Friday 19 feb – grenade attacks

Around 8 this evening there was a coordinated grenade attack in Kigali. In total four explosions went off in different places at the same time. Allegedly it was the notorious interahamwe (the driving force behind the genocide) that was behind it. This came as a total surprise for us here in Rwanda since it has been very calm and stable during the week, as always. According to newspapers one person was killed and about 30 were injured. I read in dn that one explosion had gone off at the train station which seems very odd since there is no train station in Kigali. At least not that I know about… But hey, it's only Africa so who cares? Anyway, the funny thing is that some friends and I were in town when this happened and we did not hear or see anything out of the ordinary. We did not find out until the day after when we talked to colleagues from the embassy. The only thing we saw related to this were a lot policemen out and about. This is not that unusual though since this country is very militarized and state control is high. Now we understand that this was probably related to the attacks but it could really just have been a normal Friday night.

The city has been very calm since it happened so there is no general state of disorder or tension. I also read in dn that there is fear for problems in relation to the upcoming presidential elections this summer. This is not an assessment of the situation that the majority of the people I have talked to in Kigali shares. On the contrary we have so far anticipated a very calm and uneventful election. It is quite obvious who will win since Kagame has no real competition, wether he'll allow any other candidate to register or not. The campaigning is not allowed to start until in July which feels very distant still. There is however a very unstable and violent development in Burundi where the elections will start in April. The difference between the two countries and the political realities are great so we have not expected the same situation in Rwanda. It is also highly unlikely that the development would be similar here.