title: Castrato

text: Thus the castrati came to supplant both boys (whose voices broke after only a few years) and falsettists (whose voices were weaker and less reliable) from the top line in such choirs. Women were banned by the Pauline dictum "mulieres in ecclesiis taceant" ("let women keep silent in the churches"; see I Corinthians, ch. 14, v. 34).


title: Castrato

text: The Italian castrati were often rumored to have unusually long lives, but a 1993 study found that their lifespans were average.


title: Castrato

text: Although the castrato (or musico) predates opera, there is some evidence that castrati had parts in the earliest operas. In the first performance of Monteverdi's "Orfeo" (1607), for example, they played subsidiary roles, including Speranza and (possibly) that of Euridice. Although female roles were performed by castrati in some of the papal states, this was increasingly rare; by 1680, they had supplanted "normal" male voices in lead roles, and retained their position as "primo uomo" for about a hundred years; an Italian opera not featuring at least one renowned castrato in a lead part would be doomed to fail. Because of the popularity of Italian opera throughout 18th-century Europe (except France), singers such as Ferri, Farinelli, Senesino and Pacchierotti became the first operatic superstars, earning enormous fees and hysterical public adulation. The strictly hierarchical organisation of "opera seria" favoured their high voices as symbols of heroic virtue, though they were frequently mocked for their strange appearance and bad acting. In his 1755 "Reflections upon theatrical expression in tragedy", Roger Pickering wrote:


title: Castrato

text: Farinelli drew every Body to the Haymarket. What a Pipe! What Modulation! What Extasy to the Ear! But, Heavens! What Clumsiness! What Stupidity! What Offence to the Eye! Reader, if of the City, thou mayest probably have seen in the Fields of Islington or Mile-End or, If thou art in the environs of St James', thou must have observed in the Park with what Ease and Agility a cow, heavy with calf, has rose up at the command of the Milk-woman's foot: thus from the mossy bank sprang the DIVINE FARINELLI.


title: Castrato

text: The means by which future singers were prepared could lead to premature death. To prevent the child from experiencing the intense pain of castration, many were inadvertently administered lethal doses of opium or some other narcotic, or were killed by overlong compression of the carotid artery in the neck (intended to render them unconscious during the castration procedure).


title: Castrato

text: During the 18th century itself, the music historian Charles Burney was sent from pillar to post in search of places where "the operation" was carried out:


title: Castrato

text: I enquired throughout Italy at what place boys were chiefly qualified for singing by castration, but could get no certain intelligence. I was told at Milan that it was at Venice; at Venice that it was at Bologna; but at Bologna the fact was denied, and I was referred to Florence; from Florence to Rome, and from Rome I was sent to Naples ... it is said that there are shops in Naples with this inscription: 'QUI SI CASTRANO RAGAZZI' ("Here boys are castrated"); but I was utterly unable to see or hear of any such shops during my residence in that city.


title: Castrato

text: The training of the boys was rigorous. The regimen of one singing school in Rome (c. 1700) consisted of one hour of singing difficult and awkward pieces, one hour practising trills, one hour practising ornamented passaggi, one hour of singing exercises in their teacher's presence and in front of a mirror so as to avoid unnecessary movement of the body or facial grimaces, and one hour of literary study; all this, moreover, before lunch. After, half an hour would be devoted to musical theory, another to writing counterpoint, an hour copying down the same from dictation, and another hour of literary study. During the remainder of the day, the young castrati had to find time to practice their harpsichord playing, and to compose vocal music, either sacred or secular depending on their inclination. This demanding schedule meant that, if sufficiently talented, they were able to make a debut in their mid-teens with a perfect technique and a voice of a flexibility and power no woman or ordinary male singer could match.


title: Castrato

text: In the 1720s and 1730s, at the height of the craze for these voices, it has been estimated that upwards of 4,000 boys were castrated annually in the service of art. Many came from poor homes and were castrated by their parents in the hope that their child might be successful and lift them from poverty (this was the case with Senesino). There are, though, records of some young boys asking to be operated on to preserve their voices (e.g. Caffarelli, who was from a wealthy family: his grandmother gave him the income from two vineyards to pay for his studies). Caffarelli was also typical of many castrati in being famous for tantrums on and off-stage, and for amorous adventures with noble ladies. Some, as described by Casanova, preferred gentlemen (noble or otherwise). Only a small percentage of boys castrated to preserve their voices had successful careers on the operatic stage; the better "also-rans" sang in cathedral or church choirs, but because of their marked appearance and the ban on their marrying, there was little room for them in society outside a musical context.


title: Castrato

text: The castrati came in for a great amount of scurrilous and unkind abuse, and as their fame increased, so did the hatred of them. They were often castigated as malign creatures who lured men into homosexuality. There were homosexual castrati, as Casanova's accounts of 18th-century Italy bear witness. He mentions meeting an abbé whom he took for a girl in disguise, only later discovering that "she" was a famous castrato. In Rome in 1762 he attended a performance at which the prima donna was a castrato, "the favourite pathic" of Cardinal Borghese, who dined every evening with his protector. From his behaviour on stage "it was obvious that he hoped to inspire the love of those who liked him as a man, and probably would not have done so as a woman".


title: Castrato

text: By the late 18th century, changes in operatic taste and social attitudes spelled the end for castrati. They lingered on past the end of the "ancien régime" (which their style of opera parallels), and two of their number, Pacchierotti and Crescentini, performed before Napoleon. The last great operatic castrato was Giovanni Battista Velluti (1781–1861), who performed the last operatic castrato role ever written: Armando in "Il crociato in Egitto" by Meyerbeer (Venice, 1824). Soon after this they were replaced definitively as the first men of the operatic stage by a new breed of heroic tenor, as first incarnated by the Frenchman Gilbert-Louis Duprez, the earliest so-called "king of the high Cs". His successors have included such singers as Enrico Tamberlik, Jean de Reszke, Francesco Tamagno, Enrico Caruso, Giovanni Martinelli, Beniamino Gigli, Jussi Björling, Franco Corelli and Luciano Pavarotti, among others.


title: Castrato

text: After the unification of Italy in 1861, "eviration" was officially made illegal (the new Italian state had adopted the previous penal code of the Kingdom of Sardinia which expressly forbade the practice). In 1878, Pope Leo XIII prohibited the hiring of new castrati by the church: only in the Sistine Chapel and in other papal basilicas in Rome did a few castrati linger. A group photo of the Sistine Choir taken in 1898 shows that by then only six remained (plus the "Direttore Perpetuo", the fine soprano castrato Domenico Mustafà), and in 1902 a ruling was extracted from Pope Leo that no further castrati should be admitted. The official end to the castrati came on St. Cecilia's Day, 22 November 1903, when the new pope, Pius X, issued his "motu proprio", "Tra le Sollecitudini" ('Amongst the Cares'), which contained this instruction: "Whenever ... it is desirable to employ the high voices of sopranos and contraltos, these parts must be taken by boys, according to the most ancient usage of the Church."


title: Castrato

text: The last Sistine castrato to survive was Alessandro Moreschi, the only castrato to have made solo recordings. While an interesting historical record, these discs of his give us only a glimpse of the castrato voice – although he had been renowned as "The Angel of Rome" at the beginning of his career, some would say he was past his prime when the recordings were made in 1902 and 1904 and he never attempted to sing opera. Domenico Salvatori, a castrato who was contemporary with Moreschi, made some ensemble recordings with him but has no surviving solo recordings. The recording technology of the day was not of modern high quality. Salvatori died in 1909; Moreschi retired officially in March 1913, and died in 1922.


title: Castrato

text: The Catholic Church's involvement in the castrato phenomenon has long been controversial, and there have recently been calls for it to issue an official apology for its role. As early as 1748, Pope Benedict XIV tried to ban castrati from churches, but such was their popularity at the time that he realised that doing so might result in a drastic decline in church attendance.


title: Castrato

text: The rumours of another castrato sequestered in the Vatican for the personal delectation of the Pontiff until as recently as 1959 have been proven false. The singer in question was a pupil of Moreschi's, Domenico Mancini, such a successful imitator of his teacher's voice that even Lorenzo Perosi, Direttore Perpetuo of the Sistine Choir from 1898 to 1956 and a strenuous opponent of the practice of castrato singers, thought he was a castrato. Mancini was in fact a moderately skilful falsettist and professional double bass player.


title: Castrato

text: So-called "natural" or "endocrinological castrati" are born with hormonal anomalies, such as Klinefelter's syndrome and Kallmann's syndrome, or have undergone unusual physical or medical events during their early lives that reproduce the vocal effects of castration without being castrated. In simple terms, a male can retain his child voice if it never changes during puberty. The retained voice can be the treble voice shared by both sexes in childhood and is the same as boy soprano voice. But as evidence shows, many castratos, such as Senesino and Caffarelli, were actually altos (mezzo-soprano) – not sopranos.


title: Castrato

text: Jimmy Scott, Radu Marian and Javier Medina are examples of this type of high male voice via endocrinological diseases. Michael Maniaci is somewhat different, in that he has no hormonal or other anomalies, but claims that his voice did not "break" in the usual manner, leaving him still able to sing in the soprano register. Other uncastrated male adults sing soprano, generally using some form of falsetto but in a much higher range than most countertenors. Examples are Aris Christofellis, Jörg Waschinski, and Ghio Nannini.


title: Castrato

text: However, it is believed the castrati possessed more of a tenorial chest register (the aria "Navigante che non spera" in Leonardo Vinci's opera "Il Medo", written for Farinelli, requires notes down to C, 131 Hz). Similar low-voiced singing can be heard from the jazz vocalist Jimmy Scott, whose range matches approximately that used by female blues singers. High-pitched singer Jordan Smith has demonstrated having more of a tenorial chest register.


