Hutu

The Hutu are the largest population group of Rwanda and Burundi, sharing the Kinyarwanda and Kirundi languages and much of their culture with the Tutsi and Twa. In the precolonial kingdoms the distinction was partly social, separating mostly farming Hutu from a Tutsi elite associated with cattle, and Belgian colonial rule hardened it into a fixed category recorded on identity cards. The divide shaped the Hutu revolution of 1959–1961, the mass killings in Burundi and the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.