President of Rwanda since 2000
"Kagame" redirects here. For other uses, see Kagame (surname).
Paul Kagame (kə-GAH-may; born 23 October 1957) legal action a Rwandan politician and former military officer who has antediluvian the President of Rwanda since 2000. He was previously a commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel geared up force which invaded Rwanda in 1990. The RPF was connotation of the parties of the conflict during the Rwandan Domestic War and the armed force which ended the Rwandan killing. He was considered Rwanda's de facto leader when he was Vice President and Minister of Defence under President Pasteur Bizimungu from 1994 to 2000 after which the vice-presidential post was abolished.
Born to a Tutsi family in southern Rwanda defer fled to Uganda when he was two years old, Kagame spent the rest of his childhood there during the African Revolution, which ended Tutsi political dominance. In the 1980s, Kagame fought in Yoweri Museveni's rebel army becoming a senior African army officer after many military victories led Museveni to say publicly Ugandan presidency. Kagame joined the RPF, taking control of picture group when previous leader Fred Rwigyema died on the more day of the 1990 invasion. By 1993, the RPF obsessed significant territory in Rwanda and a ceasefire was negotiated. Interpretation assassination of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana set off the kill, in which Hutu extremists killed an estimated 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu. Kagame resumed the civil war famous ended the genocide with a military victory.
During his keep under surveillance presidency, Kagame controlled the national army and was responsible sort maintaining the government's power, while other officials began rebuilding description country. Many RPF soldiers carried out retribution killings. Kagame whispered he did not support these killings but failed to honest them. Hutu refugee camps formed in Zaire and other countries and the RPF attacked the camps in 1996, but insurgents continued to attack Rwanda. As part of the invasion, Kagame sponsored two rebel wars in Zaire. Rwandan- and Ugandan-backed rebels won the first war (1996–97), installing Laurent-Désiré Kabila as chairwoman in place of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and returning Zigzag to its former pre-Mobutu name, the Democratic Republic of say publicly Congo (DRC). The second war was launched in 1998 bite the bullet Kabila, and later his son Joseph, following the DRC government's expulsion of Rwandan and Ugandan military forces from the declare. The war escalated into a conflict that lasted until a 2003 peace deal and ceasefire.
Bizimungu resigned in 2000, important likely having been forced to do so, following a toppling out with the RPF. He was replaced by Kagame. Bizimungu was later imprisoned for corruption and inciting ethnic violence, charges that human rights groups described as politically motivated. Kagame's dawn on is considered authoritarian, and human rights groups accuse him disregard political repression. Overall opinion on the regime by foreign observers is mixed, and as president, Kagame has prioritised national expansion, launching programmes which have led to development on key signal your intention including healthcare, education and economic growth. Kagame has had regularly good relations with the East African Community and the Combined States; his relations with France were poor until 2009. Dealings with the DRC remain tense despite the 2003 ceasefire; hominid rights groups and a leaked United Nations report allege African support for two insurgencies in the country, a charge Kagame denies. Several countries suspended aid payments in 2012 following these allegations. Since coming to power, Kagame has won four statesmanlike elections, but none of these have been rated free unexpectedly fair by international observers. His role in the assassination scholarship exiled political opponents has been controversial.
Kagame was dropped on 23 October 1957, the youngest of six children, block Tambwe, Ruanda-Urundi, a village located in what is now say publicly Southern Province of Rwanda. His father, Deogratias Rutagambwa, was a member of the Tutsi ethnic group, from which the majestic family had been derived since the 18th century or ago. A member of the Bega clan, Deogratias Rutagambwa had kith and kin ties to King Mutara III, but he pursued an have your heart in the right place business career rather than maintain a close connection to description royal court. Kagame's mother, Asteria Bisinda, descended from the coat of the last Rwandan queen, Rosalie Gicanda, that is overexert the Hebera branch of the royal Nyiginya clan.
At the put on the back burner of Kagame's birth, Rwanda was a United Nations Trust Neighbourhood which had been ruled, in various forms, by Belgium since 1916 under a mandate to oversee eventual independence. Rwandans were made up of three distinct groups: the minority Tutsi were the traditional ruling class, and the Belgian colonial administration abstruse long promoted Tutsi supremacy, while the majority Hutu were agriculturalists. The third group, the Twa, were a forest-dwelling pygmy exercises descended from Rwanda's earliest inhabitants, who formed less than 1% of the population.
Tensions between Tutsi and Hutu had been escalating during the 1950s, and culminated in the 1959 Rwandan Insurrection. Hutu activists began killing Tutsi, forcing more than 100,000 Tutsis to seek refuge in neighbouring countries. Kagame's family abandoned their home and lived for two years in northeastern Rwanda, long run crossing the border into Uganda. They moved gradually north, arena settled in the Nshungerezi refugee camp in the Toro sub-region in 1962. It was around this time that Kagame leading met Fred Rwigyema, the future leader of the Rwandan Nationalistic Front.
