Tag: African Court on Human and People’s Rights

He’s the president of Rwanda and the current president of the African Union, feted by the Brookings Institute, one of the most venerable ideological pillars of U.S. capital interests. So why is Paul Kagame manifesting more and more signs of paranoia? Let’s consider just a few possibilities: Assassination rumors, insurgency, political prisoner Victoire Ingabire, 7,000 Rwandan churches and mosques shut down.

Friends and supporters of Rwandan political prisoner Victoire Ingabire are still waiting for the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights to rule on her appeal. In 2010, Victoire attempted to run for president against military dictator Paul Kagame and went to prison instead. Many Rwandans describe their country as a tinderbox, an earthquake fault, or a smoldering volcano because of its brutal oligarchy, unresolved ethnic polarization, and repressed memories of violence and loss.

The Unified Democratic Forces (FDU Inkingi), a political party opposed to the regime of Rwanda’s ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), would like to inform the public that the Rwandan state did not show up on Wednesday, March 22, 2017, at the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) in Arusha, Tanzania, to defend itself in the appeal case No. 003/2014 brought against it by political prisoner Mrs. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza.

Since Friday, July 10, the management of the central prison in Kigali has decided to severely tighten the prison regime of Victoire Ingabire, Rwandan opposition leader and chair of FDU Inkingi, refusing her access to her attorney or to visitors and removing all her books. For someone already detained in solitary confinement, these measures amount to mental torture in violation of the International Convention Against Torture.

Supporters of Rwandan political prisoner Victoire Ingabire will hold an all day sit-in outside the Rwandan Embassy in Brussels on Friday, Nov. 1, the day that Rwanda’s Supreme Court is scheduled to rule on her appeal. Ingabire has been behind bars in Rwanda’s 1930 maximum security prison for three years, since October of 2010.