A former mayor accused of helping to kill several thousand people during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, has changed his plea from not guilty to guilty. Paul Bisengimana, the former mayor of Gikoro, changed his plea after prosecutors dropped 10 other charges. He told a war crimes court that he was a witness to, and had participated in, the massacre of thousands of ethnic Tutsis seeking refuge in a church.

Radio Salus, the first University/Community radio station in Rwanda, will be officially launched by the National University of Rwanda on Friday November 18. The station is based in the southern town of Butare. Radio Salus will be broadcasting on 97.0 FM.

Source: UNESCO

According to the Rwandan New Times, The State Minister in charge of Primary Education, Joseph Murekeraho, recently met and held discussions with five hundred heads of schools at Lycee de Kigali School to review Rwanda’s education system. While opening the workshop, Murekeraho appealed to the school heads to address the problems like language that hinder the students’ performances and urged them to recruit qualified teachers. “How do you expect someone who does not know that particular language to teach it? You can never teach something you have never been trained for,” Murekeraho said and called upon the school heads to be vigilant in addressing the issue of bilingualism. “Some people think that when we are giving scholarships, we consider those who can speak the language of the host country, that is wrong,” Murekeraho disclosed adding that all students are given equal chances.

A consultation will take place in Kigali, Rwanda, from 31 October to 2 November 2005 to identify ways to integrate gender concerns into demobilization and reintegration programmes in the African Great Lakes Region. The meeting is being co-organized by UNIFEM and the Secretariat of the World Bank's Multi-Country Demobilization and Reintegration Program (MDRP).

Some 1,110 Rwandans who have sought refuge in northern Burundi urgently need relief aid, an official of Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Tuesday. "They left the Gatsinda site in Ngozi [Province] as the head of the zone requested it considering their security was threatened," Catherine Lune-Grayson, the UNHCR public relations officer, said. "They are now at a site where there is not much for them."

The former director of the cabinet in the Rwanda's Ministry of Defence and alleged architect of the 1994 genocide began his testimony on Monday before the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha. Col Theoneste Bagosora, 64, denied that he masterminded the killings in Rwanda, which claimed the lives some 937,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.

African Rights welcomes the news that Désiré Munyaneza, a Rwandese citizen who played a significant role in the 1994 genocide, was arrested in Canada on Wednesday, 19 October. Munyaneza, arrested in Toronto and accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, is the first person to be charged under Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act passed five years ago. African Rights, which has long campaigned for genocide suspects to be tried in the country of asylum, commends the Canadian government’s decision to prosecute Munyaneza in Canada, rather than to deport him or to transfer him to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania.

The Palliative Care Coordinator will be responsible for assisting the Country Director and Deputy Director with overseeing and managing the Palliative Care component of a multi-year, multi-million dollar grants management program that strengthens the role and effectiveness of local organizations providing HIV/AIDS Palliative Care services at the community level. The Palliative Care Coordinator will oversee and coordinate all matters related to Palliative Care in the community-based program, including hands-on interface with USAID, local government health officials, other international NGOs and local NGO partners.

African Rights has today (19 October) sent a letter to the President of the United Nations Security Council, Ambassador Mihnea Ioan Motoc, to welcome and support the Security Council's statement of 4 October 2005 which deplored the failure of the Forces démocratiques pour la liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) to disarm and repatriate their members peacefully back to Rwanda. On 31 March 2005, the FDLR, composed of Rwandese rebels based in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), declared its intention to demobilize and return its troops voluntarily to Rwanda, following negotiations facilitated by the Sant'Egidio Community in Rome. A deadline of 30 September 2005 was set by the Joint Tripartite Plus Commission comprising the DRC, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, with the African Union, the United Nations and the European Union as observers, and the United States as facilitator.

Follow the link for an evaluation of the Released Prisoners' Project (RPP) in Rwanda, a project financed and facilitated by the Norwegian Church Aid (NCA). This project was initiated in order to help those people who were imprisoned after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda to reintegrate into society after being released from prison. It also aimed to foster dialogue and understanding between people of different faiths and church communities in Rwanda, and to help Rwandan people reconcile with their troubled past and with each other. The project is fairly unique in Rwanda, given its micro-level approach to reconciliation, its collaboration with faith groups, and its focus on reintegration and inter-faith dialogue.

Looking for credible, consistent and informative news on Rwanda? Subscribe to the monthly Rwanda National Portal newsletter for the latest news articles about and on Rwanda straight from the newsrooms of the country's major media houses.

After visiting Rwanda from 30 September to 6 October and meeting with detained Belgian priest Guy Theunis, the former editor of the Rwandan magazine Dialogue, Reporters Without Borders insisted the charges against him were politically motivated and baseless and reiterated its call for his immediate release. The press freedom organisation also reported that Father Theunis was cheerful and in good health, and the conditions in which he was being held in Kigali's main prison were acceptable.

"The essence of conflicts and killings is the emphasis of "otherness," enabling us to consider others as "different" from us, or inferior to us. Thus in Rwanda, the Tutsi were so often and publicly called "inyenzi" or cockroaches that killing them was like killing bugs and easy to do." Kenya National Commission on Human Rights chairman Maina Kiai recounts his experience in Rwanda, where he traveled with a group of Kenyan MPs to see first hand the effects of the 1994 genocide which left more than a million people dead.

