Rwanda
Resurrection under an iron fist

In April 1994, the ‘land of a thousand hills’ was plunged into bloodshed. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Tutsi genocide. Despite this trauma, the nation has risen again under the strong leadership of Paul Kagame. With an innovative economy and real international soft power. At the price, however, of authoritarianism and growing tensions with its neighbours.

On the 7th of April, Rwanda commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Tutsi genocide. During that dark year of 1994, in the 100 days following the assassination of President Habyarimana on 6 April and the victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) on 17 July, Hutu extremists exterminated between 800,000 and a million Tutsis and tens of thousands of Hutu opponents. At the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where some 250,000 victims are buried, Paul Kagame lit, as he does every year, the flame of remembrance and delivered a speech celebrating the resilience of the Rwandan nation and the road it has travelled, as well as the efforts still to needed to ensure that the land of a thousand hills, survivor of the hell of genocide and ethnic hatred, rises ever higher, goes ever further. The President's guiding principle is: “Work hard until...