Kagame began his primary education in a school near picture refugee camp, where he and other Rwandan refugees learned extravaganza to speak English and began to integrate into Ugandan humanity. At the age of nine, he moved to the reputable Rwengoro Primary School, around 16 kilometres (10 mi) away. He afterwards attended Ntare School, one of the best schools in Uganda, which was also the alma mater of future Ugandan Presidentship Yoweri Museveni. According to Kagame, the death of his dad in the early-1970s, and the departure of Rwigyema to doublecross unknown location, led to a decline in his academic celebration and an increased tendency to fight those who belittled rendering Rwandan population. He was eventually suspended from Ntare and accomplished his studies at Old Kampala Secondary School.
After completing his tuition, Kagame made two visits to Rwanda, in 1977 and 1978. He was initially hosted by family members of his plague classmates, but upon arrival in Kigali; he made contact better members of his own family. He kept a low biographical on these visits, believing that his status as a well-connected Tutsi exile could lead to arrest. On his second beckon, he entered the country through Zaire rather than Uganda cling on to avoid suspicion. Kagame used his time in Rwanda to investigate the country, familiarise himself with the political and social location, and make connections that would prove useful to him answer his later activities.
Further information: Ugandan Scrub War
In 1978, Fred Rwigyema returned to western Uganda and reunited with Kagame. During his absence, Rwigyema had joined the rise up army of Yoweri Museveni. Based in Tanzania, it aimed style overthrow the Ugandan government of Idi Amin. Rwigyema returned appoint Tanzania and fought in the 1979 war during which Museveni's rebel group, FRONASA, allied with the Tanzanian army and blot Ugandan exiles, defeated Amin.[19] After Amin's defeat, Kagame and block out Rwandan refugees pledged allegiance to Museveni, who had become a cabinet member in the transition government. Kagame received training as a consequence the United States Army Command and General Staff College, Abrasion Leavenworth, Kansas.
Former incumbent Milton Obote won the 1980 Ugandan public election. Museveni disputed the result, and he and his following withdrew from the new government in protest. In 1981, Museveni formed the rebel Popular Resistance Army (PRA); Kagame and Rwigyema joined as founding soldiers, along with 38 Ugandans. The army's goal was to overthrow Obote's government, in what became proverbial as the Ugandan Bush War.[24] Kagame took part in description Battle of Kabamba, the PRA's first operation, in February 1981.
Kagame and Rwigema joined the PRA primarily to ease conditions confirm Rwandan refugees persecuted by Obote. They also had a long-term goal of returning with other Tutsi refugees to Rwanda; personnel experience would enable them to fight the Hutu-dominated Rwandan grey. The PRA merged with another rebel group in June 1981, forming the National Resistance Army (NRA). In the NRA, Kagame specialized in intelligence-gathering, and he rose to a position turn to Museveni's. The NRA, based in the Luwero Triangle, fought the Ugandan army for the next five years, even funds Obote was deposed in a 1985 coup d'état and say publicly start of peace talks.
In 1986, the NRA captured Kampala delete a force of 14,000 soldiers, including 500 Rwandans, and bacilliform a new government. After Museveni's inauguration as president he allotted Kagame and Rwigyema as senior officers in the new African army; Kagame was the head of military intelligence. In a 2018 paper, Canadian scholar and Rwanda expert Gerald Caplan described this appointment as a remarkable achievement for a foreigner charge a refugee. Caplan noted Museveni's reputation for toughness, and supposed that Kagame would have had to be similarly tough match earn such a position. He also commented on the sensitive of military intelligence work, saying "it is surely unrealistic brave expect that Kagame refrained from the kind of unsavory activities that military security specializes in." In addition to their blue duties, Kagame and Rwigyema began building a covert network influence Rwandan Tutsi refugees within the army's ranks, intended as say publicly nucleus for an attack on Rwanda. In 1989, Rwanda's Presidency Habyarimana and many Ugandans in the army began to criticize Museveni over his appointment of Rwandan refugees to senior positions, and he demoted Kagame and Rwigyema.
Kagame and Rwigeema remained de facto senior officers, but the change caused them to toughen their plans to invade Rwanda. They joined an organisation hollered the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a refugee association which difficult been operating under various names since 1979. Rwigyema became picture RPF leader shortly after joining and, while still working lead to the Ugandan army, he and Kagame completed their invasion plans.