Rwanda's commitment to promote women leadership has greatly made the country popular on the international scene. Officiating at the launch of Women Waging Peace Project in Rwanda recently, the founder and chairperson, Ambassador Swanne Hunt said most people in the outside world did not know Rwanda but because of achievements of gender equality, the country has become famous.

Thousands of people evicted from Gishwati forest and relocated to Gaseke district in Gisenyi province are seriously in need of a hospital and health centres to improve on the looming health crisis. "The government gave us houses and plots for farming, but we are facing a great problem concerning lack of a hospitals," a resident claimed. The residents say contagious air and waterborne diseases are now common due to lack of appropriate health services. Residents also lack schools for their children, since those available are not enough for hundreds of children in the communal settlement.

Ethan Zuckerman’s ‘My Hearts in Accra’ (http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=178) questions the ‘politics’ behind the prosecution of Belgian priest, Father Guy Theunis in the ongoing Gacaca genocide tribunals taking place in Rwanda.

“Father Guy Theunis ran a magazine called Dialogue which republished translated excerpts of articles from a pro-Hutu extremist magazine Kangura. His defense is that his “republications were part of his human rights work”. What is most interesting here is that Zuckerman takes Theunis’s defense and applies it to blogging and the ‘redistribution of content’. Speaking about the Global Voices project (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/) he states:

"Obviously we haven’t reblogged any posts where someone has advocated the extermination of other people. But I can understand the need Father Theunis felt to bring to light the extreme views being expressed in magazines like “Kangura”. What’s the responsibility of a site like ours in reporting on extreme views? Is it to give an accurate picture of the views being expressed in a country? Or is the responsibility not to amplify hateful voices?"

Nigerian blogger Chippla (http://chippla.blogspot.com/2005/09/its-abuja-bus-stop.html) takes a cynical view of the latest move towards ‘modernisation’ in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.

"…if you live in Abuja, unlike in the other cities mentioned above, the concept scheduled intra-city bus services must be strange to you. In other words, though you see bus stops, you do not wait by them to board a bus."

Apparently ‘bus stops are springing up all over the city’. It will be interesting to watch how people respond to the schedules and how well the bus’s themselves can actually keep to the schedules.

Friend of the US, President Mubarak who was recently “re-elected” in Egypt, has an appalling human rights record. Egyptian blogger “Egyptian Person” (http://egyptianperson.blogspot.com/) highlights the use of Egypt’s “Emergency Laws” which are used to imprison people indefinitely without trial.

A police officer summed up the situation very clearly to political detainee Abdel Moneim Mohammed, who has spent 13 years in the custody of the Egyptian interior ministry: "We can't release you [regardless of whether you are innocent or guilty]. After spending years in prison, you hate us - and setting you free will be a great risk."

Nigerian blogger Grandiose Parlour (http://grandioseparlor.blogspot.com/) seems to have been “captured” by Katrina. He has at least 7 extended posts on the hurricane including what appears to be a daily update of US Army Corp of Engineers called “Daily Key Messages and General Mission Talking Points”.

Finally this week some good news. Kenyan Pundit now back in Nairobi has moved her blog over to (http://www.kenyanpundit.com/) and is back in full force. Check out her “Random observations of the day” category for a “day by day” account of life in Nairobi and Kenya.

On 6 September, whilst his plane was in transit at Kigali airport, the Catholic missionary Guy Theunis who worked in Rwanda from 1970 to 1994, was arrested and taken into custody by the Rwandan authorities. The Rwandan prosecutor Emmanuel Rukangira told AFP that the 60-year-old priest was accused of "incitement to genocide and of genocide denial", particularly in the Christian publication Dialogue. However, in an interview with Flemish television, the Rwandan specialist Filip Reyntjens said: "From a legal point of view, I don't think the charges stand up. I fear that father Theunis may be the victim of his notorious opposition to the current regime."

Mayor Marie Izabilza sat quietly in the back of the dirt floor concrete room in an impoverished province on the outskirts of Kigali. Her round face was furrowed in thought. Before her, a dozen young Rwandan war orphans fired off their concerns. Izabilza nodded as each one took a turn to voice a request to go to secondary school, find a job, buy food or visit a health clinic. A recently elected mayor for this province of several thousand, Izabilza and other women like her are part of a new band of female politicians working at local levels in Rwanda, which is struggling to rebuild a decade after a genocide left more than 800,000 dead in 100 days and this small Central African nation devastated.

Rwanda has a lot to recover from. Nearly one million people were killed during the 1994 genocide, and educated people were a prime target. Yet, as Dan Simmons of the BBC reports, the country has high hopes of using education and training to help it lead Africa into the information age. Unlike much of the rest of Africa, Rwanda is a small, densely populated country. This makes it much easier to connect different regions with fibre optic cables that can bring telephone, Internet and television services. The aim is to link the five main population centres in this way by the end of 2005.

International Rescue Committee (IRC) has said that it and nine other international NGOs had requested international monitoring of 8,000 Rwandans who they say were taken from Burundi illegally and by force on 13 June. In a letter on 1 July to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the NGOs asked her to "insist that the Rwandan government provide guarantees that the safety and dignity of those returned from Burundi will be ensured, and that these guarantees be subject to effective international monitoring."