#RwandaDecides2017: An opportunity to end 23 years of Dictatorship and tyranny in Rwanda

Freddy Usabuwera

 

For the last 23 years, Rwandans have been  living under the Rule of president Paul Kagame and his political party the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) that took power by military force in 1994, the year in which the Rwandan genocide happened.

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After they took the power, Kagame and his men kept on killing the population in big numbers and also anyone even foreigners that he thought would be an obstacle to his dictatorial regime. With these actions, Kagame created a climate of fear in the country which enabled him to easily control the population.

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By August 1995, just one year after the RPF took power, the coalition government led by Faustin Twagiramungu had already pushed to resignation by Kagame, and most of its Hutu members fled to foreign countries including Twagiramungu himself and some others. By the end of 1998, just 4 years after taking the country militarily, Kagame had already eliminated physically or jailed anyone in the country who would be the voice that could oppose his dictatorship, or denounce human rights abuse by his army or his government.  Journalists, priests, politicians, human rights activists… have been killed in numbers, disappeared or jailed; and some others have already fled the country for fear of death. He had also attacked militarily Rwandan refugee camps which in eastern Congo, where he killed hundred thousand of them. In march 2000, Kagame made his last move of becoming the president of Rwanda by pushing out the then president Pasteur Bizimungu. During Bizimungu’s administration (1994-2000), many believed that he was merely a figurehead, and Kagame held the real power.

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