title: Castrato

text: Actor Chris Colfer has stated in interviews that when his voice began to change at puberty, he sang in a high voice "constantly" in an effort to retain his range. Actor and singer Alex Newell has soprano range. Voice actor Walter Tetley may or may not have been a "castrato"; Bill Scott, a co-worker of Tetley's during their later work in television, once half-jokingly quipped that Tetley's mother "had him fixed" to protect the child star's voice-acting career. Tetley did never personally divulge the exact reason for his condition, which left him with the voice of a preteen boy for his entire adult life. Botanist George Washington Carver was noted for his high voice, believed to be the result of pertussis and croup infections in his childhood that stunted his growth.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: Dominic "Dom" Toretto is a fictional character and one of the two main protagonists of the "Fast & Furious" franchise. He is portrayed by Vin Diesel and first appeared on film, alongside the other protagonist Brian O'Conner, in "The Fast and the Furious" (2001). Dominic was created by screenwriter Gary Scott Thompson, who was inspired by an article on street racing that was published in the May 1998 issue of "Vibe" magazine, while Diesel was heavily sought after to play the character.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: As the patriarch of a group of street racers, Dom acts as an influential voice, being forced into the role as primary caregiver following his father's untimely passing. As the leader, he initially worked as an auto mechanic, but eventually progressed to orchestrating carjackings, a multi-million dollar heist, and illicit jobs for government agencies.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: Dominic is gruff, strong, and possesses a volatile temper, especially when his family is in danger. He preaches morality and loyalty, and in many cases is also seen to be affectionate and religious. He is married to Letty Ortiz, with whom he raises a son. He is also implied to be the group's strongest and most skilled racer, a title that is challenged persistently by Brian.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: The role propelled Diesel to become a bankable Hollywood star. He won the 2002 and 2014 MTV Movie Awards for Best On-Screen Team with Paul Walker for his performances. Diesel has served as executive producer for the franchise's later installments.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: "The Fast and the Furious" film series was inspired by an article on street racing, "Racer X", that appeared in the May 1998 issue of Vibe magazine. Having witnessed his father's death in a stock car race, Dom is left with the responsibility of taking care of his younger sister, Mia Toretto, and leading the racers dependent on him. Vin Diesel was reportedly paid $2.5 million to star in "The Fast and the Furious" and $15 million to star in and produce "Fast Five".


title: Dominic Toretto

text: Dominic Toretto is a fearless street racer, auto mechanic, and ex-convict. The character is the older brother of Jakob and Mia Toretto. Throughout the series, Dom's crew has perpetrated many high-speed semi hijackings, stealing millions of dollars in merchandise. He has spent most of his life running from the law. He is married to Letty Ortiz, his longtime wife.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: In the first film, Dom runs his own automotive garage while Mia takes care of the family's grocery store in Echo Park. He also runs his own street race team, which consists of Letty, Vince, Leon, and Jesse. Dominic has a feud with his Vietnamese-American rival Johnny Tran due to a business deal that went sour and Tran catching Dom sleeping with his sister. Unknown to the public, he and his team drive black Honda Civic coupes and stage daring semi hijackings on the freeways, taking home millions of dollars in electronic appliances. He forms a friendship with rookie racer Brian Earl Spilner (Brian O'Conner), who saves him from arrest when the LAPD raid a street race gathering. When showing Brian the 1970 Dodge Charger he had been working with his father before he died, he reveals what happened to the latter: During the last stock car race of the season in 1989, Dominic watched as his father Jack was run off the track by another racer, Kenny Linder, when Linder's car clipped his bumper. Jack was killed instantly when his stock car crashed into the wall at 120 miles per hour and burst into flames. Dominic remembered hearing his father screaming as he burned to death, but the people who witnessed the accident explained that his father had died before his car exploded. Dominic had been the one screaming. A week following the accident, Dominic encountered Linder and when given the opportunity, Dominic attacked Linder, beating him with a wrench. Dominic only intended to hit him once but lost control and kept attacking Linder it until he couldn't lift his arm anymore. The result of Linder's injuries rendered him unable to race, and Dominic was banned for life from the tracks. During the Race Wars, Johnny Tran blames Dominic for a raid by SWAT forces; the SWAT team came into his house, causing disrespect to his family. Dom then attacks him and is promptly led away by Vince, who tells him to "chill out". During a hijacking job gone wrong, Dominic discovers Brian's true identity as undercover LAPD officer named Brian O'Conner. Following a drag race that ends with Dominic's 1970 Dodge Charger getting totalled, Brian hands him the keys to his Toyota Supra, as law enforcement have found out that Toretto has stolen millions in electronics with his crew. Dom ends up escaping to Mexico, while Brian, now a wanted man himself for aiding a known felon, flees the state.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: Dom plays no role in the second film's events, but is only referenced when Brian tells Roman Pearce about him.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: Dom makes a cameo appearance at the end of the film challenging Sean Boswell in a drift race with his gunmetal silver 1970 Plymouth Road Runner, which he won from his late friend Han.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: In "Fast & Furious", Dominic, Letty, and their gang lead a successful hijacking of a gasoline tanker in the Dominican Republic, but he abandons them shortly after to keep the authorities away from them. Dominic returns to L.A. upon hearing of Letty's death at the hands of Fenix Calderon. He and Brian once again team up to take down Mexican drug dealer Arturo Braga, who had ordered Letty's execution following a drug run. He later finds out Brian was the last person who had contact with Letty; this enrages him, and he attacks Brian before the latter explains that Letty came to him for help in clearing Dom's name so he could return to Los Angeles. After successfully extraditing Braga back to the U.S., Dom turns himself in to the authorities and is sentenced to 25 years to life in prison without possibility of early parole. However, the bus carrying him is ambushed by Brian, Mia, Rico and Tego; once Dom is sprung from the bus wreckage, the group flees the U.S. as fugitives.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: In the fifth, Dominic reunites with Brian, Mia and Vince in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. They quickly make an enemy of drug lord Hernan Reyes, who has them framed for the murder of three DEA agents during a drug run on a train. As a means to get even with Reyes, Dom and Brian form a team with Roman Pearce, Tej Parker, Han, Gisele Yashar, Rico and Tego to stage a bank heist and steal Reyes' stash of US$100 million in cash. Elite bounty hunter and DSS federal agent Luke Hobbs is sent to Brazil to hunt down and capture Dom and his gang, but when he is ambushed by Reyes' men, during which all of his team are killed, he forms an unlikely alliance with Dom and helps the gang execute their heist. Vince is badly wounded during the gunfight and later succumbs to his injuries. After killing Reyes, Hobbs allows Dom and his gang to leave Brazil with their stash by giving them a 24-hour window; Dom gives Vince's share of the money to his wife and son. Hobbs' partner Elena Neves also leaves the force and becomes Dominic's new love interest.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: In the sixth film, Dom once again encounters Hobbs, who offers him a job to help him hunt down mercenary Owen Shaw and his crime syndicate; Hobbs also reveals that Letty is alive and working for Shaw. Dom and Brian reassemble their gang (minus Rico and Tego, both of whom are in Monaco) in London for the mission, in exchange for a full pardon for all members and Letty's safe return. During the chase, Dom is shot by Letty, and he later discovers that she is suffering from amnesia as a result of the explosion that nearly killed her in "Fast & Furious". He saves her from falling to her death while the gang stops Shaw aboard a military tank on a bridge in Spain. Shaw, however, reveals his backup plan of kidnapping Mia, and uses her as leverage in order to be released from custody and allowed to leave with the top-secret microchip that was removed from the tank. Despite the death of Gisele, Dom and his gang defeat Shaw and kill his men while saving Mia and the microchip in a daring chase at a NATO military airfield. Hobbs grants their pardons, and Dom and his gang move back to his home in L.A. Seeing Dom and Letty back together for good, Elena bids him farewell and returns to working with Hobbs. In a post credit scene, Owen Shaw's elder brother, Deckard Shaw, kills Han in Tokyo and calls Dom with a threatening message.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: In "Furious 7", it is revealed that Owen Shaw survived the events of the previous film but is comatose, and his older brother Deckard Shaw has gone rogue and is hunting Dom's team. Some time after the events of "Tokyo Drift" and "Fast and Furious 6", Dom and Letty have returned to L.A., but Letty later breaks up with Dom in order to find herself again after her memory loss. Meanwhile, Shaw kills Han in Tokyo (bridging the story between this film and "Tokyo Drift") and sends a bomb to Dom's house, blowing it up. After retrieving Han's body from Sean Boswell in Tokyo, a revenge-driven Dom decides to take Shaw down alone, but is stopped by a Covert Ops leader and Hobbs' friend Mr. Nobody. Nobody offers Dom a way to hunt Shaw through a software named "God's Eye"; however he also must save its creator, a hacker named Ramsey, from terrorist leader Mose Jakande and his men. Agreeing to the deal, Dominic, Brian, Letty, Tej and Roman lead a daring rescue through the mountains of Azerbaijan and succeed in liberating Ramsey from her captors. Ramsey tells them that she sent God's Eye to her friend Zafar in Abu Dhabi. After a successful retrieval of the God's Eye (that also involved Dom and Brian jumping a vehicle through three buildings), they find Shaw's hideout, but are ambushed by Jakande's men; many of Nobody's men are killed and Nobody himself is gravely injured, while Dom and Brian barely escape. Afterwards, Dom decides to take down Shaw and Jakande on their home turf in L.A. Dom and Shaw end up in an intense fight on the rooftop of a parking garage, while Brian and the others distract Jakande and Ramsey initiates a hack to shut down God's Eye for good. They succeeded in doing so, and Jakande is killed when Dom hooks a bag of grenades onto his chopper (which Hobbs shoots) before crashing his vehicle, causing his friends to believe that he died in the process. Letty then reveals that she has regained her memories of their relationship (which also reveals that they were married somewhere in between the story of "Los Bandoleros" and "Fast & Furious)", and Dom recovers from being unconscious. After this, Brian decides to retire from the crew in order to spend time with his family. Dom leaves without saying goodbye, prompting Brian to catch up to him at an intersection, and the two have one last drive before parting ways.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: The final drive scene was done to give Brian's role a clean retirement and a send-off after the actor who portrays him, Paul Walker, died in a single vehicle accident back in 2013.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: In the eighth film, Dom and Letty are now living in Cuba, where Dom is approached by a mysterious, seductive woman known as Cipher. After betraying his team during an operation in Berlin to steal an EMP device they were assigned to recover, it is revealed that Cipher — the true mastermind behind both the attempted creation of the Nightshade device in "Fast & Furious 6" and the near-theft of the God's Eye hacking device in "Furious 7" — has captured Elena and Dom's previously-unknown son, using them as blackmail tools to ensure Dom's cooperation, later letting her right-hand man and second-in-command, Connor Rhodes to kill Elena. Despite Cipher's dismissal of Dom's views on family and her access to multiple surveillance systems, Dom manages to use his contacts to pass on a message to Magdalene Shaw, Deckard and Owen's mother, allowing her to retrieve her sons and send them aboard Cipher's plane via a tracking device slipped into Dom's necklace. Once the Shaws retrieve his son, Dom kills Rhodes, avenging Elena's death before rejoining his team and destroying a Russian nuclear submarine that Cipher was attempting to steal. Although Cipher escapes, Dom vows to Elena to protect their new son, naming the boy Brian after his brother-in-law and best friend.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: A now-retired Dom, who is raising little Brian on a farm with Letty, is called by Mr. Nobody to stop a genocide mission led by Dom's estranged younger brother Jakob. It is revealed that Dom banished Jakob from the family because he believed that he caused their father's death by sabotaging the stock car's engine, causing it to burst into flames when it crashed. Dom and Jakob fight each other several times in the film, with Jakob going as far as to wanting Dom to either live under his shadow or get killed. Jakob reveals to Dom that he tampered with the car's engine because their father told him to, as he was trying to throw the race to clear some debts, but his plan went wrong when Kenny Linder hit car with his by using his dirty tactics. Towards the end of the film, however, Dom and Jakob reconcile and team up in the film's final battle in an attempt to defeat Cipher, although she escapes once more. As a way of making amends to Jakob, who had been branded a rogue agent, Dom gives him the keys to his car - just as Brian did for Dom several years ago - allowing him to evade custody.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: Dominic has been described as "a gruff but affectionate father to his loyal pack of renegades, providing them with barbecue, protection, and a rough moral code to live by." Vin Diesel has described Dominic as "a character who is strong, who is a caretaker." In contrast to Brian's estranged relationship with his father, Dominic is shown to "put family first" and be very protective of Mia. He is also implied to be religious, insisting that all members in a dinner table say grace and that the first person to take a bite must bless the meal.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: In "The Fast and the Furious", Dominic's volatile temper stems from a painful incident during his teenage years, when his father, a stock car racer, was killed in a race after a driver named Kenny Linder accidentally sent him to the wall at 120 mph. Distraught by his father's death, Dominic assaulted Linder a week later with a torque wrench and left him hospitalized with severe head injuries. Dominic served time in prison and was banned from racing for the attack. He nearly replicates the action while fighting Hobbs in "Fast Five", only to (purposely) miss Hobbs' head by an inch when Mia begs him to stop.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: In "Fast Five", Dominic recalls the influence his father had on him. His father would help Mia with her homework everyday and sending her to bed, he would stay up late reading the next chapter, to make sure he could help her the next day. On Sundays, the family would attend church and host a barbecue for the neighborhood; those who did not attend church would not be allowed at the barbecue.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: However, Dominic is also obsessed with racing. In the first film, he says: "I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters: not the mortgage, not the store, not my team and all their bullshit. For those ten seconds or less, I'm free." In "The Fate of the Furious", Cipher repeats a similar phrase to Dominic to question his loyalty to his family.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: Over the course of the series Dom exhibits the strength, stamina, and reflexes of a world-class athlete. He is also an excellent marksman and hand-to-hand combatant.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: In four of the films, Dom drove his deceased father's black 1970 Dodge Charger. In the first film, Dom tells Brian that he and his father built the 900 horsepower car, but that he had never driven it, because it "scares the shit out of [him]." Dom uses it to help Brian by attacking one of Tran's henchmen. He later races Brian's Supra with it; however, he totals it when he collides with a truck.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: In "Fast & Furious" he sees that Letty has rebuilt it for him, as she was hoping that he would return to the United States. Later in the film, Dom takes it to Mexico and shields Brian's car with it, but destroys it by running into a stack of propane canisters in the tunnels. In the final scene of the film, Brian is shown to have rebuilt it, and Dom recognizes the sound of the engine while riding in a prison bus. In "Fast Five", it is shown that Brian brakes in front of the bus, causing the bus to collide with it and flip. Dom uses it throughout the film to win cars to test for their vault heist. Meanwhile, Hobbs uses it to track the location of Dom's gang by having his men check camera feeds for a 1970 Charger. When Hobbs comes to arrest Dom, he crashes his Gurkha F5 into his Charger, cutting it in half, which triggers a fight between the pair.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: In "Furious 7", near the end of the movie he goes to his home which was recently blown up by Deckard Shaw, and in the garage is his Charger covered up. He uncovers it revealing the slightly different new look. He takes the Charger to the top of a rooftop where he faces Shaw in a game of chicken. When the parking lot is later collapsing due to missiles, Toretto ramps it off the building destroying it yet again.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: The car goes through some changes. In the first film, it is chrome trimmed, while in the fourth film it is black trimmed, with an extra grill cover. In the fifth film it is matte black, with black wheels and the supercharger removed. In the seventh film, Torretto's Charger has the supercharger again. The car still has black trim but is no longer matte black but metallic black. Also a different set of rims. In F9, it once again resembles the first film with Silver Trim.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: In "Fast & Furious 6", Dom gives his nephew Jack a diecast replica of his black Charger, hoping to keep him away from Brian's habits of favoring imports. Later in the film, Dom drives a maroon Dodge Charger Daytona, which is acquired by Tej Parker at a car auction in London. While it is not the same car as his signature black Charger, it is a direct nod to The Charger.


