Rwandan president honours those killed in genocide 25 years ago
KIGALI (Reuters) - Rwandan President Paul Kagame began a week of solemn ceremonies on Sunday to commemorate the lives of 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus murdered during the Rwandan genocide, a three-month-killing spree that began 25 years ago.
NEIGHBOUR TURNED ON NEIGHBOUR
The attack on Habyarimana mobilised Hutu government soldiers and allied extremist militia, who orchestrated the genocide to exterminate the Tutsi minority. In villages across the densely populated country, neighbour turned on neighbour as men, women and children were hacked to death, burned alive, clubbed and shot. As many as 10,000 people were killed daily. Seventy percent of the minority Tutsi population was wiped out, and over 10 percent of the total Rwandan The fighting ended in July 1994 when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Tutsi-led rebel movement led by Kagame, swept in from Uganda and seized control of the country. Under Kagame, official policy has been to strongly discourage any talk of ethnicity. The opposition says the tight control of the media and political sphere is also used to stifle dissent. “The ruling party has decided to adopt dictatorship from early days after the genocide as they said they were protecting the national sovereignty, but now I feel that should end,” opposition figure Victoire Ingabire told Reuters. “The government should let the opposition politicians work freely because denying them their rights will create problems. Twenty-five years is enough, the government should let people be free to express their opinions.” Kagame, who won nearly 99 percent of the vote in 2017 polls on a 96 percent turnout, rebuffs such criticism, pointing to Rwanda’s strong economic growth and relative peace since the genocide. In Sunday’s speech, he also issued a challenge to anyone who might threaten the country. “What happened here will never happen again. For those (who) ... want to mess with us ... we will mess up with them big time,” he said.Rwandan Kagame wins third presidential term by a landslide
Earlier, incumbent leader Paul Kagame has swept to a landslide victory in Rwanda’s presidential election, results showed early on Saturday, securing a third term in office and extending his 17 years in power.
Kagame has won international plaudits for presiding over a peaceful and rapid economic recovery in the Central African nation since the 1994 genocide, when an estimated 800,000 people Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.