Rwanda's ethnic split 're-emerging'

By Belfast Telegraph
Wednesday, 30 June 2010

A human rights report has claimed Rwanda's Tutsi-led government is oppressing Hutus in neighbouring Uganda and the ethnic divisions that sparked Rwanda's 1994 genocide have re-emerged.

International rights groups have condemned Rwanda for clamping down on dissent, curbing freedoms and silencing opponents in advance of the country's presidential election in August. Rwanda's government has denied involvement in the recent attacks.

President Paul Kagame, who is running for a second seven-year term, denied the allegations of repression and said the country is not experiencing any ethnic tension.

A former senior Rwandan military commander was shot in the stomach outside his home in South Africa on June 19. Lieutenant General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa's wife blamed Mr Kagame for the shooting. Mr Kagame denied the accusation.

A Hutu man said he was attacked by Rwandan authorities after criticising them over human rights abuses.

Mani Uwimana, 27, who fled Rwanda two years ago, said he was walking home from the roadside kiosk he operates selling soap and other toiletries outside Uganda's capital Kampala on May 15, when he was attacked by four men who wrestled him to the ground.

Mr Uwimana said: "They squeezed my neck attempting to strangle me. I pretended that I was dead. They moved a short distance from me and one of them made a phone call."

Speaking in Rwanda's Kinyarwanda language, the attacker reported that Mr Uwimana was dead, and "they should send a vehicle to take away my dead body".

He then got up and ran away.

At least 500,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the Hutu-led slaughter in 1994 - violence that ended when a Tutsi-dominated militia headed by Mr Kagame seized power - causing droves of Hutus to flee.