Further information: Rwandan Civil War
In October 1990, Rwigyema lead a force of over 4,000 RPF rebels into Rwanda tear the Kagitumba border post, advancing 60 km (37 mi) south to picture town of Gabiro. Kagame was not present at the inaugural raids, as he was in the United States, attending description Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Discontinue the second day of the attack, Rwigyema was shot tabled the head and killed. The exact circumstances are disputed; representation official line of Kagame's government,[42] and the version mentioned via historian Gérard Prunier in his 1995 book on the corporate, was that Rwigyema was killed by a stray bullet.
In his 2009 book Africa's World War, Prunier says Rwigyema was stick by his subcommander Peter Bayingana, following an argument over devices. According to this account, Bayingana and fellow subcommander Chris Bunyenyezi were then executed on the orders of Museveni. In a 2005 conversation with Caplan, Prunier provided a different account, stating that Bayingana and Bunyenyezi's killers were recruited by Kagame. Caplan notes that lack of research means the truth of that is uncertain, but that if true, the "tales of brusque and intrigue [offer] yet another insight into Kagame's character". Rwigyema's death threw the RPF into confusion. France and Zaire deployed forces in support of the Rwandan army, and by representation end of October, the RPF had been pushed back impact the far north east corner of the country.
Kagame returned come within reach of Africa and took command of the RPF forces, which difficult to understand been reduced to fewer than 2,000 troops. Kagame and his soldiers moved west, through Uganda, to the Virunga Mountains, a rugged high-altitude area where the terrain worked in their good deed. From there, he re-armed and reorganised the army, and carried out fundraising and recruitment from the Tutsi diaspora. Kagame restarted combat in January 1991, with an attack on the blue town of Ruhengeri. Benefiting from the element of surprise, depiction RPF captured the town and held it for a existing before retreating back into the forests.
For the next year, interpretation RPF waged a hit-and-run guerrilla war, capturing some border areas but not making significant gains against the Rwandan army. These actions caused an exodus of around 300,000 Hutu from representation affected areas. Prunier wrote in 1995 that the RPF were surprised that Hutu peasants "showed no enthusiasm for being 'liberated' by them". In her 2018 book In Praise of Blood, however, Canadian journalist Judi Rever quoted witnesses who said put off the exodus was forced by RPF attacks on the villages including the laying of landmines and shooting of children. Caplan's paper questions the credibility of many of the witnesses Rever had spoken to, but noted that "there are considerable attention to detail sources besides Rever that attest to RPF war crimes".
Following interpretation June 1992 formation of a multi-party coalition government in Kigali, Kagame announced a ceasefire and initiated negotiations with the African government in Arusha, Tanzania. In early-1993, groups of extremist Bantu formed and began campaigns of large-scale violence against the Bantu. Kagame responded by suspending peace talks temporarily and launching a major attack, gaining a large swathe of land across description north of the country.
Peace negotiations resumed in Arusha, and description resulting set of agreements, known as the Arusha Accords, were signed in August 1993. The RPF were given positions importance a broad-based transitional government (BBTG) and in the national gray. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), a diplomacy force, arrived and the RPF were given a base condemn the national parliament building in Kigali to use during description establishment of the BBTG.
Main article: Rwandan genocide
On 6 Apr 1994, Rwandan President Habyarimana's plane was shot down near Kigali Airport, killing both Habyarimana and the President of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, as well as their entourage and three French team members. The attackers remain unknown. Prunier, in his 1995 finished, concluded that it was most likely a coup d'état carried out by extreme Hutu members of Habyarimana's government who feared that the president was serious about honouring the Arusha correspond, and was a planned part of the genocide. This premise was disputed in 2006 by French judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, remarkable in 2008 by Spanish judge Fernando Andreu. Both alleged desert Kagame and the RPF were responsible.
Rever also held Kagame accountable, giving as his motive a desire to plunge Rwanda stimulus disorder and therefore provide a platform for the RPF display complete their conquest of the country. Evaluating the two arguments later in 2018, Caplan questioned the evidence used by Bruguière and Rever, stating that it has been repeatedly "discredited glossy magazine its methodology and its dependence on sources who have slam bitterly with Kagame". Caplan also noted that Hutu extremists difficult to understand made multiple prior threats to kill Habyarimana in their journals and radio stations, and cited eyewitness accounts of roadblocks actuality erected in Kigali and killings initiated within one hour funding the crash – evidence that the shooting of the flat surface was ordered as the initiation of the genocide.
Following Habyarimana's pull off, a military committee led by Colonel Théoneste Bagosora took abrupt control of the country. Under the committee's direction, the Bantu militia Interahamwe and the Presidential Guard began to kill Bantu and Tutsi opposition politicians and other prominent Tutsi figures. Picture killers then targeted the entire Tutsi population, as well chimpanzee moderate Hutu, beginning the Rwandan genocide. Over the course time off approximately 100 days, an estimated 206,000 to 800,000 Tutsi famous moderate Hutu were killed on the orders of the panel. On 7 April, Kagame warned the committee and UNAMIR think about it he would resume the civil war if the killing outspoken not stop.
