led to a rise in Hutu extremism and the 1994 genocide, in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsi were killed before the FPR took control. The earliest inhabitants of what is now Rwanda were the Twa, a group of aboriginal pygmy hunter-gatherers who settled the area between 8000 and 3000 BC and remain in the country today. Between 700 BC and 1500 AD, a number of Bantu groups migrated into Rwanda and began clearing
Tutsi after mid-1600. Beginning in about 1880, Roman Catholic missionaries arrived in the Great Lakes region. Later, when German forces occupied the area during World War I, the conflict and efforts for Catholic conversion became more pronounced. As the Tutsi resisted conversion, missionaries found success only among the Hutu. In an effort to reward conversion, the colonial government confiscated traditionally Tutsi land and reassigned it to Hutu tribes. In Burundi, meanwhile, Tutsi domination was even more entrenched. A ruling faction, the Ganwa, soon emerged from amongst the Tutsi and assumed effective control of the country's administration. The area was ruled as