Political prisoner Ingabire under greater isolation

Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza
remains in maximum security prison in Kigali, Rwanda,
where she has now been more isolated.

Kigali 06 May 2011

Ms. Victoire Ingabire, FDU-INKINGI chairperson and Rwandan political prisoner  is spending her 204th day in captivity in maximum prison today.

More isolation measures are now in force. The party members who visited the prison today were not given a chance to see Ms. Ingabire. The jailers informed that they have orders to follow and that any other questions should be addressed to the Minister of internal Security. 

On 29 April 2011 a dozen FDU-INKINGI party members were chased away by the maximum prison security staff.  Security Minister Fazil Harelimana told the BBC-Kinyarwanda that Madame Victoire Ingabire “must herself submit in advance a list of 5 people prior to the visitation days because the government does not want anybody to disturb prisoners when they are watching TV, reading or enjoying their siesta."  The political prisoner is incommunicado and has no means to pre-screen and shortlist her visitors days before. This is enormously inconvenient and has the direct effect of making visits impossible.

Since January 2011, the defense counsel has not been allowed to take confidential instructions from the client due to continuous and persistent monitoring of their discussions by security operatives. Prompt access has been often denied too. Those persistent violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights are seriously compromising all chances for a fair trial in Rwanda. 

We call upon President Paul Kagame and his government to consider the humanity of political prisoners and remove all those obstacles. 

FDU-Inkingi

Boniface Twagirimana

Interim Vice President.

We also recommend to visit http://www.victoire-ingabire.com/.

Kagame’s prisons, courts and killing spots: Ingabire, the Netherlands and the West

by Ann Garrison, Didas Gasana and Charles Kabonero

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, her head shaved and wearing her pink prison uniform, makes an appearance in court. In jail since Oct. 14 and reportedly tortured, she was recently denied bail. She had returned to Rwanda last January to challenge Paul Kagame for the presidency but was not allowed to run. Many commentators predicted she would have won a free and fair election.

The argument over who has been most to blame for the bloodshed in recent East Central African history intensified even further this month with testimony further challenging the history of what we know as the 1994 Rwanda Genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s former bodyguard, Aloys Ruyenzi, testified at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda that the president of the Interahamwe, the militia said to have massacred the Rwandan Tutsi population in 1994, was himself a Tutsi and Rwandan Patriotic Front agent.

Ruyenzi, in an interview in the Newsline East Africa, also described what he called “killing spots” where, he says, the Kagame regime continues to sort, classify and then systematically execute those it perceives as enemies with bayonets or, if they resist or run, with pistols.

Read more at the San Francisco Bay Newspaper, http://goo.gl/J8ANy.

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza speaks to WINGS, Womens' International News Gathering Service

Audio link: http://bit.ly/dBqnDB.

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza

August, 2010

Rwanda's FDU-Inkingi Party leader and presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza spoke to Ann Garrison, for Womens' International News Gathering Service (W.I.N.G.S.) in July 2010, near the close of Rwanda's 2010 presidential election year, on August 9th. Ingabire then was, and still is, under arrest and indictment for Rwanda's unique genocide ideology speech crime, with bail terms forbidding her departure from Rwanda or its capitol, the Kigali.  Parti Social-Imberakuri candidate Bernard Ntaganda had been in prison since June 24 and still is. Democratic Green Party of Rwanda candidate Frank Habineza had been unable to register his party, and, several days after this conversation, his party's Vice President, Andre Kagwa Rwisereka, was found beheaded, with his head all but completely severed from his body, in the wetlands of the Mukura River in southern Rwanda.  

Immigration's impact on democracy: Milton Allimadi and the Black Star News

Passport photo of Milton Allimadi, a Ugandan American graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the Editor and Publisher of the Black Star News in New York City.

Milton Allimadi, in his investigative news journal, the Black Star News, offers an unusual forum for reporting on Africa, which is so little known to most Americans, including even African Americans, because there's so little coverage of Africa in the dominant American press, and what little there is is superficial or misleading.  

Allimadi's recent piece, "Will Obama Administration screw Africa, like all the rest?" compared the struggle for civil and political rights in Africa to those of the American South during the 1960s: 

This is abominable and harkens to the days when, here in the United States, elections used to be held in the Southern States while Black voters were either barred from voting, being lynched, being "disappeared," or showered with water cannons.

After reading this essay, I finished editing a radio interview for Womens International News Gathering Service, with Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, the FDU-Inkingi presidential candidate whom Paul Kagame arrested and prevented from entering Rwanda’s 2010 presidential race, which is now heading into its sham conclusion in Aug. 9 “polls.”

I had to type up and read Victoire’s final statement, because my telephonic internet connection to her in Rwanda failed at the very end, so I introduced it, with Milton Allimadi's words in mind, by noting that it's reminiscent of the African American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and the peace movement that was so much more active then than now:

"I want to be a leader of all Rwandans seeking political change which can help us overcome ethnic division, and embrace a new vision where people are judged on the basis of what they contribute to the welfare of their  country and not which party, racial, or ethnic group they belong to.  

