(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 800,000 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."
@highlight
Human Rights Watch said opposition activists are facing harassment ahead of elections
@highlight
Kagame dismisses the opinions that outsiders may hold about Rwanda
@highlight
Country has made progress in erasing scars left from 1994 genocide, Kagame says
@highlight
Kagame insists he has nothing to do with the civil war in mineral-rich Congo
"I cannot be blamed for the problems of @placeholder or any other country," Kagame said.