Paul Kagame’s Rwanda is booming, with impressive economic development and strides in public health, since the genocide that killed hundreds of thousands in 1994. But that success comes at a price: speech about ethnic groups and the government is now extremely restricted. How this traumatized country’s history may challenge absolute American faith in free expression.
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Comments
The issue is not censorship but dictatorship itself. A regime dependent on 10% of the population cannot entrust its survival to a cohesive 90% whose last political memory was trying to exterminate them. A confidant of Margaret Thatcher once said that Britain needed her to "hang on" (by lawful democratic means) until the opposition "Labour becomes sane." Similarly, I doubt if Kagame, even with good will, will make any serious effort to democratize until "democracy" in his neighborhood becomes "sane"-- fostering tolerance and good government rather than clan favoritism, corruption, and incompetence.