Rwandan President Paul Kagame led the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of one of humanity's worst ethnic massacres, in which more than a million people died. The conditions that led to the genocide will not exist again in his country, which has made great strides in the last 30 years, was a central part of the message of his speech.
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With the aim of avoiding a repetition of history, Rwandan politics “is not organized on the basis of ethnicity or religion and will never be again,” clarified in an emotional speech this Sunday, April 7, the president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame.
The president defined any “ambiguity” about who the victims of the genocide were as “a form of denialism, which constitutes a crime.”
The systematic massacre of Tutsis and Hutus lasted for one hundred days, carried out by Hutu extremists led by the Rwandan army and a militia known as Interahamwe, starting April 7, 1994. “These conditions for an ethnic massacre can occur anywhere if they are not controlled,” the president stated.
“Genocide is populism in its purest form, because the causes are political, the remedies must also be political,” he said.
He thanked several countries such as the DRC itself, Tanzania, Kenya and Burundi for having welcomed Rwandan refugees and, specifically, South Africa for having financed the sending of Cuban doctors to the country to rebuild the health system, in addition to offering university education to its citizens. youths.
He also mentioned “the tangible support we have received from our partners outside the continent,” citing the United States, Europe and international organizations.
In a country with an average age of 19 years, According to the World Bank, the president stressed that “only a new generation of young people has the ability to renew and redeem a nation after a genocide.”
“Our people will never again be left for dead,” he emphasized.
Kagame, who has been president since 2000 but has been in effective control since his rebel force, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, entered Kigali in 1994 to end the genocide, said:
Our country's tremendous progress is visible and is the result of the decisions we make together to resurrect our nation
Presiding over peace and economic growth since the end of the genocide has been the job for which Kagame has been admired.
However, at the same time, human rights groups consider that there is repression of the political opposition and the muzzling of independent media. He and his government deny it.
Regarding the actions of the UN and the French troops deployed in Rwanda, under his mandate after the genocide, in his speech he was critical by highlighting the “contrast” between the different value assigned to the lives of foreigners and Rwandans in response to the massacre.
Instability is still part of life in Rwanda.
The West has accused Rwanda of supporting the Tutsi rebels of the M23, in the eastern neighbor of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rwanda denies this and accuses Congo of supporting the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), founded in 2000 by Hutus exiled in that country after the genocide.
“The remains of those forces (perpetrators of the massacre) are still in eastern Congo today,” said Kagame, who assured that their objectives had not changed.
As a result of the collaboration between Congolese soldiers and the FDLR, demonstrated by the UN, hundreds of thousands of Congolese Tutsis have had to seek refuge in Rwanda without there being “an action program for their safe return,” lamented the leader.
With EFE and Reuters