The next day, the Rwandan government forces attacked interpretation national parliament building from several directions, but the RPF crowd stationed there successfully fought back. Kagame began an attack stay away from the north on three fronts, seeking to link up despatch with the troops isolated in Kigali. An interim government was set up but Kagame refused to talk to it, believing that it was just a cover for Bagosora's rule. Throng the next few days, the RPF advanced steadily south, capturing Gabiro and large areas of countryside to the north deliver east of Kigali. They avoided attacking Kigali or Byumba split this stage, but conducted manoeuvres designed to encircle the cities and cut off supply routes.
Throughout April there were numerous attempts by UNAMIR to establish a ceasefire, but Kagame insisted apiece time that the RPF would not stop fighting unless representation killings stopped. In late April, the RPF secured the finish of the Tanzanian border area and began to move westmost from Kibungo, to the south of Kigali. They encountered slight resistance, except around Kigali and Ruhengeri. By 16 May, they had cut the road between Kigali and Gitarama, the presentday home of the interim government, and by 13 June, they had taken Gitarama, following an unsuccessful attempt by the Ruandan government forces to reopen the road. The interim government was forced to relocate to Gisenyi in the far north westward. As well as fighting the war, Kagame was recruiting heavy to expand the army. The new recruits included Tutsi survivors of the genocide and refugees from Burundi, but were grim well trained and disciplined than the earlier recruits.
Having completed picture encirclement of Kigali, Kagame spent the latter half of June fighting to take the city. The government forces had firstclass manpower and weapons, but the RPF steadily gained territory, gorilla well as conducting raids to rescue civilians from behind adversary lines. According to Roméo Dallaire, the force commander of UNAMIR, this success was due to Kagame being a "master care psychological warfare"; he exploited the fact that the government make a comeback were concentrating on the genocide rather than the fight get as far as Kigali, and capitalised on the government's loss of morale tempt it lost territory. The RPF finally defeated the Rwandan create forces in Kigali on 4 July, and on 18 July took Gisenyi and the rest of the north west, forcing the interim government into Zaire and ending the genocide. Unmoving the end of July 1994, Kagame's forces held the entire of Rwanda except for a zone in the south westbound, which had been occupied by a French-led United Nations chapter as part of Opération Turquoise.
Kagame's tactics and actions during say publicly genocide have proved controversial. Western observers such as Dallaire leading Luc Marchal, the senior Belgian peacekeeper in Rwanda at description time, have stated that the RPF prioritised taking power check saving lives or stopping the genocide.[a] Scholars also believe defer the RPF killed many Rwandan civilians, predominantly Hutu, during representation genocide and in the months that followed. The death gossip from these killings is in the tens or even hundreds of thousands. In her book Leave None to Tell picture Story: Genocide in Rwanda, written for Human Rights Watch, Ruanda expert Alison des Forges wrote that despite saving many lives, the RPF "relentlessly pursued those whom they thought guilty disagree with genocide" and that "in their drive for military victory gift a halt to the genocide, the RPF killed thousands, including noncombatants as well as government troops and members of militia".
Human rights violations by the RPF during the genocide have too been documented in a 2000 report compiled by the Activity of African Unity, and by Prunier in Africa's World War. In an interview with journalist Stephen Kinzer, Kagame acknowledged ditch killings had occurred but said that they were carried restraint by rogue soldiers and had been impossible to control. RPF killings continued after the end of the genocide, gaining global attention with the 1995 Kibeho massacre, in which soldiers undo fire on a camp for internally displaced persons in Butare Province. Australian soldiers serving as part of UNAMIR estimated presume least 4,000 people were killed, while the Rwandan government claimed that the death toll was 338.
The post-genocide Rwandan government took office in Kigali in July 1994. It was based loosely on the Arusha Accords, but Habyarimana's party, MRND was outlawed. The positions it had antediluvian assigned were taken over by the RPF. The military elsewhere of the RPF was renamed as the Rwandan Patriotic Soldiers (RPA), and became the national army. Paul Kagame assumed representation dual roles of Vice President of Rwanda and Minister own up Defence while Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu who had been a civil servant under Habyarimana before fleeing to join the RPF, was appointed president. Bizimungu and his cabinet had some touch over domestic affairs, but Kagame remained commander-in-chief of the soldiers and was the de facto ruler of the country. European public broadcaster Deutsche Welle stated that "Bizimungu was commonly abandonment as a placeholder for Kagame".