I dream for a Rwanda where people gather around ideas and not ethnicity, a country respected for its value and not its military might."

As I did so, it occurred to me that Milton Allimadi and his Black Star News are examples of exactly what the Colored Opinions, the blog, was created to explore: the impact of migration on democracy.   In his case, it's a very positive impact.  The Black Star News, like the San Francisco Bay View, National Black Newspaper, and Global Research, is one of the few news sources that regularly features African voices, and news and analysis of the Pentagon's militarization of Africa, its use of African proxy warriors, and the foreign scramble for African resources, including not only oil, but also cropland, timber, hydropower, and the mineral wealth essential to modern manufacture for war. 

KPFA News, 7.24.2010 on Kagame, Rwanda, Congo, and the Great Lakes Region of Africa

Voices of Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, Aimable Mugara, and Maurice Carney.

Rwanda Green Party leader assassinated

The Democratic Green Party of Rwanda's First Vice President Andre Kagwa Rwisereka was found dead, his head almost completely severed from his body, in the wetlands of the Makula River near Butare, Rwanda, on the morning of July 14, 2010.

His body had been left approximately 3 kilometers from Butare, where his car had been dumped.  He was 61 years old and is survived by four children.

Read more at Digital Journal.

Election violence in Rwanda and Burundi, refugees in Uganda

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, presidential candidate of the FDU-Inkingi Party, spoke out regarding Rwandan refugees in Uganda, as she prepared to go on trial this week in Kigali.

On Saturday, 05.22.2010, I published this brief news report on election violence in Rwanda and Burundi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame's attempt to force repatriate 1 million Rwandan refugees from Uganda:   Election violence in Rwanda and Burundi, refugees in Uganda.   I then used most of it in a KPFA Radio News report which I later hot linked into the Digital Journal report at the end.  


The radio report includes a brief interview with Rwandan presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, of the FDU-Inkingi Party, whose trial for "associating with terrorists" and "genocide ideology" will begin this week in Kigali, Rwanda.  


While speaking to Mrs. Ingabire yesterday, I immediately noticed that her fluency in English has greatly increased in just the past few months, since I've been calling her for KPFA, such that she is now quite readily understood by an American audience.   I have, during that time, come to realize that Mrs. Ingabire also speaks not only Kinyarwanda and French but also Dutch.  


I'm sure that she has worked on her English, despite everything else she has been going through, including arrest, so as to speak to the people of the US and UK, who have so much power in her country and in the surrounding Great Lakes region of Africa.   I hope they'll listen, because the stakes in Rwanda's 2010 presidential election, not only for Rwanda, but also for the entire region, are enormously high.  

Grenade blasts in Kigali, deepening political crisis in Rwanda

KPFA Radio News report, 05.16.2010, including interview with Charles Kabonero, former Editor of the Kinyarwanda language newspaper Umuseso; click to play http://goo.gl/dxzK

Kagame threatens challenger with prison for speaking to press

May 14, 2010---The Rwanda New Times reported that Rwandan Prosecutor General Ngoga threatened to jail Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza for speaking with press. Ingabire has not been allowed to register to formally run against Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

Read at Digital Journal, 
http://goo.gl/ejRL.
 

Paul Rusesabagina is a terrorist? Or, has Rwandan President Paul Kagame's PR team fumbled?

Rwandan President Paul Kagame is often said to have an extraordinary international PR team, as his Global Citizen Award from Bill Clinton, his International Medal of P.E.A.C.E. from evangelical Pastor Rick Warren, and his honorary degrees and eco awards seem to suggest.


However, the Kagame PR team seems to have fumbled this week, when the state run Rwanda New Times reported that Paul Rusesabagina has been accused, with presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, of violent conspiracy with the FDLR militias in eastern Congo: 



Lt. Col Tharcisse Nditurende and Lt. Col Noel Habiyambere, who were senior commanders of the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), admitted having worked with Ingabire and Paul Rusesabagina to form rebel groups to launch offensives in the country.
--Rwanda: Ingabire Co-Accused Arraigned in Court, Rwanda New Times/AllAfrica.com, 04.30.2010


Rusesabagina, a political exile, may be the best known man of peace to emerge from the horrific 1994 violence that the world came to know as the Rwanda Genocide, despite Kagame's accusations that he, again like Ingabire, is guilty of "Double Genocide Theory," saying that Hutus as well as Tutsis were victims of ethnic violence and crimes against humanity in 1994, amidst the horror that came to be known as the Rwanda Genocide.  Rusesabagina's story of sheltering over 1200 refugees from the violence in the four-star Kigali hotel where he was the assistant manager became the film Hotel Rwanda and his autobiography, "An Ordinary Man."   