title: Dominic Toretto

text: In "The Fate of the Furious", Toretto drives an armoured version of his usual Charger in the film's final confrontation.


title: Kigali

text: Kigali () is the capital and largest city of Rwanda. It is near the nation's geographic centre in a region of rolling hills, with a series of valleys and ridges joined by steep slopes. As a primate city, Kigali has been Rwanda's economic, cultural, and transport hub since it became the capital following independence from Belgian rule in 1962.


title: Kigali

text: In an area controlled by the Kingdom of Rwanda from the 17th century and then by the German Empire, the city was founded in 1907 when Richard Kandt, the colonial resident, chose the site for his headquarters, citing its central location, views and security. Foreign merchants began to trade in the city during the German era, and Kandt opened some government-run schools for Tutsi Rwandan students. Belgium took control of Rwanda and Burundi during World War I, forming the mandate of Ruanda-Urundi. Kigali remained the seat of colonial administration for Rwanda but Ruanda-Urundi's capital was at Usumbura (now Bujumbura) in Burundi and Kigali remained a small city with a population of just 6,000 at the time of independence.


title: Kigali

text: Kigali grew slowly during the following decades. It was not initially directly affected by the Rwandan Civil War between government forces and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which began in 1990. However, in April 1994 Rwanda's President Juvénal Habyarimana was killed when his aircraft was shot down near Kigali. His death was followed by the Rwandan genocide, with Hutu extremists loyal to the interim government killing an estimated 500,000–800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu nationwide. The RPF resumed fighting, ending a cease-fire of more than a year. They gradually took control of most of the country and seized Kigali on 4 July 1994. Post-genocide Kigali has experienced rapid population growth, with much of the city rebuilt.


title: Kigali

text: The city of Kigali is one of the five provinces of Rwanda, with boundaries set in 2006. It is divided into three districts—Gasabo, Kicukiro, and Nyarugenge—which historically had control of significant areas of local governance. Reforms in January 2020 transferred much of the districts' power to the city-wide council. The city also hosts the main residence and offices of the president of Rwanda and most government ministries. The largest contributor to Kigali's gross domestic product is the service sector, but a significant proportion of the population works in agriculture including small-scale subsistence farming. Attracting international visitors is a priority for city authorities, including leisure tourism, conferences and exhibitions.


title: Kigali

text: The name Kigali comes from the Kinyarwanda prefix ki- combined with the adjective suffix -gali, which means wide or broad. This was originally applied to Mount Kigali, most likely because the mountain itself was broad and wide, with the city later being named after the mountain. According to Rwandan oral history, the name originated in the 14th century. Rwandan scholar Alexis Kagame, who did extensive research into the country's oral history and traditions, wrote that the name Kigali came into use after King Cyilima I Rugwe completed a conquest of the area. The legend states that Rugwe viewed the territory from the top of a hill and said "burya iki gihugu ni kigali", which translates to "this country is vast".


title: Kigali

text: The earliest inhabitants of what is now Rwanda were the Twa, a group of aboriginal pygmy hunter-gatherers who settled the area between 8000 and 3000 BC and remain in the country today. They were followed between 700 BC and AD 1500 by a number of Bantu groups, including the Hutu and Tutsi, who began clearing forests for agriculture. According to oral history, the Kingdom of Rwanda was founded in the 14th century on the shores of Lake Muhazi, around east of modern Kigali. The early kingdom included Kigali but it was a small state at this point in its history with larger and more powerful neighbours, Bugesera and Gisaka. A member of the Gisaka dynasty killed Rwanda's king Ruganzu I Bwimba in the 16th century, but Ruganzu's son Cyilima I Rugwe fought back with help from Bugesera and was able to expand Rwanda's territory. In the late 16th or early 17th century, the kingdom of Rwanda was invaded from the north by the Banyoro of modern-day Uganda. The king was forced to flee westward, leaving Kigali and eastern Rwanda in the hands of Bugesera and Gisaka. The formation of a new Rwandan dynasty in the 17th century by the "mwami" (king), Ruganzu II Ndoli, followed by eastward invasions and the conquest of Bugesera, marked the beginning of the Rwandan kingdom's dominance in the area. The capital of the kingdom was at Nyanza, in the south of the country.


