Rwanda: A vulcano to erupt any moment

“Let’s continue with rebuilding Rwanda together”, states president Kagame during the Umaganda, a national public service every last Saturday of the month. All Rwandans are obliged to help build and repair roads, houses and schools. Even the president himself is participating.

In front of dozens of cameras he throws cement into the groundwork of a new building, which has to become a community center for genocide survivors. Later, when he gives a speech from a small stage, built the same day, a crowd of people obviously convened for the occasion singing just too exuberantly how the Umuganda develops and unites their country.

Critics argue, however, that as long as history can’t be discussed openly and honestly, Rwandans will never fully recover from trauma of the genocide, they won’t be able to fully reconcile with each other and the hilly country will remain a volcano to erupt any moment.

Continue Reading..

Hutu’s, who lost loved ones, have to remain silent

Infused with this one-sided picture the twentieth commemoration of the genocide has Tutsi’s giving testimonies on radio and television while Hutu’s, who also have lost loved ones, have to remain silent for a hundred days. “If I would plea for a memorial for all perished Hutus, I would be arrested immediately”, Francis smiles bitterly. The journalist refers to the Rwandese politician Victoire Ingabire, who lived in the Netherlands for 16 years and returned to Rwanda in 2010 to participate in the presidential elections.

Upon her return, at the genocide memorial in Kigali, Ingabire called for an investigation into ‘crimes against humanity’ allegedly committed by Tutsi soldiers against Hutu civilians in 1994. In Rwanda, such a remark stands equal to ‘divisionism’ and ‘denying the genocide’, although foreign researchers several years after the genocide already documented how tens of thousands of Hutu’s indeed had been murdered during and right after the hundred days when the massacres took place. This statement, plus alleged links with the in Eastern Congo active Hutu rebel movement RDR, led to a prison sentence of 15 years for Ingabire.

Continue Reading..

The genocide

In October 1990 the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), consisting of mostly Tutsi Rwandan refugees who grew up in Uganda, invaded Rwanda. A year later, the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana opened peace talks about a transitional government, including the RPF and in 1993 ceasefire was officially reached through the so-called Arusha Peace Agreement. Habyarimana adopted several Tutsis into his government and started introducing a multiparty system.

On 6 April 1994, Habyarimana’s private plane was shot down, also carrying the President of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira . The death of Habyarimana ignited a murderous spree by extremists from the majority Hutus against Tutsis and those Hutus who had opposed the government in the past or who had supported the peace accords. Within 100 days, somewhere between 800,000 and 1 million Rwandans were massacred. However, several reports, including the famous ‘Gersony report’, identified a pattern of massacres by the RPF rebels of Hutu’s in the months right after the genocide, killing between 25,000 and 45,000 people, and killing tens of thousands as well in 1995, 1996 and 1997 in eastern Congo.

It remains unclear who was behind the assassination of Habyarimana. At the time, the Hutu Power media claimed the plane had been shot down on orders from RPF leader Paul Kagame, who would have sacrificed his people for the sake of power. Others, including the RPF, accused militant Hutus from within Habyarimana’s party of orchestrating the crash in order to provoke anti-Tutsi outrage while simultaneously seizing power. Since the aircraft had a French crew, a French investigation had been conducted; in 2006 it concluded that Kagame was responsible for the killing and demanded that he be prosecuted. The response from Kagame was that the French were only trying to cover up their own part in the genocide that followed. A more recent French probe, with a team of French investigators and two French judges concluded, in a January 2012 report, that the missiles could not have come from a military base occupied by Kagame supporters, and appears to exonerate Kagame’s role in the assassination.

Continue Reading..

Timeline History of Rwanda From 1800 to 1962

From the first contact with Europeans in Rwanda to Rwanda's Independence:

Twa women with traditional pottery.

• 1860: John Speke in his writings mentions the existence of Rwanda that he could see the shore Tanzanian Kagera.
• 1863: In his book "Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile", the same John Speke, after a brief stint in Burundi makes his theory about Batutsi: this would be "Hamitic-Semite" from Ethiopia. (This theory has a hard life)
• 1876: Henry Morton Stanley bypasses Rwanda from the north, but is not able to enter. It describes the Rwandans as a people of warriors resisting attempts by Arab and Swahili slave.
• 1884/1885: At the Berlin conference, the region including Tanganyika, Rwanda and Burundi was awarded to Germany.