CNN recently spoke to Rusesabagina about his advocacy for peace and social justice in Rwanda, D.R. Congo, and Burundi, and Rwandan prison labor in eastern Congolese mines:

Rwanda arrests presidential candidate Victoire Ingabiré Umuhoza; Rwandans call on international community to speak out

Rwandan presidential candidate Victoire Ingabiré Umuhoza, arrested 04.21.2010.

The San Francisco Bay View, National Black Newspaper, published Rwandan exile
Aimable Mugara's 5-point action plan.

Rwanda arrests presidential candidate Victoire Ingabiré Umuhoza

Rwandan presidential candidate Victoire Ingabiré Umuhoza, arrested April 21st, held at Kicukiro Police station. 

The Rwandan FDU-Inking Party's announced that their presidential candidate, Victoire Ingabiré Umuhoza, was arrested on the morning of April 21st, and taken to Rwanda's Kicukiro Police station.  They have called upon the international community to come to the aid of Mrs. Ingabiré and peaceloving Rwandan people:


SUPPORT COMMITTEE


CONTACT: EUGENE NDAHAYO TEL. 00 33 676758434

Brussels, 21st April 2010

Mrs. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza: icon of the struggle for freedom, democracy and justice in Rwanda arrested

UDF-Inkingi Support Committee demands her immediate and unconditional release.

The UDF – Inkingi Support Committee condemns in the strongest terms possible the arrest this morning of the party Chair, Mrs. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, for her views on how to bring about genuine national reconciliation and peace through the rule of law and equal opportunity and how to end the cycle of political violence through a non violent, peaceful democratic competition for and exercise of power. We know that this violent arrest will not deter her determination, instead its prompts the struggle of this freedom icon to a higher level.

It is a tragedy for Rwanda that a call for justice for all Rwandans irrespective of political and ethnic affiliation and for an all inclusive national dialogue to give their views on how to put in place institutions that reassure every Rwandans is turned into accusations of: genocide ideology, divisionism and collaboration with a terrorist organisation FDLR.

Such a barbaric and unlawful act against a peace loving mother who braved the system to show that there is another way to bring about lasting peace and development in Rwanda is not only a challenge to the conscience and dignity of the Rwandan people but also to the international community, in particular foreign governments who are sponsoring the government.

It is an irony and a challenge to the international community that this is happening at a time when the Governor General of Canada, a lady herself and whose government was not only at the forefront of countries that sponsored Rwanda to join the commonwealth on the grounds that it meets democratic standards and other values of that organisation, is visiting the country. During the visit she is scheduled to meet the women and men of Kibirizi and participate in a discussion on the growing participation of women in Rwandan society.

We call upon governments and peace loving people and organisations to support us in getting our chair immediately and unconditionally released.

For the UDF INKINGI Support Committee Eugene Ndahayo, President.

This report has also been posted to Victoire Ingabiré Umuhoza's blog, http://victoire2010.skyrock.com/.

Free speech in Rwanda

Former New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer, writing in the London Guardian, on March 2, 2010, paraphrased "Rwandan leaders" when comparing free speech in the African Republic of Rwanda to yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre.

Kinzer is the author of "A Thousand Hills, Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed it," the story of how former General, now incumbent President, Paul Kagame seized power in Rwanda during the Rwanda Genocide of 1994.

Critics characterize him as Kagame's biographer, apologist, and publicist.

Full text at Digital Journal, http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/288466

"Twas, Tutsis, and Hutus united against Kagame!"

On February 10, 2010, In Brussels, Rwandan exiles demonstrated outside the Rwandan Embassy, against the repression of opposition political parties in Rwanda's 2010 presidential election.   Some held signs reading "Twas, Tutsis, and Hutus united against Kagame!" in both English and French, the two European languages spoken in Rwanda. 

Others held signs of Victoire Ingabiré Umuhoza, the presidential candidate of the broadbased FDU-Inkingi Party, who was, on the same day, being questioned, for four hours, by the Criminal Investigation Division of the Rwandan Police, about "genocide ideology," "divisionism," and her relationship to the FDLR militia in Eastern Congo.  Also visible were signs that read, in French, "Liberez Joseph!" (Liberate Joseph), and pictures of Joseph Ntawangundi, Mrs. Ingabiré's aide, who was arrested several days after the two of them tried to register their party, and her presidential candidacy.

On the same day, Human Rights Watch issued a news release, "Rwanda: End Attacks on Opposition Parties," stating that "opposition  party members are facing increasing threats, attacks, and harassment in advance of Rwanda's August 2010 presidential election, and urging the government "to investigate all such incidents and to ensure that opposition activists are able to go about their legitimate activities without fear."

The three viable Rwandan opposition parties have faced harassment, threats, bureaucratic roadblocks, arrest, and even violence as they've tried to register and convene so as to field presidential candidates in the race against incumbent President Paul Kagame, the former Rwandan Patriotic Front general trained at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in the U.S.  Neither the FDU-Inkingi nor the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda have been able to register and the government has threatened to revoke the Parti Social-Imberakuri's registration.