Sharon Broussard 's Blogs
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Rwanda Is a Beautiful Country Still Coming to Terms With an Ugly Past
The Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre is built over the remains of 300,000 victims of the 1994 genocide.Photo: Jody Kurash, Associated PressThanks to the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University, I'm in Rwanda for the next two weeks. When most people think of Rwanda, they think of the 1994 genocide where nearly a million people, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were shot or hacked to death with machetes by extremist Hutus. President Paul Kagame, who once chased those Hutus out of the country, thinks of a grand, modern Kigali, and already you can see his vision taking shape. The airport is being expanded, hotels are shooting up, Chinese contractors are building roads and slums are being cleared for affordable housing or more profitable investments. The Homes of the LivingSlum-clearing is controversial even in a place like Rwanda, where the government allows little dissent. One mother of two...
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