Tag: FDU-Inkingi

In an article titled “Rwanda Is a Shining Example of Good News from Africa” published in Stuff, writer Phil Quin has a line that I love: “But the truth, as always, is more nuanced and, especially over the past decade or so, Africa is in many ways coming into its own.”

FDU-Inkingi, the United Democratic Forces of Rwanda, a coalition of groups opposed to the current Kagame regime, condemns the murder of five prisoners in Huye Prison in the night of Jan. 23, 2019, allegedly for their attempt to escape. It calls on the government to end this barbarism that has become common in detention at police stations and government prisons.

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.

On May 19, 2016, the Rwandan government ordered Dutch lawyer Caroline Buisman to leave Rwanda immediately, without even meeting her new client, political prisoner Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. Buisman had arrived in the country’s capital Kigali on May 14, 2016, to consult with Ingabire regarding the appeal of her conviction for terrorism, inciting popular revolt and minimizing the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.

Five Rwandan political parties and organizations – Amahoro PC, FDU-Inkingi, PDP-Imanzi, PS-Imberakuri and IHURIRO-RNC – have united in a common platform. The platform calls for the unconditional release of all political prisoners, including Mrs. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, president of FDU-Inkingi, and Déo Mushayidi, president of PDP-Imanzi.

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.

On Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2015, in Rwanda’s capital city Kigali, Ambassador of the Netherlands Ms. Leoni Cuelenaere paid a courtesy visit to political prisoner and president of FDU-Inkingi Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza in her cell in the Kigali Central Prison. The visit took place after a long struggle by the ambassador, who wanted to see for herself the prison conditions of Ms. Ingabire. They have deteriorated since the change in leadership at the central prison.

Gen. Paul Kagame ordered the shooting down of the plane in which President Habyarimana and President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi, French citizens, and all others on board were killed on April 6, 1994. This assassination triggered the genocide. Since then President Kagame has imposed a reign of terror to keep himself and the ruling party in absolute power.

Today, as President Paul Kagame has finally decided to go to pay his last respects to the freedom and reconciliation hero Nelson Mandela, his Supreme Court sentenced political prisoner Madam Victoire Ingabire to 15 years in prison on final appeal, almost double the eight-year High Court sentence of Oct. 30, 2012. This is a very strong message to the whole opposition.

On Monday, March 26, 2013, within and outside the premises of the Supreme Court of Rwanda, Rwandan police assaulted opposition members walking to the appeal hearing of political prisoner Madame Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, chair of the main opposition coalition, FDU-Inkingi. She was its presidential candidate in August 2010 and has been imprisoned since Oct. 14 of that year.

Imprisoned Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire and her supporters await a Kigali court’s verdict in her case this coming Friday, Sept. 7. Ingabire has been in prison for nearly two years, charged with giving financial support to a terrorist group, planning to cause state insecurity, and divisionism, a violation of Rwanda’s “genocide ideology” statute.

As with the path that the U.S. Civil Rights Movement took after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, nothing in Rwanda will ever be the same after Victoire Ingabire’s defiance of the Rwandan government’s unjust laws. She sparked a spirit of resistance.

Rwandan, Congolese and American activists rallied in Chicago Saturday to protest the appearance of Rwandan President Paul Kagame at “Rwanda Day,”

On Jan. 20, Rwanda’s High Court once again rejected the bail appeal of Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, chair of Rwanda’s FDU-Inkingi coalition of opposition parties.

Victoire Ingabire, widely regarded as Rwanda's opposition leader, was arrested on Oct. 14, 2010, after a week long police siege on her home. She is charged with the formation of a terrorist organization with the aim to disrupt the territorial security of Rwanda.

Human rights activists around the world have called for international justice and an end to impunity in the wake of the “U.N. Mapping Report on Human Rights Abuse in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” But many don't expect justice from an international criminal tribunal.

For many Western observers – Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates among them – Rwanda’s economic growth is the foundation of its democratic transition. Yet, as Rwandans head to the polls next month to elect a president, Paul Kagame’s ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) has perverted the very democratic ideals it claims to uphold.

In less than weeks, Rwandans will go to the polls to elect a president. The incumbent, Paul Kagame, head of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front, continues to exert total control over the country’s election process. “In 2010, the people will vote as we instruct them,” said an aide to the Minister of Local Government.