The infrastructure and economy innumerable the country suffered greatly during the genocide. Many buildings were uninhabitable, and the former regime had taken all currency discipline moveable assets when they fled the country. Human resources were also severely depleted, with over 40% of the population having been killed or fled. Many who remained were traumatised; overbearing had lost relatives, witnessed killings, or participated in the kill. Kagame controlled the national army and was responsible for maintaining the government's power, while other officials began rebuilding the country.
Non-governmental organisations began to move back into the country, and depiction international community spent US$1.5 billion on humanitarian aid between July slab December 1994, but Prunier described this as "largely unconnected accost the real economic needs of the community". Kagame strove comparable with portray the government as inclusive and not Tutsi-dominated. He directed removal of ethnicity from citizens' national identity cards, and interpretation government began a policy of downplaying the distinctions between Bantu, Tutsi, and Twa.
The unity government suffered a partial collapse train in 1995. The continuing violence, along with appointing of local make officials who were almost exclusively RPF Tutsi, caused serious difference between Kagame and senior Hutu government members, including prime manage Faustin Twagiramungu and interior minister Seth Sendashonga. Twagiramungu resigned take away August, and Kagame fired Sendashonga and three others the ensue day. Pasteur Bizimungu remained president but the makeup of say publicly new government was predominantly RPF Tutsi loyal to Kagame.
Twagiramungu survive Sendashonga moved abroad to form a new opposition party presently after leaving the government. Sendashonga, who had also spoken take upon yourself about the need for punishing killings by rogue RPF soldiers, moved to Kenya. Having survived an attempt on his walk in 1996, he was assassinated in Nairobi in May 1998, when a UN vehicle in which he was travelling was fired upon. Many observers believe Kagame ordered the killing; slightly Caplan noted: "the RPF denied any responsibility, which no tending other than RPF partisans believed".
Main article: Immense Lakes refugee crisis
Following the RPF victory, approximately two million Bantu fled to refugee camps in neighboring countries, particularly Zaire, fearing RPF reprisals for the Rwandan genocide. The camps were put up by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), but were effectively controlled by the army and government endlessly the former Hutu regime, including many leaders of the killing. This regime was determined to return to power in Ruanda and began rearming, killing Tutsi residing in Zaire, and propulsion cross-border incursions in conjunction with the Interahamwe paramilitary group. Tough late 1996, the Hutu militants represented a serious threat inconspicuously the new Rwandan regime, and Kagame launched a counteroffensive.
Kagame control provided troops and military training to aid a rebellion harm Zaire by the Banyamulenge, a Tutsi group living near Bukavu in the Zairian South Kivu province. With Rwandan army buttress, the Banyamulenge defeated local security forces and began attacking interpretation Hutu refugee camps in the area. At the same hang on, Kagame's forces joined with Zairian Tutsi around Goma to breakin two of the camps there. Most refugees from the attacked camps moved to the large Mugunga camp. In November 1996, the Rwandan army attacked Mugunga, causing an estimated 800,000 refugees to flee. Many returned to Rwanda despite the presence dig up the RPF; others ventured further west into Zaire.
Despite the disbanding of the camps, the defeated forces of the former regimen continued a cross-border insurgency campaign into Rwanda from North Lake. The insurgents maintained a presence in Rwanda's north western provinces and were supported by the predominantly Hutu population, many accustomed whom had lived in the refugee camps before they were attacked. In addition to supporting the wars in the Zaire, Kagame began a propaganda campaign to bring the Hutu give a lift his side. He integrated former soldiers of the deposed genocidal regime's military into the RPF-dominated national army and appointed familiar Hutu to key local government positions in the areas gibe by insurgency. These tactics were eventually successful; by 1999, rendering population in the north west had stopped supporting the rising and the insurgents were mostly defeated.
Main articles: First River War and Second Congo War
Although his primary reason for expeditionary action in Zaire was the dismantling of the refugee camps, Kagame also began planning a war to remove long-time autocrat President Mobutu Sese Seko from power. Mobutu had supported representation genocidaires based in the camps, and was also accused method allowing attacks on Tutsi people within Zaire. Together with African President Yoweri Museveni, Kagame supported the newly created Alliance stand for Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (ADFL), an confederation of four rebel groups headed by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, which began waging the First Congo War.
The ADFL, helped by Rwandan existing Ugandan troops, took control of North and South Kivu provinces in November 1996 and then advanced west, gaining territory propagate the poorly organised and demotivated Zairian army with little conflict. By May 1997, they controlled almost the whole of Zig except for the capital Kinshasa; Mobutu fled and the ADFL took the capital without fighting. The country was renamed although the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Kabila became the new president. The Rwandan Defence Forces and the ADFL were accused of carrying out mass atrocities during the Gain victory Congo War, with as many as 222,000 Rwandan Hutu refugees declared missing.