title: Kigali

text: The founding of Kigali is generally dated to 1907, when German administrator and explorer Richard Kandt was appointed as the first resident of Rwanda, and established the city as the headquarters. Alexis Kagame promoted an alternative theory that the city was established as a capital under Cyilima I Rugwe in either the 1300s or the 1500s. There is little direct evidence for this, however, and the more recent kings of the pre-colonial era are known to have been based at Nyanza. Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi had been assigned to Germany by the Berlin Conference of 1884, forming part of German East Africa, and Germany established a presence in the country in 1897 with the formation of an alliance with the king, Yuhi V Musinga. Kandt arrived in 1899, to explore Lake Kivu and search for the source of the Nile.


title: Kigali

text: When Germany decided in 1907 to separate the administration of Rwanda from that of Burundi, Kandt was appointed as resident. He chose to make his headquarters in Kigali due to its central location in the country, and also because the site on Nyarugenge Hill afforded good views and security. Kandt's house, located close to the central business district (CBD), was the first European-style house in the city, and remains in use today as the Kandt House Museum of Natural History. Despite a German ordinance written in 1905, which prohibited "non-indigenous natives" from entering Rwanda, Kandt began permitting the entry of foreign traders in 1908, which allowed commercial activity to begin in Rwanda. Kigali's first businesses were established by Greek and Indian merchants, with assistance from Baganda and Swahili people. Items traded included cloth and beads. Commercial activity was limited and there were only around 30 firms in the city by 1914. Kandt also opened government-run schools in Kigali, which began educating Tutsi students.


title: Kigali

text: Belgian forces took control of Rwanda and Burundi during World War I, with Kigali being captured by the Northern Brigade led by Colonel Philippe Molitor on 6 May 1916. The Belgians were granted sovereignty by a League of Nations mandate in 1922, forming the mandatory territory of Ruanda-Urundi. In early 1917, Belgium attempted to assert direct rule on the mandate, placing King Musinga under arrest and sidelining Rwandans in the judiciary. In this period, Kigali was one of two provincial capitals, alongside Gisenyi. An agricultural-labour shortage caused by the recruitment of locals to assist the European armies during the war, the plundering of food by soldiers, and torrential rains which destroyed crops, led to a severe famine at the start of the Belgian administration. The famine, combined with the difficulty of governing the complex Rwandan society, prompted the Belgians to re-establish the German-style indirect rule at the end of 1917. Musinga was restored to his throne at Nyanza, with Kigali remaining home to the colonial administration. This arrangement persisted until the mid-1920s, but from 1924 the Belgians began once more to sideline the monarchy, this time permanently. Belgium took over control of dispute resolution, appointment of officials and collection of taxes. Kigali remained relatively small through the remainder of the colonial era, as much of the administration took place in Ruanda-Urundi's capital Usumbura, now known as Bujumbura in Burundi. Usumbura's population exceeded 50,000 during the 1950s and was the mandate's only European-style city, while Kigali's population remained at around 6,000 until independence in 1962.


title: Kigali

text: Kigali became the capital upon Rwandan independence in 1962. Two other cities were considered: Nyanza, as the traditional seat of the "mwami", and the southern city of Butare (known as Astrida under the Belgians), due to its prominence as a centre of intellect and religion. The authorities eventually chose Kigali because of its more central location. The city grew steadily during the following decades; in the early 1970s the population was 25,000 with only five paved roads, and by 1991 it was around 250,000. On 5 July 1973 there was a bloodless military coup, in which minister of defence Juvénal Habyarimana overthrew ruling president Grégoire Kayibanda. Military officers had gathered in Kigali for a military tattoo to commemorate Independence Day a few days earlier, and they began occupying government buildings from dawn on 4 July. Businesses closed for a few days, and troops patrolled across the city, but the coup was bloodless and life continued as normal, historian Gérard Prunier describing the reaction as "widespread popular relief". According to a US Department of State diplomatic cable sent shortly afterwards, the disruption following the coup was short-lived and the army had left the streets by 11 July.


title: Kigali

text: Kigali was not directly affected during the first three years of the 1990–1994 Rwandan Civil War, although the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) did come close to attacking the city in February 1993. In December of the same year, following the signing of the Arusha Accords, a United Nations peacekeeping force was established in the city, and the RPF were granted use of a building in the city for their diplomats and soldiers. In April 1994 President Habyarimana was assassinated when his plane was shot down near Kigali International Airport. Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira was also killed in the attack. This was the catalyst for the Rwandan genocide, in which 500,000–800,000 Tutsi and politically moderate Hutu were killed in well-planned attacks on the orders of the interim government. Opposition politicians based in Kigali were killed on the first day of the genocide, and the city then became the setting for fierce fighting between the army and the RPF including at the latter's base. The RPF began attacking from the north of the country, and gradually took control of most of Rwanda between April and June. After encircling Kigali and cutting off its supply routes, they began fighting for the city itself in mid-June. The government forces had superior manpower and weapons but the RPF fought tactically, and were able to exploit the fact that the government forces were concentrating on the genocide rather than the fight for Kigali. The RPF took control of Kigali on 4 July, a date now commemorated as Liberation Day, a Rwandan national holiday.


title: Kigali

text: Since the war and genocide the city has experienced rapid population growth as a result of migration from other areas, as well as a high birth rate. Buildings that were heavily damaged during the fighting have been demolished, much of the city has been rebuilt, and modern office buildings and infrastructure now exist across the city. A masterplan, adopted by the city and the government in 2013 and supported by international finance and labour, seeks to establish Kigali as a decentralised modern city by 2040. The development has been accompanied by forced eviction of residents in informal housing zones, however, and groups such as Human Rights Watch have accused the government of removing poor people and children from the city's streets and moving them to detention centres.


title: Kigali

text: Kigali is located in the centre of Rwanda, at 1°57′S 30°4′E. Like the rest of Rwanda it uses Central Africa Time, and is two hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC+02:00) throughout the year. The city is coterminous with the province of Kigali, one of the five provinces of Rwanda introduced in 2006 as part of a restructuring of local government in the country. The city has boundaries with the Northern, Eastern and Southern provinces. It is divided into three administrative districts—Nyarugenge in the south west, Kicukiro in the south east, and Gasabo, which occupies the northern half of the city's territory. The built-up urban area covers about 70 per cent of the municipal boundaries. Kigali lies in a region of rolling hills, with a series of valleys and ridges joined by steep slopes. It is situated between Mount Kigali and Mount Jali, both of which have elevations of more than above sea level, while the lowest areas of the city have an altitude of . Geologically, Kigali is in a granitic and metasedimentary region, with lateritic soils on the hills and alluvial soils in the valleys.


title: Kigali

text: The Nyabarongo River, part of the upper headwaters of the Nile, forms the western and southern borders of the administrative city of Kigali, although this river lies somewhat outside the built-up urban area. The largest river running through the city is the Nyabugogo River, which flows south from Lake Muhazi before flowing west between Mount Kigali and Mount Jali, and draining into the Nyabarongo. The Nyabugogo is fed by various smaller streams throughout the city, and its drainage basin contains most of Kigali's territory, other than areas in the south which outflow directly to the Nyabarongo. The rivers are flanked by wetlands, which act as a water store and flood protection for the city, although these are under threat from agriculture and development. The "Umusambi Village" is a restored marshland in Kigali that serves as a shelter for vulnerable grey crowned cranes.


title: Kigali

text: Kigali's central business district (CBD), sometimes known in English by the Kinyarwanda term "mu mujyi" ("in town"), is on Nyarugenge Hill and was the site of the original city founded by Richard Kandt in 1907. The house that Kandt lived in is now the Kandt House Museum of Natural History. The CBD is situated towards the western edge of the built-up area, as the terrain to the east was more suitable for development of the expanding city than the high slopes of Mount Kigali to the west. Several of Rwanda's tallest buildings, including the 20-storey Kigali City Tower, are located in the CBD, as are the headquarters of the country's largest banks and businesses. Other buildings in the CBD include the upmarket Serena, Marriott and Mille Collines hotels, the University Teaching Hospital of Kigali, the national university's College of Science and Technology, and government buildings such as the National Bank of Rwanda and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning.


title: Kigali

text: To the south west of the CBD, and also on the Nyarugenge Hill, is the suburb of Nyamirambo. This was the second part of the city to be settled, being built in the 1920s by the Belgian colonial government as a home for civil servants and Swahili traders. The latter group were mostly members of the Islamic faith, which led to Nyamirambo being known as the "Muslim Quarter". Nyamirambo's Green Mosque ("Masjid al-Fatah") is the oldest mosque in Kigali, dating to the 1930s. Travel publisher Rough Guides described Nyamirambo in 2015 as "Kigali's coolest neighbourhood", citing its multi-cultural status and an active nightlife, which is not found in much of the rest of the city. North of Nyamirambo, and west of the CBD is Nyabugogo. Situated at the lowest part of the city, in the valley of the eponymous Nyabugogo River, Nyabugogo is home to Kigali's principal bus and share taxi station, with vehicles departing for numerous domestic and international destinations.


title: Kigali

text: The remainder of Kigali's suburbs lie to the east of the CBD, with an urban sprawl spanning the many hills and ridges. Kiyovu is the closest, on the eastern slopes of Nyarugenge Hill. The higher part of Kiyovu, to the south of main road KN3, has been home to wealthy foreign residents and Rwandans since colonial times, with large houses and high-end restaurants. The residence of the Rwandan president is located in this area. The lower part of Kiyovu, north of the main road, consisted until 2008 of informal settlements that had formed after independence, when strict residence rules were relaxed. The houses in lower Kiyovu were expropriated by the government in 2008 with residents compensated or relocated to other areas, including to a purpose-built estate in the Batsinda neighbourhood. The government has plans to create a new business district in lower Kiyovu to complement the existing CBD, although as of late 2017 there had been only a handful of buildings erected there. Other eastern suburbs include Kacyiru, home to most government departments and the office of the president; Gisozi, where the Kigali Genocide Memorial is located; Nyarutarama, an affluent suburb housing the city's only golf course; Kimihurura; Remera and Kanombe, from the CBD on the eastern edge of the city, where Kigali International Airport is located. Kigali has been ranked the "cleanest city in Africa" in recent years.


