![Overview of Rwandan Leadership from 1973 to 1994 (Part 2) Overview of Rwandan Leadership from 1973 to 1994 (Part 2)](https://broadcastunited.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/juvenal_habyarimana.jpg)
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Juvenal Habyarimana
In 1973, Habyarimana, a major in the military, overthrew and killed Kayibanda, subsequently destroyed Kayibanda’s MDR-PARMEHUTU party and established a one-party government, the National Revolutionary Movement (MRND), of which he was the leader. The country continued to have one-party rule until 1991.
Nearly 20 years after the RDF saved and killed the crimes committed by the dictator and his opponents, especially the Tutsis, Habyarimana agreed to restore multi-party politics because of the changes triggered by the Rwandan War of Liberation. RPF-Inkotani and other politicians have the opportunity to revive the movement.
The Habyarimana regime was characterized by tyranny at the top, especially through a group of relatives from the north who were involved in the plan to expel Tutsi refugees and continued to harm other parts of the country.
In general, Habyarimana’s policies were no different from those of Kayibanda, as both were based on spreading hatred among Rwandans, encouraging and training Hutus to hate their Tutsi compatriots; they always believed that the FPR-Inkotanyi organization was against the MRND, which was started by Tutsis who fled the crimes of 1959 and the overthrow of the royal dynasty.
Habyarimana did all this with his regionalism based mainly on favoritism towards his own ethnic group (the North), he also got over his hatred towards the Tutsis and started oppressing the Hutus in the south of Gregoire Kayibanda. It was like a way to get rid of him because his regime (Kayibanda) was characterized by favoritism towards the southerners, which is why Habyarimana overthrew and killed him.
After Habyarimana came to power in 1973, Tutsis who had fled the 1959 genocide and the years that followed kept asking him to allow them to return to their homeland, but he insisted that Rwanda was like a glass full of water; if you poured more water into it, it would break.
But this was a continuation of discriminatory policies such as that of Kayibanda, who led the exiled Tutsis to form the FPR-Inkotanyi organization (1987) with the aim of using force to liberate the country and expel the refugees.
The struggle began in October 1990, and in 1991-1992, when Habyarimana saw that things were not going to be easy for him, he agreed to restore multi-party politics, but he continued his efforts to convince the Hutus that the Tutsis were the enemies of their country.
At that time, some Hutus who were against his other political parties began to come back to his side, namely to build what they called the Hutu Power and eliminate the Tutsis in Rwanda, which was done as a project of the national hierarchy. At the same time, the battle between the RPF and Inkoyani was also in the balance.
On the evening of April 6, 1994, as Habyarimana was travelling to sign the Arusha Agreement in Tanzania to share power with parties that disagreed with him, including the Rwandan Patriotic Front, his plane was shot down by a bomb upon arrival in Rwandan airspace, killing the Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira who was accompanying him.
After Habyarimana was assassinated, the genocide plan that had been planned for a long time by Hutu extremists who did not support the Arusha Agreement was implemented. In order to prevent refugees from fleeing, genocide was started and their homes were destroyed. The Tutsis killed more than one million people in just 100 days.
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Theodore I don’t belong to them
After the killing of Habyarimana, 57, Theodore Sindikwabo replaced him as speaker and formed a government called the Rescuers, filled with those who planned and carried out the genocide against the Tutsi.
That government did not last twice, as it was ordered from April 7 to July 4, 1994, when the RPF-Inkotani won the battle, many people fled to the former Zaire (Democratic Republic of Congo), others went to other African countries and other continents.
Although he was in power for less than four months, Sindikubwabo was one of the people who brought the genocide to the public attention because immediately after replacing Habyarimana as interim president, he told all the Hutu people at large that no one should ignore me and that they should unite to eliminate the Tutsi, saying that it was they who killed Habyarimana.
But he did not last twice, as he died of illness in the Bukavu (Zaire) refugee camp in 1998 at the age of 70. His Prime Minister Jean Kambanda, arrested in Nairobi, Kenya in 1997 and brought to the International Criminal Court (ICTR) to admit his role in the genocide against the Tutsi, is now imprisoned in Mali and sentenced to life imprisonment.
After the RPF stopped the genocide against the Tutsi, stability was restored by establishing a Rwandan unity government during the transitional period, which was led by Reverend Bizimungu, the chairman of the RPF, and supported by Major General Paul Kagame, who completed the country’s liberation struggle and then served as Minister of Defense.
The Rwanda Union Government joined with other political parties in accordance with the Habyarimana Document stipulated in the Arusha Agreement. At that time, Faustin Twagiramungu was appointed Prime Minister by the MDR party, which was not called PARMEHUTU because of his bad record under the Kayibanda regime.
In the next section, we will give you an overview of Reverend Bizimungu, who led the transition for four years before resigning in 2000, as Rwanda prepared for its first elections after the genocide against the Tutsi.
Paul Kagame lost this election and he subsequently became the sixth president, from Mbonyiumtwa (interim), Kayibanda (First Republic), Habyarimana (Third Republic), Sindikubwabo (interim), Bizimungu (transitional), thus Rwanda entered the third presidential republic through democratic elections.
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