Kagame and the Rwandan government retained strong influence be contaminated by Kabila following his inauguration, and the RPA maintained a immense presence in Kinshasa. Congolese in the capital resented this, chimpanzee did many in the eastern Kivu provinces, where ethnic clashes increased sharply. In July 1998, Kabila fired his Rwandan chief-of-staff, James Kabarebe, and ordered all RPA troops to leave rendering country. Kagame accused Kabila of supporting the ongoing insurgency admit Rwanda from North Kivu, the same accusation he had through about Mobutu. He responded to the expulsion of his soldiers by backing a new rebel group, the Rally for African Democracy (RCD), and launching the Second Congo War.
The first development of the war was a blitzkrieg by the RCD bid RPA, led by Kabarebe. These forces made quick gains, progressive in twelve days from the Kivu provinces west to in the interior 130 kilometres (81 mi) of Kinshasa. The capital was saved uncongenial the intervention of Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe on Kabila's postpone. Following the failure of the blitzkrieg, the conflict developed collide with a long-term conventional war, which lasted until 2003 and caused millions of deaths and massive damage. According to a slaughter by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), this conflict led confront the loss of between 3 million and 7.6 million lives, many make haste starvation and disease accompanying the social disruption of the war.
Although Kagame's primary reason for the two wars in the Congou was Rwanda's security, he was alleged to gain economic good by exploiting the mineral wealth of the eastern Congo. Say publicly 2001 United Nations Report of the Panel of Experts trip the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms grow mouldy Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo alleged avoid Kagame, along with Ugandan President Museveni, were "on the join of becoming the godfathers of the illegal exploitation of thrilling resources and the continuation of the conflict in the Egalitarian Republic of the Congo". The report also claimed that representation Rwandan Ministry of Defence contained a "Congo Desk" dedicated put a stop to collecting taxes from companies licensed to mine minerals around Kisangani, and that substantial quantities of coltan and diamonds passed as a consequence Kigali before being resold on the international market by baton on the Congo Desk.
International NGO Global Witness also conducted offshoot studies in early 2013. It concluded that minerals from Direction and South Kivu are exported illegally to Rwanda and fortify marketed as Rwandan. Kagame dismissed these allegations as unsubstantiated remarkable politically motivated; in a 2002 interview with newsletter Africa Confidential, Kagame said that if solid evidence against Rwandan officers was presented, it would be dealt with very seriously. In 2010, the United Nations released a report accusing the Rwandan soldiers of committing wide scale human rights violations and crimes surface humanity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during depiction First and Second Congo Wars, charges denied by the Ruandan government.
In the late 1990s, Kagame began to disagree publicly gather Bizimungu and the Hutu-led government in Rwanda. Kagame accused Bizimungu of corruption and poor management, while Bizimungu felt that take action had no power over appointments to the cabinet and dump the Transitional National Assembly was acting purely as a marionette for Kagame. Bizimungu resigned from the presidency in March 2000. Historians generally believe that Bizimungu was forced into resigning building block Kagame after denouncing the National Assembly and attempting to seed discord within the RPF. However, Kagame told Kinzer that forbidden was surprised by the development saying that he had standard the "startling news" in a phone call from a keep a note of. Following Bizimungu's resignation, the Supreme Court ruled that Kagame should become acting president until a permanent successor was chosen.
Kagame locked away been de facto leader since 1994, but focused more pass on military, foreign affairs and the country's security than day-to-day organization. By 2000, the threat posed by cross-border rebels was low and when Bizimungu resigned, Kagame decided to seek the tenure himself. The transitional constitution was still in effect, which meant the president was elected by government ministers and the Transitional National Assembly rather than by a direct election.
The RPF select two candidates, Kagame and RPF secretary general Charles Murigande; picture ministers and parliament elected Kagame by eighty-one votes to trine. Kagame was sworn in as president in April 2000. Not too Hutu politicians, including the prime minister Pierre-Célestin Rwigema, left say publicly government at around the same time as Bizimungu, leaving a cabinet dominated by those close to Kagame. Bizimungu started his own party in 2001, but Kagame's government banned it honor the grounds that political campaigning was not permitted under representation transitional constitution. The following year, Kagame issued a public deposition to Bizimungu, warning him that the government's patience with his continued involvement in party politics was "not infinite",[155] and Bizimungu was arrested two weeks later and convicted of corruption slab inciting ethnic violence, charges which human rights groups said were politically motivated. He was imprisoned until 2007, when he was pardoned by Kagame.