• 1892: Dr Oscar Baumann, Ph.D. and Austrian geographer, is the first European to enter Rwanda. He stayed there from September 11 to 15.
• 1894: A German officer, Count Von Götzen, crosses the east-west Rwanda at the head of a column of 620 soldiers and askaris. He meets the Mwami Kigeri IV Rwabugiri May 29 to Kageyo (current prefecture of Gisenyi).
• 1895: IV Kigeri Rwabugiri died in November. He is succeeded by his son who took the name Rutarindwa dynastic Mibambwe Rutarindwa IV.
• 1896: Coup of Rucunshu: Musinga Mwami's half-brother and the Queen Mother Kanjogera Rutarindwa are murdered and other nobles. Musinga is named Yuhi V Musinga. It also decides to "trust" the external relations of the kingdom to the German Empire which recognizes the de facto protectorate.
• 1900: The White Fathers of Cardinal Lavigerie settle in Rwanda under the leadership of Bishop Hirth. On 4 February, the Mission of Save is created.
• 1907: The Germans settled in Rwanda. They open a military command in Kigali they have chosen as the "capital".
• 1911: Ratification in Brussels on July 27 of the Convention signed between Germany and Belgium May 14, 1910, fixing the borders "final" between the Belgian Congo and Rwanda.
• 1912: The Germans Yuhi V Musinga help to conquer the north.
• 1916: War of 1914-1918: the Allies fighting Germany in East Africa. Belgians drove the Germans out of Rwanda and occupied the country.

Umwami 

• 1922: Appointed first Bishop of Rwanda in the person of Bishop class.
• 1924: Belgium formally accepts the mandate of the Trusteeship "Ruanda-Urundi" entrusted by the League of Nations (LN) following the participation of Belgium to victory against Germany.
• 1926: The mandate of the League in Belgium provides a "mission of civilization based on a system of indirect rule."
• 1931: November 12, Belgium dismisses Yuhi V Musinga "selfishness and lust" among others. On 14 November, the fallen leaves mwami Nyanza. November 16, his son Charles was inducted Rudahigwa Mwami of Rwanda under the dynastic name Mutara III Rudahigwa, name chosen by Bishop class.
• 1933: Marriage of Mutara III Rudahigwa October 15 with Nyiromakomali.
• 1935: Mutara III Rudahigwa offers the Catholic church land situated in Nyanza property from his father. This land will become "the Church and the mission of Nyanza.
• 1941/1945: While World War II raging in Europe, Rwanda suffered a terrible famine caused by drought from 1941 to 1945 and cost 300,000 lives in Rwanda (which account at that time 2,000,000 inhabitants). Following the famine, new cultures are emerging in Rwanda: sweet potato, bean, pea and potatoes.
• 1942: Second marriage Mutara III Rudahigwa January 13 Gicanda with Rosalie.
• Highlights of the history of Rwanda to the independence of Rwanda
• 1944: Musinga, exiled by Belgium in Moba (Belgian Congo), dies January 13.
• 1945: Disappearance of Bishop Class in Bujumbura on January 31 following a compound fracture of the femoral neck and pelvis.
• 1946: Rwanda is enshrined in the Mwami "Christ the King" at a ceremony Oct. 27 in Nyanza.
• The Rwanda spends defunct League of Nations mandate to the tutelage of the United Nations (UN).
• 1949: Travel triumphant Mutara III Rudahigwa in Belgium at the end of the year.
• 1954: Mutara III Rudahigwa decreed the abolition of feudalism on April 1.
• 1955: The Belgian King, Baudouin first visit to Rwanda.
• 1956: Archbishop Perraudin was appointed bishop of Rwanda.
• 1957: On March 24, publication of the "Hutu Manifesto" in which the Catholic Church and the Belgian rule is not implicated.
• 1959: The letter published in Lent February 11 by Bishop Perraudin and read in many churches attacked violently policy Mwami.
• July 25 Mutara III Rudahigwa dies under mysterious circumstances Bujumbura: therapeutic accident or murder?

King mutara with the white missionaries

• July 28, Mwami deceased's funeral held in Nyanza. The same day, the leading monarchist F. Rukeba, A. Kayumba, M. and M. Rwagasana Kayihura gaining speed the Belgian authorities and designate one of the halves of Rudahigwa brothers, Jean-Baptiste Ndahindurwa, as his successor under the dynastic name of Kigeri V Ndahindurwa.
• Takes place in November "Toussaint Rwandan" tens of thousands of Tutsi were driven from their hills, and had to go into exiled, they moved to Zaire, Burundi and Uganda. This is the beginning of the "social revolution" of the Hutu.
• 1960: Municipal elections organized by the colonial authorities from 26 June to 30 July. They give a landslide victory in PARMEHUTU party Kayibanda.
• 1961: In elections on Sept. 25 in Rwanda, PARMEHUTU totals 78% of the vote and 17% UNAR.
• 1962: On July 1, the independence of Rwanda is given by Belgium. The republic is proclaimed and Kayibanda became the first President of the Republic of Rwanda

Continue Reading..