Relationship To MRND
In the 1980s and '90s, Bizimungu worked within the Hutu MRND government which ruled Rwanda until 1994. Prior to 1990, Bizimungu had close ties to Hutu president Juvénal Habyarimana. During this period, he held several positions, including director general of Electrogaz, the national electricity company.
In 1990 he joined the primarily Tutsi Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) when his brother, a colonel in the Rwandan Armed Forces, was assassinated, possibly on the orders of the government. At the time, dissatisfied with the Hutu government of Habyarimana, the RPF was just beginning its invasion of Rwanda from Uganda. Bizimungu lived in exile in Belgium, serving as the party's information officer. In 1993, he helped negotiate the 1993 Arusha Accords, ending the three-year Rwandan Civil War.
After Habyarimana's death in a plane crash on 6 April 1994, decades of complex ethnic, social and political hatreds were ignited and led to the Rwandan Genocide.
Read more about this topic: Pasteur Bizimungu
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