Steve Terrill is a journalist who works in Rwanda. Or at least he worked in Rwanda, until he accidentally got the office of Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame to implicate itself in a long-running online harassment campaign. On the latest episode of TLDR, Alex talks to Steve about inadvertently exposing the Rwandan government’s most prolific troll, and being banned from the country as a result.
Rwanda, 20 Years Later
Twenty years ago this week, the Rwandan genocide began. It’s estimated 800,000 to a million people were killed over 100 days. Most were Tutsi but tens of thousands were moderate Hutu and others caught in the slaughter.
The country today is commemorating by holding a week of mourning alongside a longer 100-day vigil.
The #Rwanda20yrs hashtag on Twitter is an at times sobering, enlightening and inspiring access point to news, resources and personal accounts of the period.
Here’s some of what we’ve been reading through:
- BBC, Rwanda genocide: 100 days of slaughter; a backgrounder on the events.
- BBC, A good man in Rwanda; the story of Mbaye Diagne, an unarmed, Senegalese peacekeeper with the UN, who’s credited with saving at least 500 Rwandans.
- Thomson Reuters Foundation, Genocide and Justice: Rwanda 20 years on; an immersive site with first person accounts from survivors, perpetrators, diplomats and more.
- The Guardian, Genocide in Rwanda was a fork in the road not just for Africa but the world; how the genocide has affected international law and world response to events today.
- Slate, Unreconciled Rwanda; can survivors really forgive those that murdered family and loved ones, and what policies has the Rwandan government put in place to foster reconciliation attempts.
Image: Via National Geographic, “A man tries to unlock a cell door at a hospital in Kigali, Rwanda in 1994. As the genocide spread across the country, doctors and staff of the main psychological hospital in Kigali fled or were killed leaving the patients to care for themselves.” Photo by David Guttenfelder. Revisiting the Rwandan Genocide: Origin Stories From The Associated Press. Select to embiggen.


