Filip Reyntjens (born 1952) [1] is professor emeritus at University of Antwerp. His academic training is in constitutional law, but he later pivoted towards the study of politics especially of the Great Lakes region of Africa. [2]
In 1975, while working as a research assistant at the University of Antwerp, Reyntjens was asked to be involved in a project that involved running a law school at the National University of Rwanda, in Butare. [3] This began a long affiliation with Rwanda. His PhD Thesis: 'Power and Law in Rwanda. Public Law and Political Evolution, 1916-1973' (Original French: Pouvoir et droit au Rwanda. Droit public et évolution politique, 1916-1973), was completed in 1983, and later published as a book in 1985. [4] After this, his research widened from Rwanda to the Great Lakes Region as a whole - publishing work on Burundi and on the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Outside of academia, Reyntjens has been called as an expert witness in cases relating to the Great Lakes region in the courts of multiple nations, as well as before the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. [5] He has also volunteered for Amnesty International. [2]
Juvénal Habyarimana was a Rwandan politician and military officer who was the second president of Rwanda, from 1973 until his assassination in 1994. He was nicknamed Kinani, a Kinyarwanda word meaning "invincible".
Paul Kagame is a Rwandan politician and former military officer who has been the President of Rwanda since 2000. He was previously a commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel armed force which invaded Rwanda in 1990. The RPF was one of the parties of the conflict during the Rwandan Civil War and the armed force which ended the Rwandan genocide. He was considered Rwanda's de facto leader when he was Vice President and Minister of Defence under President Pasteur Bizimungu from 1994 to 2000 after which the vice-presidential post was abolished.
The Rwandan Patriotic Front is the ruling political party in Rwanda.
Mutara III Rudahigwa was King (umwami) of Rwanda between 1931 and 1959. He was the first Rwandan king to be baptised, and Roman Catholicism took hold in Rwanda during his reign. His Christian names were Charles Léon Pierre, and he is sometimes referred to as Charles Mutara III Rudahigwa.
The Burundian Civil War was a civil war in Burundi lasting from 1993 to 2005. The civil war was the result of longstanding ethnic divisions between the Hutu and the Tutsi ethnic groups. The conflict began following the first multi-party elections in the country since its independence from Belgium in 1962, and is seen as formally ending with the swearing-in of President Pierre Nkurunziza in August 2005. Children were widely used by both sides in the war. The estimated death toll stands at 300,000.
The First Congo War, also nicknamed Africa's First World War, was a civil war and international military conflict which lasted from 24 October 1996 to 16 May 1997 and took place mostly in Zaire, with major spillovers into Sudan and Uganda. The conflict culminated in a foreign invasion that replaced Zairean president Mobutu Sese Seko with the rebel leader Laurent-Désiré Kabila. Kabila's unstable government subsequently came into conflict with his allies, setting the stage for the Second Congo War in 1998–2003.
Mass killings of Tutsis were conducted by the majority-Hutu populace in Burundi from 21 October to December 1993, under an eruption of ethnic animosity and riots following the assassination of Burundian President Melchior Ndadaye in an attempted coup d'état. The massacres took place in all provinces apart from Makamba and Bururi, and were primarily undertaken by Hutu peasants. At many points throughout, Tutsis took vengeance and initiated massacres in response.
Linda Melvern is a British investigative journalist. Early in her career, she worked for The Evening Standard and then The Sunday Times (UK), including on the investigative Insight Team. Since leaving the newspaper she has written seven books of non-fiction. She is a former Honorary Professor of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, in the Department of International Politics.
On the evening of 6 April 1994, the aircraft carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira, both Hutu, was shot down with surface-to-air missiles as their jet prepared to land in Kigali, Rwanda; both were killed. The assassination set in motion the Rwandan genocide, one of the bloodiest events of the late 20th century.
Human rights in Rwanda have been violated on a grand scale. The greatest violation is the Rwandan genocide of Tutsi in 1994. The post-genocide government is also responsible for grave violations of human rights.
Imidugudu, meaning villages, are the smallest administrative divisions of Rwanda. Imidugudu are the result of a forced villagization program that was launched on 13 December 1996 by a decision of the Rwandan Cabinet which set out to concentrate the entire rural population in such villages.
Rwandan genocide denial is the pseudohistorical assertion that the Rwandan genocide did not occur, specifically rejection of the scholarly consensus that Rwandan Tutsis were the victims of genocide between 7 April and 19 July 1994. The perpetrators, a small minority of other Hutu, and a fringe of Western writers dispute that reality.
Major General Jack Nziza is Inspector-General of the Rwanda Defence Force. He has also served as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence.
On 21 October 1993, a coup was attempted in Burundi by a Tutsi–dominated army faction. The coup attempt resulted in assassination of Hutu President Melchior Ndadaye and the deaths of other officials in the constitutional line of presidential succession. François Ngeze was presented as the new President of Burundi by the army, but the coup failed under domestic and international pressure, leaving Prime Minister Sylvie Kinigi in charge of the government.
In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front is a 2018 non-fiction book by Canadian journalist Judi Rever and published by Random House of Canada; it has also been translated into Dutch and French. The book describes alleged war crimes by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), Rwanda's ruling political party, during its ascent to power in the 1990s.
Jean‐Marie Ngendahayo is a Burundian politician.
André Kisase Ngandu was a Congolese rebel leader. An insurgent in the Simba rebellion of the 1960s, he immigrated to East and later West Germany where he lived for many years. He resumed his rebel activity with Ugandan support in the 1990s and emerged as leader of the National Council of Resistance for Democracy (CNRD) which waged an insurgency in eastern Zaire.
Modern relations between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda have origins that date back to the colonial era. Sharing a border that is 221 km in length, the two countries were both colonial possessions of Belgium between 1919 and 1960, and were impacted by the two world wars. Both Rwanda and the Congo experienced violent upheavals during their first years of independence, with the Congo being left with a weak central authority, and Rwanda dealing with periodic raids and incursions from expelled Tutsi rebels in the east of the Congo.
Relations between Burundi and Rwanda have existed for at least as long as the states themselves. Before contact with Europeans, Rwanda and Burundi were kingdoms competing to gain control over nearby territory. In the 1880s, the two kingdoms were placed under colonial authority, first by Germany, and then by Belgium after 1919.
The Battle of Kisangani took place in March 1997 during the First Congo War. The rebels of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDL), supported by the Rwandan Patriotic Front, took the city defended by the Zairian Armed Forces (FAZ) which was loyal to President Mobutu Sese Seko.