in Kigali Subsequent governments, including the current government led by President
Paul Kagame, have committed grave violations of human rights. On 22 April 1995 the
Rwandan Patriotic Army killed more than 4,000 people in the
Kibeho massacre. In September 1996 Rwanda invaded
Zaire, precipitating the
First Congo War. The immediate targets of the invasion were the large
Hutu refugee camps located right across the border in the vicinity of
Goma and
Bukavu, which were organized under the leadership of the former regime. The Rwandan army
chased the refugees in hot pursuit clear across Zaire, while helping to install
AFDL in power in
Kinshasa. The historian
Gérard Prunier estimated the death toll among the fleeing refugees to lay between 213,000–280,000. In 2010, the
United Nations issued
a report investigating 617 alleged violent incidents occurring in the
Democratic Republic of Congo between March 1993 and June 2003. It reported that the "apparent systematic and widespread attacks described in this report reveal a number of inculpatory elements that, if proven before a competent court, could be characterized as crimes of genocide" against Hutus. The report was categorically rejected by the Rwandan government. In December 1996 the Rwandan government launched a forced
villagization program which sought to concentrate the entire rural population in villages known as
Imidugudu, which resulted in human rights violations of tens of thousands of Rwandans, according to Human Rights Watch. According to a report by
Amnesty International, between December 1997 and May 1998, thousands of Rwandans "disappeared" or were murdered by members of government security forces and of armed opposition groups. Most of the killings took place in Rwanda's northwestern provinces of
Gisenyi and
Ruhengeri where there was an armed insurgency. Amnesty wrote that "Thousands of unarmed civilians have been
extrajudicially executed by
RPA soldiers in the context of military search operations in the northwest." When Kagame visited Washington in early 2001,
Human Rights Watch criticized Rwanda for its involvement in the
Second Congo War in which "as many as 1.7 million" civilians had died. Regarding human rights under the government of President Paul Kagame, Human Rights Watch in 2007 accused Rwandan police of several instances of extrajudicial killings and deaths in custody. In June 2006, the
International Federation of Human Rights and Human Rights Watch described what they called "serious violations of international humanitarian law committed by the Rwanda Patriotic Army". According to
The Economist in 2008, Kagame "allows less political space and press freedom at home than
Robert Mugabe does in
Zimbabwe", and "[a]nyone who poses the slightest political threat to the regime is dealt with ruthlessly". Kagame has been accused of using memories of the genocide to muzzle his opposition. In 2009, Human Rights Watch claimed that under the pretense of maintaining ethnic harmony, Kagame's government displays "a marked intolerance of the most basic forms of dissent." It also claimed that laws enacted in 2009 that ban "genocide ideology" are frequently used to legally gag the opposition. In 2010, along similar lines,
The Economist claimed that Kagame frequently accuses his opponents of "divisionism," or fomenting racial hatred. In 2011, Freedom House noted that the government justifies restrictions on civil liberties as a necessary measure to prevent ethnic violence. These restrictions are so severe that even mundane discussions of ethnicity can result in being arrested for divisionism. The United States government in 2006 described the human rights record of the Kagame government as "mediocre", citing the "disappearances" of political dissidents, as well as arbitrary arrests and acts of violence, torture, and murders committed by police. U. S. authorities listed human rights problems including the existence of political prisoners and limited freedom of the press,
freedom of assembly and freedom of religion.
Reporters Without Borders listed Rwanda in 147th place out of 169 for freedom of the press in 2007, and reported that "Rwandan journalists suffer permanent hostility from their government and surveillance by the security services". It cited cases of journalists being threatened, harassed, and arrested for criticising the government. According to Reporters Without Borders, "President Paul Kagame and his government have never accepted that the press should be guaranteed genuine freedom". In 2010, Rwanda fell to 169th place, out of 178, entering the ranks of the ten lowest-ranked countries in the world for press freedom. Reporters Without Borders stated that "Rwanda,
Yemen and
Syria have joined
Burma and
North Korea as the most repressive countries in the world against journalists", adding that in Rwanda, "the third lowest-ranked African country", "this drop was caused by the suspending of the main independent press media, the climate of terror surrounding the presidential election, and the murdering, in Kigali, of the deputy editor of
Umuvugizi,
Jean-Léonard Rugambage. In proportions almost similar to those of
Somalia, Rwanda is emptying itself of its journalists, who are fleeing the country due to their fear of repression". In December 2008, a draft report commissioned by the
United Nations, to be presented to the Sanctions Committee of the
United Nations Security Council, alleged that Kagame's Rwanda was supplying child soldiers to
Tutsi rebels in
Nord-Kivu,
Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the context of the
conflict in Nord-Kivu in 2008. The report also alleged that Rwanda was supplying General
Laurent Nkunda with "military equipment, the use of Rwandan banks, and allow[ing] the rebels to launch attacks from Rwandan territory on the
Congolese army". In July 2009, the
Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative issued a report critical of the human rights situation in Rwanda. It highlighted "a lack of political freedom and harassment of journalists". It urged the Rwandan government to enact legislation enabling
freedom of information and to "authorise the presence of an opposition in the next election". It also emphasised abuses carried out by Rwandan troops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and described Rwanda's overall human rights situation as "very poor": The report details a country in which democracy, freedom of speech, the press and human rights are undermined or violently abused, in which courts fail to meet international standards, and a country which has invaded its neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo, four times since 1994. ... Censorship is prevalent, according to the report, and the government has a record of shutting down independent media and harassing journalists. It concludes that Rwanda's constitution is used as a "façade" to hide "the repressive nature of the regime" and backs claims that Rwanda is essentially "an army with a state".
2010s and later In the lead-up to the
2010 presidential election, the
United Nations "demanded a full investigation into allegations of politically motivated killings of opposition figures".
André Kagwa Rwisereka, the president of the
Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, was found beheaded. "[A] lawyer who had participated in genocide trials at a UN tribunal was shot dead". There was a murder attempt on
Kayumba Nyamwasa, "a former senior Rwandan general who had fallen out with Kagame". And
Jean-Léonard Rugambage, a journalist investigating that attempted murder, was himself murdered. In 2011,
Amnesty International criticized the continued detention of former transportation minister and Bizimungu ally
Charles Ntakirutinka, who was seven years into a ten-year sentence at
Kigali central prison. Amnesty International called him a
prisoner of conscience and named him a 2011 "priority case". Foreign media connected the murder to those of several prominent critics of the Rwandan government over the previous two years. To improve the perception of its human rights record, the Rwandan government in 2009 engaged a U. S. public relations firm,
Racepoint Group, who had improved the image of Libya's
Gaddafi, Tunisia, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, and Senegal. An internet site was set up by BTP advisers, a British firm, to attack critics. Racepoint's agreement with the government stated that it would "flood" the Internet and the media with positive stories about Rwanda. In 2020, regime critic
Paul Rusesabagina who had fled the country and become a Belgian citizen, was tricked into boarding a private flight to Rwanda, arrested, and the next year sentenced to 25 years in prison on charges that human rights advocates called politically motivated. == Critics of the Rwandan government dead or missing ==