title: Kigali

text: Like the rest of Rwanda, Kigali has a temperate tropical highland climate, with temperatures that are cooler than typical for equatorial countries because of its high elevation. Under the Köppen climate classification, Kigali is in the tropical savanna climate ("Aw") zone, straddling the subtropical highland climate.


title: Kigali

text: The city has an average daily temperature range between , with little variation through the year. There are two rainy seasons annually, from February to June and from September to December. These are separated by two dry seasons: the major one from June to September, during which there is often no rain at all, and a shorter and less severe one from December to February. The wettest month is April, with an average rainfall of , while the driest month is July. Global warming has caused a change in the pattern of the rainy seasons. According to a report by the Strategic Foresight Group, change in climate has reduced the number of rainy days experienced during a year, but has also caused an increase in frequency of torrential rains. Strategic Foresight also characterise Rwanda as a rapidly warming country, with an increase in average temperature of between 0.7 °C to 0.9 °C over the 50 years to 2013.


title: Kigali

text: As of the 2012 Rwandan census, the population of Kigali was 1,132,686, of which 859,332 were urban residents. The population density was . At the time of independence in 1962, Kigali had 6,000 inhabitants, consisting primarily of those associated with the Belgian colonial residency. It grew considerably after being named as the independent nation's capital, although it remained a relatively small city until the 1970s due to government policies restricting rural-to-urban migration. The population reached 115,000 by 1978, and 235,000 by 1991. The city lost a large fraction of its people during the 1994 genocide, including those killed and those who fled to neighbouring countries. From 1995 the economy began to recover and large numbers of long-term Tutsi refugees returned from Uganda. Many of these refugees settled in Kigali and other urban areas, due to difficulty in obtaining land in other parts of the country. This phenomenon, coupled with a high birth rate and increased rural-to-urban migration, meant that Kigali reattained its previous size quite quickly and began to grow even more rapidly than before. The population exceeded 600,000 in 2002, and in the 2012 census had almost doubled to 1.13 million, although this was in part because the administrative boundaries of the city had been expanded.


title: Kigali

text: As of the 2012 census, 51.7 per cent of residents were male. The Rwanda Environment Management Authority hypothesised that the high male-to-female ratio was due to a tendency for men to migrate to the city in search of work outside the agricultural sector, while their wives remained in a rural home. The population is young, with 73 per cent of residents being less than 30 years old, and 94 per cent under the age of 50. The city has a higher proportion of 14–35 year olds than the Rwanda average, with 50.3 per cent versus 39.6 per cent nationwide. Children between birth and seventeen (i.e. < 18) years of age have a below-average share of the total, with 39.6 per cent against 47.7 per cent nationally. These differences are attributed by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR) to the migration of working-age Rwandans from rural to urban areas. Similarly, Kigali has a lower level of over-60s, with 2.6 per cent, than the Rwanda average of 4.9 per cent, also likely reflecting the tendency for non-working-age inhabitants to live rurally. In 2014, the proportion of people classified as living in poverty within Kigali was 15 per cent, compared with 37 per cent for Rwanda as a whole. The 2012 census recorded a workforce of 487,000 in Kigali. The city's biggest employment sector is agriculture, fishing and forestry, covering 24 per cent of the workforce; utilities and financial services with 21 per cent; trade 20 per cent and government 12 per cent.


title: Kigali

text: In 2018 Kigali scored 0.632 on the Human Development Index (HDI), a composite measure of life expectancy and health, education, and standard of living. This figure had risen or remained the same every year since 1992, during the civil war, when the figure was 0.223. It is also the highest of Rwanda's five provinces with the next highest, the Northern Province, recording an HDI of 0.531. Analysts at the World Bank attribute the gains in HDI seen across Rwanda as a whole to a "strong focus on homegrown policies and initiatives", which have accompanied economic growth.


title: Kigali

text: As with Rwanda as a whole, Christianity is the dominant religion in Kigali. In the 2012 census, 42.1 per cent of the city's inhabitants identified as Protestant with a further 9.1 per cent following Adventism, which was classified separately. Catholics formed 36.8 per cent of the population. Islam is more prevalent in Kigali than elsewhere in Rwanda, with 5.7 per cent of people following the faith compared with 2.0 per cent nationwide. Jehovah's Witnesses form 1.2 per cent and other faiths 0.3 per cent, while those who profess no religion number 3.0 per cent.


title: Kigali

text: Kigali is the economic and financial hub of Rwanda, serving as the country's main port of entry and largest business centre. The NISR does not maintain detailed economic data for subnational entities in Rwanda, but economists have used various measures to estimate the city's output. A 2015 working paper by the World Bank Policy Research unit used the amount of light visible at night in different regions as a proxy for relative gross domestic product (GDP), and found that the three districts of Kigali represented 42 per cent of Rwanda's total night-light output. When translated, this gives a total city GDP of approximately US$1.8 billion or $1,619 per capita, compared with a national average of $436 per capita. Another 2015 World Bank study measured the total turnover of registered companies in the country, as reported to the Rwanda Revenue Authority, and found that 92 per cent of these were from the city of Kigali. However, the authors noted that this figure excluded turnover from small-scale farming, and was also inflated for companies headquartered in Kigali with revenue generated elsewhere in Rwanda. Official statistics classify economic activity as either "farm" or "non-farm", and Kigali accounts for 39 per cent of non-farm waged employees in the country.


title: Kigali

text: In 2013, the economy was reported to be dependent on foreign aid and illegal resource extraction from the DRC. The largest contributor to Kigali's economy is the service sector. The World Bank estimates that services contributed 53 per cent of GDP in 2014, while a 2012 study by Surbana International Consultants put the figure at almost 62 per cent. Activity within the service sector includes retail, information technology, transport and hotels, and real estate. The city authorities have prioritised business services for expansion, constructing several modern buildings in the CBD such as the Kigali City Tower. Attracting international visitors is a priority for both the city and the Rwanda Development Board, including leisure tourism, conferences and exhibitions. Kigali is the major arrival point for tourists visiting Rwanda's national parks and tracking mountain gorillas, and has its own sites of interest such as the Kigali Genocide Memorial and ecotourist facilities, as well as bars, coffee shops and restaurants. Expansion of destinations by carrier RwandAir and building of new facilities such as the Kigali Convention Centre has attracted events to Kigali including the African Development Bank's 2014 Annual General Assembly, and a 2018 extraordinary summit of the African Union. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting was scheduled to be held in the city in June 2020, with attendees including Charles, Prince of Wales, and national leaders, although this has been postponed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.


title: Kigali

text: The city's largest employment sector is agriculture, fishing and forestry, representing 24 per cent of the workforce. Farmland comprised over 60 per cent of the land within the city's boundaries in 2012, mostly in the outer areas surrounding the urban core. As is the case nationwide, much of the agriculture in Kigali is subsistence farming on small plots, but there are some larger modern farms close to the city, particularly in Gasabo district, which has the highest average area of cultivated land per household in the country. Other major employment areas in the city are government, which comprises 12 per cent of the workforce, transportation and communication, construction, and manufacturing. The NISR classifies 21 per cent of the workforce as being employed in "other services" such as utilities and financial services, the latter including banking, pensions, insurance, microfinance, and the Rwanda Stock Exchange, which launched in 2011.


title: Kigali

text: Industry in Kigali formed only 14 per cent of the city's GDP in 2014, focused on a small industrial zone set up in the 1970s. Challenges for the sector include the high cost of importing raw materials into a land-locked country, as well as substandard infrastructure and a lack of skilled workers. In 2011, the parliament passed a law establishing special economic zones in Rwanda, the first of which was established in 2014 on Masoro Hill in Gasabo district, close to Kigali International Airport. Companies operating within the zone benefit from good infrastructure, availability of land and transport links, as well as tax breaks. It attracted 61 businesses in its first year of operation, manufacturing products such as paper and foam mattresses. As the zone grew over subsequent years, further businesses relocated there from other parts of the capital such as the Gikondo Industrial Park. The city sits close to deposits of cassiterite, an ore used to obtain tin, as well as tungsten. Cassiterite is mined in the town of Rutongo, around north of Kigali, while tungsten is mined at Nyakabingo, a similar distance away. Much of the raw mineral is exported out of Rwanda for processing, but there are some local processing facilities. This includes the Karuruma smelter in the northern suburbs of Kigali, which was built in the 1980s and was able to produce up to of pure tin per year as of 2019.


title: Kigali

text: Kigali is a province-level city, one of the five provinces of Rwanda. The area under the city's jurisdiction has been expanded several times since Rwandan independence, the current boundaries being established through a 2005 law as part of local-government restructuring. The law gave the city government responsibility for strategic planning and urban development, as well as liaising with the three constituent districts and monitoring the districts' development plans. Like other provinces, Kigali is divided into districts—Gasabo, Kicukiro, and Nyarugenge—which are in turn divided into 35 sectors.


title: Kigali

text: From January 2020 a new administrative system for Kigali was introduced, after a law was passed by the national parliament the previous year. Under the previous system, in effect since 2002, power was significantly devolved to the districts which were led by their own mayors, managing infrastructure and levying taxes, around 30 per cent of which were passed to the city-wide authority. The changes, implemented with the goal of reducing bureaucracy and inefficiency, gave the city council much greater power including control of the budget. The districts ceased to be separate legal entities, their mayors being replaced by district executive administrators appointed by the national government.


title: Kigali

text: The city council is composed of eleven individuals, down from 33 in the old system. Six of the council members are directly elected by the public, each district electing one man and one woman. The remaining five members are appointed by the president of Rwanda, subject to the approval of the cabinet. Each council member serves for a renewable five-year term. The executive branch of the city government is headed by the mayor, who is elected via a complex electoral college system, with the electorate voting for delegates at the sub-sector village level, who go on to elect other delegates through each level of the administrative hierarchy. The mayor and two deputy mayors form the executive committee, which reports to the council and implements its decisions. As of 2021 the incumbent mayor is Pudence Rubingisa, who is also leader of the Kigali branch of the ruling RPF party. Notable past mayors include Francois Karera, who held the post from 1975 to 1990 under the presidency of Juvénal Habyarimana, and Rose Kabuye, who had fought with the RPF during the Rwandan Civil War and was the first post-genocide mayor from 1994 to 1997. Day-to-day budget and staff management are the responsibility of a city manager, appointed by the prime minister.


