LaNUBlog™

RPF leader and President, Paul Kagame,has been hailed for overseeing rapid economic growth in the tiny country. He has also tried to turn Rwanda into a technological hub and is very active on Twitter. But his critics say he does not tolerate dissent and several opponents have met unexplained deaths.

There are numerous memorials around Rwanda to those killed in the genocide In just 100 days in 1994, some 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda by ethnic Hutu extremists. They were targeting members of the minority Tutsi community, as well as their political opponents, irrespective of their ethnic origin. Why did the Hutu militias want to kill the Tutsis? About 85% of Rwandans are Hutus but the Tutsi minority has long dominated the country. In 1959,

A UN-backed special court in The Hague is due to rule on an appeal by former Liberian President Charles Taylor. Last May, the court sentenced him to 50 years in prison for aiding and abetting rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone during the 1991-2002 civil war. He became the first former head of state convicted by an international war crimes court since World War II. His lawyers want him acquitted arguing that legal and factual errors were made during the trial. However, the prosecution has sought to increase his sentence to 80 years. The BBC's Chris Morris in The Hague says the court's decision will be closely watched because the guilty verdict was hailed as a landmark, proving that even people at the highest level of power can be held to account. Charles Taylor, 65, was found guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes in Sierra Leone, including terrorism, rape, murder and the use of child soldiers. He was also found guilty of planning some of the attacks carried out by reb...