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TIME: One part of the international community, the human rights groups, are pretty critical. They talk about the arrest of your political rivals, they say you use the genocide as an excuse, they say that's also used as a reason to jail reporters. What is your response to that? And why is there such a split on Rwanda, between those that love the government for its progressive attitudes and those who accuse it of repression?
Kagame: There are critics. But I don't think they are being fair. The same people who may be behind some of these criticisms are the people who have historically been associated with what has taken place in this country, before we came to power. And these were the people who were praising Rwanda for progress, which was not there at all. It's like today: always criticizing Rwanda and the government and not accepting the improvements or that Rwanda is much better today than it has ever been I believe they are doing that because they are defensive. They created the wrong impression of Rwanda, they were part of this very tragic history, they carry a responsibility on their shoulders. So they don't want to accept the new and the good that has come out of this whole struggle. And it has been a struggle. We have had to wage a war, an armed struggle, we have had to go through the aftermath of the genocide and re-building the country, so many difficulties. And they don't want to accept this.
And some of the things they criticize Rwanda for are not well explained. They talk about arrests. Well, there are going to be arrests. Based on the law. We have put laws and a constitution in place. We have had to fight things like corruption. We have had to fight things like sectarianism. Genocide was built on divisive politics. So what do people want us to do?
And they say we use genocide as an excuse. This is really an insult. Did the genocide happen or not? It happened. And I don't think any of those [critics] could deny it. What do we need an excuse for? What can't we do, what can't we achieve that we need an excuse? We have a record to prove our worth. If there is something that we need to stand up and fight for, we stand up and fight.
It's ok to have people that don't like us, who criticize the right things we are doing. Maybe sometimes we may not do things right. It's ok, we listen to that. If there any criticism that is fair, we will take it on board. If it's not correct, we move ahead.
But to people who are making criticism, Rwandans and foreigners, I would say: take a moment, and look at what we went through. [The type of experience] that would make many countries failed states. But we didn't fail. A country where a million people have been lost. A country which has really been shattered beyond what you could imagine. A country that had 3 million people displaced. Every institution completely destroyed. Starting not from zero, but below. And we had to bring these people back together, people whose minds and hearts were seriously wounded.