title: Kigali

text: In addition to the city government, most Rwandan government offices are located in Kigali, particularly in the suburbs of Kacyiru and Kimihurura. This includes Village Urugwiro in Kacyiru, which is the office of the president, and the Chamber of Deputies and Senate in Kimihurura.


title: Kigali

text: In common with the rest of the country, policing in Kigali is provided by the Rwanda National Police (RNP). The city falls within RNP's central division, which is headed as of 2020 by Assistant Commissioner of Police Felly Rutagerura Bahizi. The United States government's Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) praises the RNP's professionalism, but notes that it lacks specialist skills in dealing with policing tasks such as investigation, counter-terrorism, bomb disposal, and forensics. OSAC also notes that the RNP has limited resources on the ground, stating that police are often "unable to respond to an emergency call in a timely manner", and that police patrols are more focused on terrorism than crime.


title: Kigali

text: Despite this, Kigali has a reputation for being a relatively safe city. The "Lonely Planet" guidebook describes it as "a genuine contender for the safest capital in Africa", while Bert Archer of BBC Travel described it as "clean and safe". In a 2015 interview with "The New Times", then-commander of the central division Rogers Rutikanga cited "efficient operations and daily surveillance" as the means by which the city was policed. Rutikanga noted that there were crimes related to burglary, drugs, assault and robbery, as well as petty crime and pickpocketing, but that numbers were kept low through community policing and engagement with schools, businesses, municipal government and social service providers. In its advice to overseas visitors, OSAC states that there is a "moderate risk from crime in Kigali", but notes that such crime is rarely violent. It cites pickpocketing and petty theft as the biggest concerns for foreigners within the city. Rwanda as a whole has lower crime rates than other countries in East Africa. In 2014–15, the number of intentional homicides per 100,000 people was 2.52 in the country, compared with 11.52 for Uganda, 6.95 for Tanzania, 4.79 for Kenya, and 4.52 for Burundi.


title: Kigali

text: Although the constitution allows freedom of assembly, with protests and demonstrations allowed with a permit, such gatherings in Rwanda are rare. The US political freedom research institute Freedom House states that fear of arrest serves as a deterrent for most such protests, and that the police often disperse protests even when they have official permission. Those gatherings which do take place are mostly peaceful and crime-free. OSAC's report assesses the city's terrorism risk as "minimal".


title: Kigali

text: Kigali was not historically the hub of Rwanda's cultural heritage. For example, the country's traditional dance, a choreographed routine consisting of three components, originated in the royal court at Nyanza. However, the capital is now home to many groups which perform the dance including the LEAF community arts troupe, whose founding members were eighteen homeless orphaned children, and "Indatirwabahizi", a cultural troupe affiliated with the city government. Drums are of great importance in traditional Rwandan music; the royal drummers enjoyed high status within the court of the "mwami". Drummers play together in groups of varying sizes, usually between seven and nine in number. Traditional music and songs are performed in venues across the city by acts such as the Gakondo Group led by Massamba Intore. Rwanda and Kigali have a growing popular music industry, influenced by African Great Lakes, Congolese, and American music. The most popular genre is hip hop, with a blend of dancehall, rap, ragga, R&B and dance-pop. Since 2011, the Kigali Up music festival has been held annually in July or August. Artists from Rwanda and other countries perform music in a variety of styles including reggae and blues, with audiences of several thousands. Some of the musicians also give lessons to attendees during the festival. The Hobe Rwanda Festival, held in September, features music as well as dance and local art.


title: Kigali

text: A number of films about the Rwandan genocide have been filmed in Kigali, including "100 Days", "Sometimes in April", "Shooting Dogs" and "Shake Hands with the Devil". Others, such as "Hotel Rwanda", were set in the city but filmed in other countries. Several of the films featured survivors as cast members. Kigali also has a growing domestic film industry which began in the early 2000s with the Rwanda Film Centre, founded by journalist Eric Kabera. One of the centre's goals was to diversify the subjects covered by Rwandan films beyond the genocide theme, presenting other aspects of the country. In 2005, Kabera inaugurated the Rwanda Film Festival which takes place annually at venues in the capital and elsewhere, giving it the nickname "Hillywood", a portmanteau word combining Rwanda's nickname "land of a thousand hills" with Hollywood. The term is also used for Rwanda's film industry in general.


title: Kigali

text: On Genocide Memorial Day, a national holiday observed every year on 7 April, the Kigali Genocide Memorial hosts "Kwibuka", during which the president lights a "flame of hope" and addresses the nation. This is followed by an official week of mourning and, on 4 July, the Liberation Day holiday.


title: Kigali

text: Along with the rest of Rwanda, the last Saturday of each month in Kigali is "umuganda", a morning of mandatory community service lasting from 8am to 11am. All able-bodied people between 18 and 65 are expected to carry out community tasks such as cleaning streets or building homes for vulnerable people. Most normal services close down during "umuganda", and public transportation is limited.


title: Kigali

text: Kigali's cuisine is similar to that of the rest of the country. For those reliant on subsistence agriculture, local staple foods include bananas, plantains (known as "ibitoke"), pulses, sweet potatoes, beans, and cassava (manioc). These staple foods are also served in restaurants across the city, often as part of a "mélange", a self-service buffet meal which can also include meat, chips or fish. Cassava leaves are often combined with onions and other ingredients to make a stew dish known as "isombe". Brochettes are the most popular food when eating out in the evening, usually made from goat but sometimes tripe, beef or fish. The city has restaurants serving dishes from outside the country, including Chinese, French, Indian, and Italian. Popular drinks include "ikivuguto", a fermented milk, and banana beer.


title: Kigali

text: In colonial and pre-genocide Rwanda, Butare was the country's principal centre for tertiary education. Early colleges such as the Nyakibanda Major Seminary, founded in 1936, and three 1960s establishments including the National University of Rwanda (UNR), were all located in the southern city. The first higher-education institution in Kigali was the Institut Africain et Mauricien de statistique et d'économie appliquée, which was founded in 1976, but the city did not become a major centre of learning until the second half of the 1990s. At that time, the public Kigali Health Institute (KHI), Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), and Kigali Institute of Education (KIE) were founded, along with private universities the Kigali Independent University (ULK) and the University of Lay Adventists of Kigali (UNILAK). Further institutions were added in Kigali in the 21st century, including the public School of Finance and Banking (SFB) in Gikondo and the private University of Kigali, as well as branches of foreign universities such as Mount Kenya University and Carnegie Mellon University's college of engineering. As of 2018, there were a total of 50,594 students enrolled at tertiary institutions in Kigali, with a total of 28 separate campuses.


title: Kigali

text: In 2013 the government implemented significant changes in the country's public university system, intended to improve efficiency by removing duplicated courses of study and eliminating discrepancies in student assessment between the different schools. The previously-independent Kigali institutions KHI, KIST, KIE and SFB were merged with three others from outside the city—the UNR, Nyagatare-based Umutara Polytechnic and Ruhengeri's Higher Institute of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry—creating the consolidated University of Rwanda. It has six constituent colleges, spanning nine campuses, three of which are in Kigali. These are the Gikondo campus, which serves as the university's headquarters and is home to its business and economics programmes, the Nyarugenge campus on the former KIST site, which houses the sciences, architecture and engineering, and the Remera campus which covers medicine, nursing, dentistry and health sciences.


title: Kigali

text: In 2018 Kigali had 239 primary schools with 203,680 pupils enrolled, and 143 secondary schools with an enrolment of 60,997. The large rate of drop-out between primary and secondary, a phenomenon which occurs across Rwanda, is attributed by the Ministry of Education and UNICEF to insufficient numeracy and English skills in primary-school finishers, cost, the need for children to contribute to household labour, and insufficient teaching resources. The city's three districts occupied the top positions in the national table of exam results at primary level in 2019, although this success was not replicated at secondary level in which rural districts were the top performers. The top-three performing individual secondary schools offering the Rwandan syllabus—FAWE Girls' School, Petit Séminaire St Vincent de Ndera, and Lycée Notre-Dame de Cîteaux—were all in Kigali, however. The city also has a number of private schools, which target wealthy Rwandans and expatriates, including the Green Hills Academy, École Belge, and the International School of Kigali. These schools, which charge high fees, offer international programmes such as the International General Certificate of Secondary Education and the International Baccalaureate which enable students to study at universities worldwide.


title: Kigali

text: On the 14 September 2022 the government announced that starting with the academic year 2022-2023, parents will no longer pay school fees for students in pre-primary and primary, however, they will contribute Rwf975 for school feeding program. This will help parents with limited means be able to send their children at school.


title: Kigali

text: The largest sports venue in Kigali is Amahoro Stadium, in the Remera area of the city, which was built in the 1980s and has a capacity of 30,000. The stadium is used primarily for association football, playing host to most Rwanda national football team home games as well as domestic fixtures. It was one of four stadia used for fixtures in the 2016 African Nations Championship including the final, in which the Democratic Republic of the Congo beat Mali. The stadium also hosts rugby union fixtures, including those of the national team, as well as concerts and public events. The Amahoro complex includes an indoor venue, commonly known by the French name "Petit stade", and a Paralympic playing hall. The Kigali Arena is a 10,000-capacity indoor arena next to Amahoro Stadium, which opened in 2019. The arena hosts sports such as basketball, including the AfroBasket 2021 tournament, as well as handball, volleyball, and tennis. Other venues in the city include the 22,000-capacity Nyamirambo Regional Stadium and the Rwanda Cricket Stadium in Gahanga, which opened in 2017. Rwanda's only golf course, the Kigali Golf Club, is based in Nyarutarama; as of 2020 it is being expanded to eighteen holes and hopes to attract regional tournaments in future.