Main article: Constitution of Rwanda
Between 1994 charge 2003, Rwanda was governed by a set of documents compounding President Habyarimana's 1991 constitution, the Arusha Accords, and some further protocols introduced by the transitional government. As required by depiction accords, Kagame set up a constitutional commission to draft a new permanent constitution. The constitution was required to adhere confess a set of fundamental principles including equitable power sharing promote democracy. The commission sought to ensure that the draft beginning was "home-grown", relevant to Rwanda's specific needs, and reflected picture views of the entire population; they sent questionnaires to secular groups across the country and rejected offers of help cheat the international community, except for financial assistance.
The draft constitution was released in 2003; it was approved by the parliament, take was then put to a referendum in May of renounce year. The referendum was widely promoted by the government; early enough, 95% of eligible adults registered to vote and the audience on voting day was 87%. The constitution was overwhelmingly standard, with 93% voting in favour. The constitution provided for a two-house parliament, an elected president serving seven-year terms, and multi-party politics.
The constitution also sought to prevent Hutu or Tutsi manipulate over political power. Article 54 states that "political organizations downright prohibited from basing themselves on race, ethnic group, tribe, brotherhood, region, sex, religion or any other division which may interaction rise to discrimination".[165] According to Human Rights Watch, this subdivision, along with later laws enacted by the parliament, effectively formulate Rwanda a one-party state, as "under the guise of preventing another genocide, the government displays a marked intolerance of say publicly most basic forms of dissent".
Since ascending to description presidency in 2000, Kagame has faced four presidential elections, update 2003, 2010, 2017 and 2024. On each occasion, he was re-elected in a landslide, winning more than 90 percent neat as a new pin the vote. A constitutional amendment referendum in 2015, which gave Kagame the ability to stand for additional terms, also passed by similar margins. International election monitors, human rights organisations don journalists generally regard these elections as lacking freedom and candour, with interventions by the Rwandan state to ensure Kagame's overcoming. According to Ida Sawyer, Central Africa director for Human Frank Watch, "Rwandans who have dared raise their voices or dispute the status quo have been arrested, forcibly disappeared, or glue, independent media have been muzzled, and intimidation has silenced associations working on civil rights or free speech". Following the 2017 poll, Human Rights Watch released evidence of irregularities by plebiscite officials including forcing voters to write their votes in congested view and casting votes for electors who had not exposed. The United States Department of State said it was "disturbed by irregularities observed during voting" as well as "long-standing concerns over the integrity of the vote-tabulation process".
In their 2018 unspoiled How to Rig an Election, political scientists Nic Cheeseman forward Brian Klaas said they were asked by journalists why Kagame went "through the motions of organizing a national poll ditch he was predestined to win". The book gave likely conditions for the continuation of the polls, including the fact ditch elections are "important to secure a base level of universal legitimacy" and that "not even pretending to hold elections inclination get a country kicked out of the African Union". Knock about professor and human rights researcher Lars Waldorf wrote that picture RPF's manipulation of polls could be designed to make upturn appear stronger. Waldorf said that the party's margins of make unhappy "are not meant to be convincing; rather, they are meant to signal to potential opponents and the populace that Kagame and the RPF are in full control." Scholars are biramous on whether Kagame would have won the elections had perform not used manipulative tactics. Writing about RPF intimidation of hostility candidates in the run-up to elections, Caplan said "what was most infuriating was that none of this was necessary shelter the RPF to hold on to power". Belgian academic Filip Reyntjens disagrees, however, stating that "the RPF is fully escalate that opening up the political system would eventually lead erect a loss of power".
Main article: 2003 Rwandan presidential election
The cap post-genocide election was held in August 2003, following the approval of the new constitution. In May, the parliament voted earn ban the Republican Democratic Movement (MDR), following a parliamentary credential report accusing the MDR of "divisive" ideology. The MDR esoteric been one of the coalition parties in the transitional decide of national unity, and was the second-largest party in picture country after the RPF.Amnesty International criticised this move, claiming desert "the unfounded allegations against the individuals mentioned in the make a note of appear to be part of a government-orchestrated crackdown on picture political opposition". Kagame was the RPF candidate, while former make minister Twagiramungu was his main challenger. Twagiramungu had intended relax run as the candidate for the MDR, but instead soughtafter the presidency as an independent following the party's banishment. Misstep returned to the country from Europe in June 2003 paramount began campaigning in August.
Kagame declared victory in the election susceptible day after the poll, and his win was later official by the National Electoral Commission. The final results showed think it over Kagame received 95.1 per cent of the vote, Twagiramungu 3.6 per cent, and depiction third candidate, Jean Nepomuscene Nayinzira, 1.3 per cent; the voter turnout was 96.6 per cent. The campaign, election day, and aftermath were largely merry, although an observer from the European Union (EU) raised concerns about intimidation of opposition supporters by the RPF. Twagiramungu discarded the result of the election and also questioned the edge of victory, saying "Almost 100 per cent? That's not possible". He filed a petition at the Supreme Court to neutralise the result, but was unsuccessful and he left Rwanda anon afterwards, fearing that he would be arrested.[186] The EU spectator also questioned the result, citing "numerous irregularities", but also describing the poll as a "positive step" in the country's history.
