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,

Rwanda experienced Africa's worst genocide in modern times, and the country's recovery was marred by its intervention in the conflict in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. The country has been beset by ethnic tension associated with the traditionally unequal relationship between the dominant Tutsi minority and the majority Hutus. Although after 1959 the ethnic relationship was reversed, when civil war prompted around 200,000 Tutsis to flee to Burundi, lingering resentment led to periodic massacres of Tutsis. The most notorious of these began in April 1994. The shooting down of the plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana and his Burundian counterpart near Kigali triggered what appeared to be a coordinated attempt by some Hutu leaders to eliminate the Tutsi population. Traditional dancers and musicians At a Glance POLITICS : Rwanda is trying to shake off its image associated with the 1994 state-sponsored genocide; the government argues the country is now stable...