Rwanda’s president leads genocide commemoration 30 years on

KIGALI: Rwanda’s president on Sunday led commemorations to mark 30 years since the 1994 genocide that killed more than 1 million people and said the conditions that led to the slaughter would never be allowed to exist again in his country’s politics.

Over 100 days, starting on April 7 1994, Tutsis and moderate Hutus and were systematically massacred by Hutu extremists, led by the Rwandan army and a militia known as the Interahamwe.

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and his wife led 37 visiting leaders at a wreath laying ceremony at a genocide memorial in the capital Kigali that contains the remains of some 250,000 people.

“Genocide is populism in its pure form, because the causes are political the remedies must be as well. For that reason our politics are not organised on the basis of ethnicity or religion and never will be again,” Kagame said at a separate ceremony at a Kigali sports arena.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which was set up in Tanzania in late 1994 to try the masterminds of the genocide, closed in 2015 after convicting 61 suspects.

More prominent suspects have since been caught after decades on the run, and Rwanda’s own internal justice system has handled another nearly 2 million cases. “We survivors we are strong. We will build the country together,” Marie Louise Ayinkamiye, who was 11 during the genocide, told the audience at the arena.