title: Kigali

text: Seven of the sixteen teams in the association football Rwanda Premier League are based in Kigali. Most of these do not have their own stadia and play fixtures at multiple venues including Amahoro Stadium, Nyamirambo Regional Stadium and various smaller grounds. The country's two most successful teams are based in the city: APR FC, who won eighteen championships between 1969 and 2020, and Rayon Sports, who won nine in the same period. As of 2020, ten of the fourteen teams in Rwanda's National Basketball League play their home games in Kigali, with venues including Club Rafiki and the Integrated Polytechnic Regional College Kigali, as well as the Amahoro Stadium's "Petit stade" and the Kigali Arena. This includes the two most successful clubs Patriots BBC and Espoir BBC, who have won five and four league titles respectively.


title: Kigali

text: Kigali was awarded hosting of the 2025 UCI Road World Championships, marking the first time the organisation’s flagship event visits Africa.


title: Kigali

text: The Rwandan government has increased investment in the transport infrastructure of Rwanda since the 1994 genocide, with aid from the United States, European Union, Japan, and others. Kigali is the centre of the country's road network, with paved roads linking the city to most other major cities and towns in the country. It is also connected by road to other countries in the East African Community, namely Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Kenya, as well as to the eastern Congolese cities of Goma and Bukavu; the most important trade route for imports and exports is the road to the port of Mombasa via Kampala and Nairobi, which is known as the Northern Corridor. Within the city there was a total of of road in 2012, although only fourteen per cent of this was paved road and many of the unpaved sections were of poor quality and dangerous during rainfall. The authorities have been making gradual improvements since the 1990s, increasing the quality of the surfaces and also upgrading most of the city's arterial routes to dual-carriageway.


title: Kigali

text: Car ownership in Kigali is low, with just six per cent of households possessing one as of 2011. Most residents therefore rely on public transport for journeys within the city and elsewhere. Historically most passenger journeys within Kigali were in minibuses, operating under a share taxi system with sixteen passengers per bus. In the 2010s these were phased out in many areas of the city, in favour of larger buses, some of which permit cashless payment through a "Tap & Go" card and online bookings. Motorcycle taxis are a very popular form of private-hire vehicle, with 10,486 drivers registered with cooperatives or syndicates in 2012, a figure which is likely an underestimate. The government has announced plans to replace the country's fleet of petrol-powered motorcycles with electric vehicles, and online booking and metering has been rolled out for both motorcycles and taxicabs in recent years, such as Yego Cab and Move Ride by Volkswagen. Bicycle taxis operate in some areas of the city, being reintroduced in 2014 after a period in which they were banned.


title: Kigali

text: International coaches run from Nyabugogo to other destinations in East Africa. Until 2019, this included the Ugandan capital Kampala, which was reached either via Gatuna and Kabale or via Kagitumba. The journey via Gatuna on the overnight service takes around ten hours. Some Kampala services continued to Nairobi in Kenya. In 2019 the Rwanda–Uganda border was closed by the Rwandan government amid a diplomatic dispute over rebel groups and the treatment of Rwandan nationals in Uganda. Some travellers began using the Rusomo Falls border crossing to reach Kampala via Tanzania, a much longer journey. Rwanda has no railways, but the government has agreed with Tanzania to construct a standard-gauge railway linking Kigali to Isaka, where passengers could connect with either the Central Line or with the future Tanzania Standard Gauge Railway, to reach Dar-es-Salaam.


title: Kigali

text: Kigali International Airport (KIA), in the eastern suburb of Kanombe, is the nation's and the city's principal airport. The busiest routes are those to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi and Entebbe International Airport, which serves Kampala; there is one domestic route, between Kigali and Kamembe Airport near Cyangugu. With capacity for growth at KIA limited, the government commissioned the new Bugesera International Airport, south-east of Kigali, with construction beginning in 2017. It will become the country's largest when it opens, complementing the existing Kigali airport. The national carrier is RwandAir, and the country is served by seven foreign airlines.


title: Kigali

text: Kigali's electricity supply was, until the early 2000s, generated almost entirely from hydroelectric sources; power stations on Lakes Burera and Ruhondo provided 90 per cent of Rwanda's electricity. A combination of below average rainfall and human activity, including the draining of the Rugezi wetlands for cultivation and grazing, caused the two lakes' water levels to fall from 1990 onwards; by 2004 levels were reduced by 50 per cent, leading to a sharp drop in output from the power stations. Coupled with this, demand had been increasing since the 1980s as the economy grew, particularly in Kigali. In 2003–04, the national electricity company was forced to reduce output from the power stations, necessitating widespread loadshedding. As an emergency measure, the government installed diesel generators north of the city; by 2006 these were providing 56 per cent of the country's electricity, but were very costly. Power outages remained a frequent occurrence in the late 2010s. This prompted the government and national supplier Rwanda Energy Group to invest in a programme of new peat-fired, hydroelectric, and methane power stations across Rwanda as well as the construction and repair of power lines. As of 2018, 82 per cent of Kigali's households had access to electricity, with the government targeting 100 per cent provision within seven years. Most of these households are supplied by Rwanda's wide area synchronous grid, with only between 2 and 4 per cent of households in the three districts relying on off-grid access in 2020.


title: Kigali

text: Rwanda has five national referral hospitals, of which four are located in Kigali. The largest of these is the University Teaching Hospital of Kigali (UTH-K), which is governed by the Ministry of Health and receives most of its funding from the government. UTH-K has 519 beds and employs 155 personnel. Founded in 1918, it is currently in Kigali CBD, but plans to relocate to a new larger site in the Masaka area of the city. The other national referral hospitals are King Faisal Hospital, which was constructed in the late 1980s with assistance from the Saudi Fund for Development, the Rwanda Military Hospital and the Ndera Neuropsychiatric Hospital. In addition to the national hospitals, the city also contains three provincial hospitals, at Kibagabaga, Masaka, and Kacyiru. In 2021, a new 300-bed hospital opened in Nyarugenge district, designated as a specialist referral centre for COVID-19 patients.Moreover, the health care system in Rwanda operates 499 health centers, 680 health posts which are mainly involved with the outpatient programmes such as immunizations and family planning services, a number of dispensaries, and 42 district hospitals.


title: Kigali

text: Under the Twubakane Decentralisation and Health Project, responsibility for primary healthcare has moved from the national level to district level. Healthcare centres in the city are run as a mixture of public sector, government-assisted and private sector, with some traditional healers also operating. Not all residents have easy access to these facilities, however, with some having to walk more than 30 minutes to reach the nearest centre. The government has devolved the financing and management of healthcare to local communities, through a system of health insurance providers called "mutuelles de santé". The "mutuelles" were piloted in 1999, and were made available nationwide by the mid-2000s, with the assistance of international development partners.


title: Kigali

text: There are a total of eleven different terrestrial television stations broadcast in Rwanda, ten of which are domestic. All of the ten domestic channels are headquartered in Kigali. These stations are provided by two organisations—the public Rwanda Broadcasting Agency (RBA), and Chinese firm StarTimes. They are broadcast from two transmitters in the Kigali area, one on Mount Jali, and one in Gasabo. In addition to the terrestrial channels, StarTimes also run a pay TV service along with two other networks, Azam and Tele10. A 2017 survey by research firm GeoPoll found that Rwanda TV is the most popular station in the country, with an audience share of 45.2 per cent, followed by TV1 with 9.3 per cent, and TV10 with 6.4 per cent. Rwanda TV was historically run by the government, but in 2013 it was transferred to the RBA.


title: Kigali

text: A number of radio stations also operate in Kigali, with transmitters located at Mount Jali and at Mount Rebero, the south of the city. The 2017 GeoPoll survey found that RBA-owned Radio Rwanda was the most popular, with 38.6 per cent of the national audience, followed by Kiss FM with 9.3 per cent and KT Radio with 7.3 per cent. All three of these are based in Kigali. Various overseas radio stations are broadcast on FM in Kigali including BBC News, Voice of America, and Deutsche Welle. A number of newspapers are published in Kigali, including "The New Times", the country's largest English-language publication, "La Nouvelle Relève", in French, and Kinyarwanda papers such as "KT Press" and "Imvaho Nshya". According to international observers such as Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House, the Rwandan media does not have press freedom and is routinely censored or forced to self-censor by the government.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: The controversy surrounding the political status of Taiwan or the Taiwan issue is a result of World War II, the second phase of the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949), and the Cold War.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: The basic issue hinges on who the islands of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu should be administered by. Main options include:


