President Kagame's repressive policies risk inflaming a volatile region, writes Declan Walsh
It must be a record. Last Monday, Rwanda held a landmark presidential election, counted the votes, declared the winner and held a celebratory party - all in the space of one day.
Just as impressive was the margin of incumbent President Paul Kagame, who polled an astonishing 94 per cent of the vote in preliminary results. Addressing supporters in Kigali's Amahoro (peace) stadium at 3 a.m. yesterday, he declared the result "a lesson to the outside world that Rwanda is on the right path". Not quite. The wiry, ascetic leader's win came at the cost of the most basic democratic practices, such as allowing rivals to campaign against him.
Although the mechanics of Monday's vote went smoothly, the proceeding weeks were marred by harassment, intimidation and arrest of opposition supporters.
His main rival, Faustin Twagiramungu, abandoned his campaign early, reduced to distributing business cards as his election material.
Mr Kagame justified the hermetic crackdown as a necessary measure against ethnic "divisionism", a thinly coded reference to fears of a second genocide. It is almost certainly unjustified. Mr Twagairmungu lost four brothers in the genocide, fled the country and once served under Mr Kagame.
Instead, the move appears a cynical act of political manipulation. The 1994 genocide, an almost unimaginable act of mass slaughter that killed over 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, still hangs over Rwanda like a cloud.
By tapping into this fear to justify sidelining an already weak opponent, Mr Kagame is taking a dangerous step.
He risks souring relations with foreign allies. More critically, the repression is radicalising opposition inside and outside Rwanda. According to the International Crisis Group (ICG), it has created unlikely alliances such as the "Igihango", a secret blood pact between Hutu extremists and disgruntled genocide survivors.
And at worst, Mr Kagame's authoritarian policies could end up exacerbating the dangerous ethnic passions they are supposed to extinguish.
Until recently, the soldier-turned-statesman had good reason to be wary of easing control over the fragile nation. Only years after the genocide, in 1998, the rump of the Interahamwe - Hutu extremists who carried out the genocide - were still attacking his soldiers in remote border areas. Later they were pursued into the forests of neighbouring Congo, where Rwanda triggered a massive, bloody war.
That military threat stymied planned political reforms. President Kagame argued that Rwandans had to be first educated, and their leaders made more responsible, before fully-fledged pluralism could be allowed. For most of the 1990s many agreed with his caution, including western donors.
But although the need for such paternalistic measures receded in recent years, the repression of critical voices has intensified in what the ICG calls an "authoritarian drift". Outspoken journalists have been arrested or jailed. Independent civil society groups were silenced or placed under control of government supporters. And several opposition politicians were forced into exile or, more worryingly, "disappeared".
Western friends accepted these draconian measures unquestioningly.
Like so much else in Rwanda, the reason harks back to the genocide. Guilty at having failed to stop the slaughter, the US and European countries flooded aid into Rwanda. For them, Mr Kagame was a smart, disciplined leader they could work with. Some, such as Britain's former Development Secretary Claire Short, saw Mr Kagame as an inspiration to the rest of the continent.
His lionisation as the saviour of Rwanda was gilded by American journalist Philip Gourevitch's influential book We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. The emotionally compelling account lays bare the planning and gruesome execution of the genocide, and western culpability. However, it skates over atrocities committed by Mr Kagame's troops.
According to Human Rights Watch, Tutsi soldiers massacred up to 50,000 Hutus inside Rwanda during and immediately after the genocide. In the following years, many more were hunted down and killed in the forests of the Congo - men, women and children executed in cold blood. Nobody can say for sure how many died, but the toll probably runs into the hundreds of thousands.
While Mr Kagame has recognised these war crimes, he refuses to allow them be prosecuted.
Instead, he obstructed the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) every time it tried to investigate RPF crimes, leading to a showdown with prosecutor Carla del Ponte.
Those who try to highlight such crimes are branded "revisionists" or "genocide apologists".
But for many Hutus, only an evenhanded approach to Rwanda's painful history can lead to ethnic reconciliation.
By now, Mr Kagame and the RPF brook no criticism from any quarter. Even friends of Rwanda have been vilified for daring to question his judgement.
The ICG has been effectively banned since it published a critical report last year. In May, the Foreign Minister tarred Alison des Forges of Human Rights Watch, an expert on the genocide, as a Hutu supremacist. Ironically, Ms des Forges is testifying before the ICTR in Tanzania this week, against Hutu extremists.
Discomfort over Congo caused western countries, particularly the US, to pressure Rwanda into withdrawing its troops from Congo. Donors enjoy considerable leverage in Rwanda, paying over 75 per cent of the national budget.
But they have remained astonishingly quiet about this week's electoral abuses. In fact, despite loud warnings by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the European Union pumped €1.8 million into the sham poll. Only the Dutch government, which recently pulled €250,000 in election funding, has openly complained.
The softly-softly treatment contrasts sharply with, say, Zimbabwe, where every wrong turn brings the sledgehammer of international opprobrium onto President Robert Mugabe.
After this week's poll, the days of turning a blind eye must end.
Rwandans have a real and justifiable fear of a return to genocide. But this must be tackled through fearless dialogue and real ethnic reconciliation, not political repression and Stalinist-style control tactics.
Mr Kagame has done an admirable job of tackling tensions of Rwanda's wounded society since the genocide. Hutus make up 85 per cent of the population, and he has brought a number into power with him.
But only a minority of Hutus are violent extremists and, inevitably, not all of the remainder will agree with him. Denying them a voice is a recipe for disaster.
The proof is written in the pages of history. Dominance by any one group, perceived or real, has wrenched Rwanda apart several times since independence.
Now Mr Kagame is settling into a seven-year term of office. To ensure stability he must show that his first priority is healing those ethnic wounds, and not soldering his grip on power.