juvénal habyarimana

Juvénal Habyarimana (Kinyarwanda: [hɑβɟɑːɾímɑ̂ːnɑ], French: [ʒyvenal abjaʁimana]; 8 March 1937 – 6 April 1994) was a Rwandan politician and military officer who served as the second president of Rwanda, from 1973 until 1994. He was nicknamed Kinani, a Kinyarwanda word meaning "invincible".
An ethnic Hutu, Habyarimana served in several security positions including minister of defense under Rwanda's first president, Grégoire Kayibanda. After overthrowing Kayibanda in a coup in 1973, he became the country's new president and eventually continued his predecessor's pro-Hutu policies. He 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, one-party 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.In 1990, the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) launched the Rwandan Civil War against his government. After three years of war, he signed the 1993 Arusha Accords with the RPF as a peace agreement. The following year, he was killed under mysterious circumstances when his aircraft, also carrying the President Cyprien Ntaryamira of neighboring Burundi, was shot down by a missile near Kigali, Rwanda. His assassination ignited ethnic tensions in the region and helped spark the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.

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