Category Archives: Rwanda

We once again celebrate the Third Anniversary of the founding of our party, the Rwanda Peoples Party (RPP). This has been a tumultuous three years during which time we have consolidated our political role as a vanguard for democratic change and transformation in our country. We have paid particular attention to four guiding principles of our party which are: Carry out the building and consolidation of      our party organs inside Rwanda and abroad. This has included safe      recruitment of party members in both the urban centres and rural areas and      providing them with the necessary political education to enable them more      effectively carry out party tasks as … Continue reading →

A group of Rwandan academics have come out in support of Rwandan President Paul Kagam,e who has been accused of supporting M23 rebels who are fighting the government of President Joseph Kabila in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Here is the full extract of their arguments: It is regrettable that in the past decade, the so-called international community appears to have made a sport of blaming Rwanda, a tiny country of less than twelve million people, for every unrest experienced in Africa’s largest country – in terms of land mass – the Democratic Republic of Congo, a nation of over 70 million inhabitants. Historically, parts of the kingdom of Rwanda … Continue reading →

Mounting evidence that Rwanda is supplying arms and recruits to a rebellion led by an indicted war criminal in the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C.) is the latest indication that, in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, President Paul Kagame’s government will ensure its own security and interests even to the detriment of its neighbors and in defiance of international law. Rwanda’s relations with Congo are defined by the genocide, in which 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered by Hutu death squads. In the face of international inaction, Kagame, then-leader of a Tutsi-dominated rebel army, beat back the genocidaires, many of whom fled to Congo with millions of … Continue reading →

By John Karuranga Today is not a day for pointing fingers and trading accusations as to who is supporting who or who is fighting who in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).  But it should be a day for consoling and showing our sympathy for the thousands of Congolese citizens who have been displaced and made homeless in their own country, and many forced to seek refuge in neighbouring countries. The FDLR in particular has been a source of instability in the DRC and their links with the Interahamwe   has never been broken. Murders and gross human rights abuses have been going on in the DRC for many years but … Continue reading →

By Gerald Kaplan Two seemingly unrelated Rwandan stories made both history and the headlines this week. One was the dramatic finding by a French inquiry that members of the pre-genocide Hutu government and military must have shot down the plane carrying their President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994, launching their planned genocide only hours later. (The President of Burundi was also a passenger on the ill-fated plane, as were other senior Rwandan officials.) The second was the decision of the Canadian government to deport to Rwanda at long last a man named Leon Mugesera, accused of inciting his fellow Hutu to massacre Tutsi about one-and-half years before the plane … Continue reading →