Mass ethnic violence in Postcolonial Africa

Mass ethnic violence in Postcolonial Africa occurred in the Sudan, the Congo, Uganda, and Rwanda during the 20th Century. It has been estimated that ten million deaths resulted from these events.
Details
Several claims exist about the history of the wars. In the southern region of the Sudan, two million people who belonged to various Nilotic peoples including Dinka, Nuer and Shilluk were thought to have been killed during attacks which were mounted against them by Sudanese Arabs from the North.
Roughly five and a half million people were thought to have died in the Congo, most of them died during the Second Congo War but they also died in relatively smaller holocausts such as the Ituri conflict and the "Effacer le tableau" or the genocide against the Pygmies.
In Uganda, 300 thousand people were killed by the regime of Idi Amin and 500 thousand people were killed during the rule of his successor, Milton Obote. Amin's genocides targeted the Acholi and Lango peoples;these two groups went on to kill other groups (mainly the Baganda) during Obote's rule.
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 killed by Hutu people during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
In the Rwandan genocide, the people who had been the victims of genocide in Burundi ( retaliated against the Tutsi, and later, the Tutsi retaliated against the Hutu by perpetrating another genocide against them during the First Congo War.
In all of these wars, the victims were thought to have been killed by people who belonged to different ethnic groups. Ten million deaths occurred in countries which were in close proximity to each other.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu