RWANDA'S PAUL KAGAME - VISIONARY OR TYRANT?
Lanky and
soft-spoken, Rwanda's President Paul Kagame portrays himself as a
modern-day politician who sees social media as a way of championing
democracy and development.
However, his opponents accuse him of
being the latest in a long line of authoritarian rulers in Africa, who
will win the 4 August election after his regime brutally suppressed the
opposition and killed some of his most vocal critics - a charge his
allies vehemently deny.
One of the first African leaders to set up a website
with a presence on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Flickr, Mr Kagame
believes the IT revolution has meant there are "few excuses" for
political intolerance and poverty.
"There is a global awareness of
national events - for example, in China, and days before that, in Iran,
that is due to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and relatively inexpensive
access to technology," the 59-year-old Rwandan leader said at the World Technology Summit in 2009, long before many other African leaders had grasped the significance of social media.
"These moments in history are captured and diffused in remote corners of the world, even as the events unfold," he added.
'Schooled in conflict'
His comments are ironic, given that the international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders
identifies him as a "predator" who attacks press freedom, citing the
fact that in the last two decades, eight journalists have been killed or
have gone missing, 11 have been given long jail terms, and 33 forced to
flee Rwanda.
"A lot of effort has been made to improve internet
access, but the idea is still to control discourse on social media,
including by trolling journalists," Reporters Without Borders Africa
head Clea Kahn told the BBC.
Mr Kagame, who received military training in Uganda, Tanzania and the US, is seen as a brilliant military tactician.
A
refugee in neighbouring Uganda since childhood, he was a founding
member of current Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's rebel army in
1979.
He headed its intelligence wing, helping Mr Museveni take power in 1986.
Then
he spearheaded the launch of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebel
movement. It took power in Kigali to end the 1994 genocide which killed
some 800,000 Tutsis - the ethnic minority group to which Mr Kagame
belongs - and moderate Hutus.
BBC NEWS
Posted by Editor
on 15:53.
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