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| 1996 |
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| During the course of the year, more than 1.3 million refugees were repatriated to Rwanda. | 1 |
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| 1997 |
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| The UN-sponsored war crimes tribunals, concerning the alleged Hutu genocide of Tutsis in 1994, began its operations from a base in neighboring Arusha, Tanzania. | 2 |
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| 1998, April 24 |
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| Twenty-two people convicted of genocide committed during the mid-1990s were publicly executed by firing squads in various Rwanda localities, though international human rights activists had discouraged the Rwanda government from doing so. | 3 |
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| Aug. 2 |
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| Rwanda joined forces with Uganda to assist rebel forces in an attempted overthrow of Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) president Laurent Kabila. Although both nations had supported his rise to power in 1997, they opposed Kabila within a year of his taking office. | 4 |
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| Sept. 4 |
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| Former prime minister Jean Kambanda was sentenced by a UN tribunal to life imprisonment for genocide. Kambanda became the first person in history to plead guilty and be officially convicted of genocide as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention (following World War II). Refugee problems and ethnic massacres continued in Rwanda and neighboring nations through 1999, despite a cease-fire in August of that year in the Congo. | 5 |
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