(CNN) — Rwandan President Paul Kagame hit back Monday at human rights activists who say he’s behaving like an autocrat and fueling a bloody civil war in Rwanda’s neighbor, Congo. “If you are talking about people in the human rights community from outside… I have an issue with this,” Kagame said, 16 years after he was hailed as a hero for ending a genocide that killed at least 800000 people. “You tend to make a judgment of a country, 11 million people, on what a couple of people have said and (they) don’t take into account what Rwandans say.” Kagame added, “Nobody has asked the Rwandans … it’s as if they don’t matter in the eyes of the human rights people. It’s our own decisions in the end.” He said everyone in Rwanda has to play by the rules and be accountable. “There has to be leadership to make things move in the right direction,” Kagame stated. Kagame’s comments came a month after the New York-based group, Human Rights Watch, said opposition activists are facing increasing threats, attacks, and harassment ahead of Rwanda’s presidential election in August. Human Rights Watch said opposition party members have suffered serious intimidation by individuals and institutions close to the government and Kagame’s ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). The RPF took power in 1994 after its army swept into the capital of Kigali and overthrew the Hutu-dominated government responsible for the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans, most of them members of the minority …