Juvénal Habyarimana



Juvénal Habyarimana (March 8, 1937 – April 6, 1994) was the 2nd President of the Republic of Rwanda, serving longer than any other president to date, from 1973 until 1994. He was nicknamed "Kinani", a Kinyarwanda word meaning "invincible".

Habyarimana was a dictator, and electoral fraud was suspected for his unopposed re-elections: 98.99% of the vote on 24 December 1978, 99.97% of the vote on 19 December 1983, and 99.98% of the vote on 19 December 1988. During his rule, Rwanda became a totalitarian order in which his MRND-party enforcers required people to chant and dance in adulation of the President at mass pageants of political "animation". While the country as a whole had become slightly less impoverished during Habyarimana's tenure, the great majority of Rwandans remained in circumstances of extreme poverty.

On April 6, 1994, he was killed when his aircraft, also carrying the President of neighbouring Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down near Kigali, Rwanda. His assassination ignited ethnic tensions in the region and helped spark the Rwandan Genocide.