The tragedy is that the RPF-led dictatorial government seems to be blind to the realities of the people's situation and to the lesson of history that sooner or later the people will be free. Initiated in north-western Rwanda, the coercive and compulsory villagization program is being extended to other provinces, particularly in Kibungo, Gitarama and Cyangugu, not affected by the fighting between the RPF's army and the rebels. In those areas, the villagization involves the households abandoning their existing landholdings and being allocated new holdings by the village council, the legal entity in which land rights are vested and which always gives the best land to RPF members and government officials and supporters. Sites for the villages are chosen by provincial and local government administration. What the peasantry themselves think about the plan and their quality of life in government's villages is completely ignored and doesn't matter.
Rwandan farmers like to be close to their land.
If the nearest village is 10 miles away it is unlikely the lone farmer will want to move voluntarily from his home and property to a centralized village site. As the concentration of the population in centralized villages increases the distance between the dwellings and farms, all usual households' soil fertilization activities undertaken on near-home farms are halted by the program. This has led to the fall in peasants' food production and revenues. In the end, the villagization program will result in millions of impoverished and landless peasants forced into permanent servitude by becoming farm labourers or labour tenants on large scale farms belonging to RPF members and government's supporters to whom the best agricultural land is allocated. The RDR calls for the total and complete dismantle of all government's rural townships and for their internees to have the immediate, full, safe and unhindered access to their livelihoods outside these rural townships.