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Few of the former Tutsi students are alive and most of the Hutu children now

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Few of the former Tutsi students are alive and most of the Hutu children now live in refugee camps in Zaire and Tanzania. The shops had all been plundered and the houses of Tutsis burned to the ground. Two institutions continued to function: the orphanage, whose residents had miraculously escaped the machete; and the hospital, whose wards were overflowing with mutilated victims of Hutu hatred.The boarding school in whose looted rooms we slept has since been reopened by a local order of nuns and today has 650 pupils. The town was empty but for a few dazed survivors of the genocide.

The town had just been liberated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels and under their escort we would venture into the countryside to chart the progress of the war. The rump government, soon to be overthrown, was holed up in Gitarmama, just to the north; the capital, Kigali, had yet to fall. By then most of the town's Tutsi inhabitants had been slaughtered and the Hutus had fled before the swiftly advancing rebels. In June last year I was one of a small band of journalists encamped in an abandoned girls' school in Nyanza, once Rwanda's royal capital. Commerce is again thriving behind the freshly-painted store fronts, and in the collonaded passageways groups of women are busy at their sewing machines The dirt roads are thronged. They added that Mr Obasanjo and 11 others had been given life sentences. Nyanza - Other than some empty shops and broken windows, there is little to indicate the cataclysmic events that overtook this southern Rwandan town just over a year ago.

Chief Abiola has been detained in Abuja for the past year after he declared himself the elected president.The detention of Mr Obasanjo, a Commonwealth eminent person and the only Nigerian military leader to hand over power voluntarily to an elected government, has provoked the loudest international outcry.Nigerian newspapers have reported that 14 people were sentenced to death for their alleged role in plotting a coup d'etat. "In as much as our doors are open to foreign investors, we will not be dictated to by anybody nor allow our sovereignty to be subjected to slavery," he told the oil executives.Britain renewed its criticism yesterday, when the foreign office minister Jeremy Hanley, speaking at question time, said "it is difficult to see how Nigeria can play a full role in Commonwealth affairs until she puts her house in order."Mr Hanley's statement echoed previous comments by British officials, such as Baroness Chalker, suggesting that Nigeria might not be welcome at the November Commonwealth summit in Auckland.A team from the Commonwealth states, headed by former Canadian foreign minister, Flora MacDonald, is in Nigeria to compile a report on the human rights situation to present to that meeting.General Abacha, who came to power in November 1993, has pledged to announce his plans to return the country to civilian rule on 1 October.Appeals for clemency of the 40 detainees have poured in from the Pope, Western capitals, and international human rights groups as relatives and associates dispatched prominent envoys to Abuja, the capital, to beg for mercy.Nigerian human rights groups said they feared the military regime could begin today to execute up to 14 detainees, and send the remainder, including Mr Obasanjo, to prison to serve long jail terms."The indications are that they could move ahead with the executions," said Beko Ransome-Kuti, the head of the Campaign for Democracy, whose northern organiser, Sani Shehu, was believed to among the convicted.General Abacha's Provisional Ruling Council, which must confirm the convictions announced on 14 July, was expected to meet today in Abuja.Nigeria has been in virtual crisis since June 1993, when General Abacha's predecessor, General Ibrahim Babangida, annulled presidential elections which were declared free and fair by international observers and were apparently won by Chief Moshood Abiola, a flamboyant millionaire philanthropist. He criticised "the unfriendly posture of the British government and its general attitude" towards the government and people of Nigeria. The government said an official investigation would begin immediately.Mr Morais said members of his yacht club rescued a dozen injured navy cadets who swam from the island..

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