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: This controversy also concerns whether the current "status quo" of existence and legal status as a sovereign state of both the ROC and the PRC is legitimate as a matter of international law.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: The "status quo" is accepted in large part because it does not define the legal or future status of Taiwan, leaving each group to interpret the situation in a way that is politically acceptable to its members. At the same time, a policy of status quo has been criticized as being dangerous precisely because different sides have different interpretations of what the status quo is, leading to the possibility of war through brinkmanship or miscalculation. The PRC seeks the end of Taiwan's "de facto" independence through the process of unification, and has not ruled out the use of force in pursuit of this goal. Internationally, the United Nations and countries that have diplomatic relations with the PRC handle relations with Taiwan according to the "One China" policy.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: Taiwan (excluding Penghu) was first populated by Austronesian people and was partially colonized by the Dutch, who had arrived in 1623. The Kingdom of Tungning, lasting from 1661 to 1683, was the first Han Chinese government to rule part of the island of Taiwan. From 1683, the Qing Dynasty ruled much of the western plains of the island as a prefecture and in 1875 divided the island into two prefectures, Taiwan and Taipeh. In 1885 the island was made into a separate province to speed up development in this region. In the aftermath of the First Sino-Japanese War, Taiwan and Penghu were ceded by the Qing Dynasty to Japan in 1895 under the Treaty of Shimonoseki. The Republic of China overthrew the Qing dynasty in 1912. At the end of World War II, the Republic of China, on behalf of the Allied Powers, accepted the surrender of Japanese troops in Taiwan, putting Taiwan under control of a Chinese government again after 50 years of Japanese rule. The ROC would then claim sovereignty on the basis of the Qing dynasty's administration, Cairo Declaration, Potsdam Declaration, and Japanese Instrument of Surrender, but this became contested by pro-independence groups in subsequent years due to different perceptions of the said documents' legality. Upon losing the Chinese civil war in 1949, the ROC government retreated to Taipei, and kept control over a few islands along the coast of mainland China and in the South China Sea. The People's Republic of China (PRC) was established in mainland China on 1 October 1949, claiming to be the successor to the ROC.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: Quemoy, Matsu and Wuchiu on the coast of Fukien, Taiping and Pratas in the South China Sea, are part of the ROC's present territory, but were not ceded to Japan. Some arguments supporting the independence of Taiwan do not apply to these islands.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and some other minor islands effectively make up the jurisdiction of the state with the official name of the Republic of China (ROC), commonly known as "Taiwan". The ROC, which asserted control of Taiwan (as well as Penghu and other nearby islands) in 1945, had ruled mainland China and claimed sovereignty over Tibet (now controlled by the PRC as the Tibet Autonomous Region), Outer Mongolia (now Mongolia) and Tannu Uriankhai (now a part of Tuva, Russia) before losing the Chinese Civil War to the Chinese Communist Party and relocating its government and capital city from Nanjing to Guangzhou, Chongqing and Chengdu before arriving at Taipei as the temporary capital in December 1949. The Communists established a new government on the mainland as People's Republic of China (PRC) in October 1949.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: Since the ROC lost its United Nations seat as "China" in 1971 (replaced by the PRC), most sovereign states have switched their diplomatic recognition to the PRC, recognizing the PRC as the representative of all China, though all countries that have established formal diplomatic ties with the PRC use terms such as "respects", "acknowledge", "understand", "take note of" in regards to the PRC's claim over Taiwan which avoids clarifying what territories are meant by "China" in order to associate with both the PRC and ROC. , just 15 countries maintain diplomatic relations with the ROC, although informal relations are maintained with nearly all others. Agencies of foreign governments such as the American Institute in Taiwan operate as "de facto" embassies of their home countries in Taiwan, and Taiwan operates similar "de facto" embassies and consulates in most countries under such names as "Taipei Representative Office" (TRO) or "Taipei Economic and Cultural (Representative) Office" (TECO). In certain contexts, Taiwan is also referred to as Chinese Taipei.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: The ROC government has in the past actively pursued the claim as the sole legitimate government over mainland China and Taiwan. This position began to change in the early 1990s as democracy was introduced and new Taiwanese leaders were elected, changing to one that does not actively challenge the legitimacy of PRC rule over mainland China. Both the PRC and the ROC carry out Cross-Strait relations through specialized agencies (such as the Mainland Affairs Council of the ROC and the Taiwan Affairs Office of the PRC), rather than through foreign ministries. Different groups have different concepts of what the current formal political situation of Taiwan is.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: In addition, the situation can be confusing because of the different parties and the effort by many groups to deal with the controversy through a policy of deliberate ambiguity. The political solution that is accepted by many of the current groups is the perspective of the status quo: to unofficially treat Taiwan as a state and, at a minimum, to officially declare no support for the government of this state making a formal declaration of independence. What a formal declaration of independence would consist of is not clear and can be confusing given the fact that the People's Republic of China has never controlled Taiwan and the Republic of China still exists, albeit on a decreased scale.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: In the Cairo Conference of 1943, the allied powers agreed to have Japan restore "all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese", specifically listing "Formosa" and Penghu, to the Republic of China after the defeat of Japan. According to both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China, this agreement was given legal force by the Instrument of Surrender of Japan in 1945. The PRC's UN Ambassador, Wang Yingfan, has stated multiple times in the UN general committee: "Taiwan is an inseparable part of China's territory since antiquity" and "both the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Declaration have reaffirmed in unequivocal terms China's sovereignty over Taiwan as a matter of international law." The PRC rejects arguments involving the lack of a specific treaty (San Francisco Peace Treaty) transferring Taiwan's sovereignty to China by noting that neither PRC nor ROC was a signatory to any such treaty, making the treaties irrelevant with regard to Chinese claims. Also, according to the Treaty of Shimonoseki, China legally surrendered its sovereignty and jurisdiction over Taiwan (Formosa) forever. So, this treaty therefore renders Japan's declaration of the returning of sovereignty over Taiwan to China as well as the PRC's UN Ambassador, Wang Yingfan's claims regarding China's right to sovereignty over Taiwan, as legally extraneous and unsubstantiated. The US and UK governments also hold that the Cairo Declaration made in 1943 is just a war-time statement of intention and cannot itself transfer the sovereignty of Taiwan from Japan to China.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: The ROC argues that the Treaty of Taipei implicitly transferred sovereignty of Taiwan to it, however the US State Dept. disagreed with such an interpretation in its 1971 Starr Memorandum.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: A number of supporters of Taiwan independence argue that Taiwan was only formally incorporated as a Chinese territory under the Qing Dynasty in 1683, and as a province in 1885. Subsequently, because of the Shimonoseki Treaty of 1895, Taiwan had been "de jure" part of Japan when the ROC was established in 1912 and thus was not part of the Chinese republic. Also, because the Cairo Declaration was an unsigned press communiqué, the independence advocates argue that the legal effectiveness of the Declaration is highly questionable. Furthermore, they point out that the Instrument of Surrender of Japan was no more than an armistice, a "modus vivendi" in nature, which served as a temporary or provisional agreement that would be replaced with a peace treaty. Therefore, only a military occupation of Taiwan began on 25 October 1945, and both the Treaty of San Francisco and Treaty of Taipei hold legal supremacy over the surrender instrument. These treaties did not transfer the title of Taiwan from Japan to China. Some argue that Taiwan was returned to the people of Taiwan when Japan renounced sovereignty of Taiwan based on the policy of self-determination which has been applied to "territories which detached from enemy states as a result of the Second World War" as defined by article 76b and 77b of the United Nations Charter and also by the protocol of the Yalta Conference. The United Nations General Assembly has not been particularly receptive to this argument, and the ROC's applications for admission to the United Nations have been rejected 15 times.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: Although the interpretation of the peace treaties was used to challenge the legitimacy of the ROC on Taiwan before the 1990s, the introduction of popular elections in Taiwan has compromised this position. Except for the most extreme Taiwan independence supporters, most Taiwanese support the popular sovereignty theory and no longer see much conflict between this theory of sovereignty and the ROC position. In this sense, the ROC government currently administering Taiwan is not the same ROC which accepted Japanese surrender because the ruling authorities were given popular mandate by different pools of constituencies: one is the mainland Chinese electorate, the other is the Taiwanese constituencies. In fact, former president Chen Shui-bian has been frequently emphasizing the popular sovereignty theory in his speeches.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: However, as of 2010, the conflict between these two theories still plays a role in internal Taiwanese politics. The popular sovereignty theory, which the pan-green coalition emphasizes, suggests that Taiwan could make fundamental constitutional changes by means of a popular referendum. The ROC legal theory, which is supported by the pan-blue coalition, suggests that any fundamental constitutional changes would require that the amendment procedure of the ROC constitution be followed.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: Taiwan (Formosa) including the Pescadores were permanently ceded by Qing Dynasty China to Imperial Japan via Articles 2b and 2c of the Treaty of Shimonoseki on 8 May 1895 in one of what the Chinese term an unequal treaty. Kinmen and Matsu Islands on the coast of Fukien, and the islands in the South China Sea currently administered by the Republic of China on Taiwan were not part of the cession.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: In 1895, subsequent to the Treaty of Shimonoseki, officials in Taiwan declared independence. The Republic of Taiwan (1895) collapsed after 12 days due to political infighting, but local leaders continued resistance in the hope of achieving self-rule. The incoming Japanese crushed the island's independence bid in a five-month campaign.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: The Chinese Qing Dynasty was subsequently overthrown and replaced by the Republic of China (ROC). Upon the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the ROC declared the Treaty of Shimonoseki void in its declaration of war on Japan. The war soon merged with World War II, and Japan was subsequently defeated in 1945 by the Allied Powers, of which the ROC was a part.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: The United States entered the War in December 1941. Most military attacks against Japanese installations and Japanese troops in Taiwan were conducted by United States military forces. At the Cairo Conference, the U.S., United Kingdom, and the ROC agreed that Taiwan was to be restored to the ROC after the war. This agreement was enunciated in the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Declaration, which outlined the terms of Japanese surrender, specified that the terms of the Cairo Declaration shall be carried out.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: When Japan unconditionally surrendered, it accepted in its Instrument of Surrender the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. Japanese troops in Taiwan were directed to surrender to the representatives of the Supreme Allied Commander in the China Theater, Chiang Kai-shek (i.e. the Republic of China military forces) on behalf of the Allies, according to the directions of General Douglas MacArthur, head of the United States Military Government, in General Order No. 1, which was issued 2 September 1945. Chief Executive Chen Yi of Republic of China soon proclaimed "Taiwan Retrocession Day" on 25 October 1945.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: When the 228 Incident erupted on 28 February 1947, the U.S. Consulate-General in Taipei prepared a report in early March, calling for an immediate intervention in the name of the U.S. or the United Nations. Based on the argument that the Japanese surrender did not formally transfer sovereignty, Taiwan was still legally part of Japan and occupied by the United States (with administrative authority for the occupation delegated to the Chinese Nationalists), and a direct intervention was appropriate for a territory with such status. This proposed intervention, however, was rejected by the U.S. State Department. In a news report on the aftermath of the "228 Incident", some Taiwanese residents were reported to be talking of appealing to the United Nations to put the island under an international mandate, since China's possession of Taiwan had not been formalized by any international treaties by that time and the island was therefore still under belligerent occupation.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: They later made a demand for a treaty role to be represented at the forthcoming peace conference on Japan, in the hope of requesting a plebiscite to determine the island's political future.


title: Political status of Taiwan

text: At the start of 1950, U.S. President Harry S. Truman appeared to accept the idea that sovereignty over Taiwan was already settled when the United States Department of State stated that "In keeping with these <nowiki>[Cairo and Potsdam]</nowiki> declarations, Formosa was surrendered to Generalissimo Chiang-Kai Shek, and for the past four years, the United States and Other Allied Powers have accepted the exercise of Chinese authority over the Island."