Kagame accuses international inaction on the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda

74

KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) — Rwandan President Paul Kagame blamed the international community’s inaction for allowing the 1994 genocide to happen, as Rwandans looked back on 30 years of the killing of some 800,000 people by extremists backed by government.

Rwanda has shown strong recovery and economic growth over the years, but scars remain and questions remain over whether genuine reconciliation has been achieved during the long rule of Kagame, whose rebel movement stopped the genocide and seized power. Many have praised him for bringing relative stability, but others have vilified him for his intolerance toward dissent.

Kagame led somber commemorations in the capital, Kigali. Among the foreigners present was a delegation led by Bill Clinton, who was president of the United States during the genocide, and Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

The killings began when a plane carrying then-president Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down over Kigali. Tutsis were blamed for the plane crash and the death of the president, making them targets of massacres led by Hutu extremists that lasted more than 100 days. Some moderate Hutus who tried to protect the Tutsi, who were a minority, were also killed.

Rwandan authorities blame the international community for ignoring warnings about the killings, and some Western leaders have expressed regret.

After leaving office, Clinton classified the Rwandan genocide as a failure of his government. French President Emmanuel Macron, in a video recorded before Sunday’s ceremonies, acknowledged that France and its allies could have prevented the genocide, but lacked the will to do so. Three years ago, Macron acknowledged the “overwhelming responsibility” of France—Rwanda’s closest European ally in 1994—for failing to prevent the African country from heading toward massacre.

“It was the international community that failed us all, whether out of contempt or cowardice,” Kagame said in the speech he gave after lighting a flame of remembrance and placing a wreath at a monument where the remains of 250,000 victims of the genocide in Kigali.

“We will never forget the horrors of those 100 days, the pain and loss suffered by the people of Rwanda, or the shared humanity that connects us all, which hate can never overcome,” said US President Joe Biden in a statement.

Rwanda’s ethnic composition remains largely unchanged since 1994, with a Hutu majority. The Tutsis represent 14% and the Twa only 1% of Rwanda’s 14 million inhabitants. Kagame’s Tutsi-dominated government has banned any form of ethnic organisation, as part of attempts to create a uniform Rwandan identity.