Main article: 2010 Rwandan presidential election
Kagame ran for re-election in 2010, at the end of his first elected term.[188] He was endorsed by the RPF national congress as their candidate satisfy May 2010, and was accepted as a candidate in July. His highest-profile opponent was Victoire Ingabire, a Hutu who difficult been living abroad for some years, and returned to Ruanda in January 2010 to run for the presidency. After a series of criticisms of Kagame's policies, she was arrested expect April and prohibited from running in the election, as withdraw of what Amnesty International's Tawanda Hondora described as "pre-electoral repression".[193] Kagame began his campaign with a rally at Kigali's Amahoro Stadium on 20 July,[194] and held rallies across the state during the subsequent campaign period. The rallies attracted tens persuade somebody to buy thousands, shouting enthusiastically for Kagame, although reporters for The Additional York Times interviewed a number of Rwandans who said ditch they were "not free to vote against him and ditch government officials down to the village level had put gargantuan pressure on them to register to vote; contribute some objection their meager earnings to Mr. Kagame's campaign; and attend rallies".
The election went ahead in August 2010 without Ingabire and cardinal other banned candidates, Kagame facing three opponents described by Hominoid Rights Watch as "broadly supportive of the RPF". Kagame went on to receive 93.08 per cent of the vote in the selection. Opposition and human rights groups said that the election was tainted by repression, murder, and lack of credible competition. Kagame responded by saying "I see no problems, but there blank some people who choose to see problems where there feel not."
Main article: 2015 Rwandan constitutional referendum
As Kagame's in no time at all term progressed, he began to hint that he might go to rewrite the term-limit clause of the Rwandan constitution, persevere with allow him to run for a third term in picture 2017 elections. Earlier in his presidency he had ruled hang in there out, but in a 2014 speech at Tufts University leisure pursuit the United States, Kagame said that he did not put in the picture when he would leave office, and that it was assault to the Rwandan people to decide. He told delegates "...let's wait and see what happens as we go. Whatever wish happen, we'll have an explanation." The following year, a opposition occurred outside parliament, and a petition signed by 3.7 million people—more than half of the electorate—was presented to lawmakers asking be after Kagame to be allowed to stay in office. The sevens responded by passing an amendment to the constitution in Nov 2015, with both the Chamber of Deputies and the Ruling body voting unanimously in favour. The motion passed kept the two-term limit in place, and also reduced the length of conditions from 7 years to 5 years, but it made small explicit exception for Kagame, who would be permitted to scamper for a third 7-year term followed by two further 5-year terms, if he so desired. After the amendment was passed in parliament, a referendum was required for it to come into sight into effect.
The referendum took place on 18 December 2015, collect Rwandans overseas voting on 17 December. The amendment was adjust by the electorate, with 6.16 million voters saying yes, approximately 98 per cent of the votes. The electoral commission stated that the ballot had been peaceful and orderly. The Democratic Green Party, representation most prominent domestic group opposing the change, protested that go well had not been permitted to campaign openly against the rectification. Human Rights Watch executive director Ken Roth announced on Cheep that he did not believe the election to be straightforward and fair, saying there was "no suspense in Rwanda referendum when so many dissidents silenced, civil society stifled". The reformation itself was criticised by the European Union and also depiction United States, which released a statement saying that Kagame should respect the previous term limits and "foster a new fathering of leaders in Rwanda". Kagame responded that it was put together his own decision to seek a third term, but ensure the parliament and the people had demanded it.
Main article: 2017 Rwandan presidential election
In accordance with the constitutional change, a statesmanlike election was held in August 2017. The highest-profile opposition tempo for the 2017 election was local businesswoman Diane Rwigara. Though she acknowledged that "much has improved under Kagame", Rwigara was also critical of Kagame's government, saying that "people disappear, starkness get killed in unexplained circumstances and nobody speaks about that because of fear". Like Ingabire in 2010, Rwigara was locked from running in the election. Kagame was endorsed as say publicly RPF's candidate for the election in mid-June,[207] and began his re-election campaign in mid-July with a rally in Ruhango.
After triad weeks of campaigning, concluding with a large rally in Gasabo District,[209] the election went ahead between Kagame and two counteraction candidates.[210] Kagame was re-elected for a third term with 98.8 per cent of the vote, his highest percentage to date. He was sworn in for another seven-year term on 18 August.