Since her return to Rwanda in 2010 after living for 16 years in the Netherlands, Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza has alleged that Rwanda is not safe, and that it violates the principles democracy and freedom of speech.

The self-proclaimed opposition leader was in 2013 tried and convicted for crimes related to genocide and terrorism. She was sentenced to 15 years in jail, but released in 2018, on presidential pardon.

Following her release, Ingabire declared that she distanced herself from the terror activities of FDU-Inkingi. However, she covertly kept on leading the organisation founded by genocidaires and genocide ideologues who fled Rwanda after they perpetrated the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

Ingabire later founded FDU-Inkingi’s splinter in Rwanda, DALFA-Umurinzi, which is not allowed to participate in Rwanda’s political space unless it changes its agenda of divisionism.

Despite declaring that she is going to participate in Rwanda’s development when she was released from jail, Ingabire still has the same criminal mindset. Her goal is to tarnish the image of the Rwandan government while relentlessly advocating for genocidaires and genocide ideologues, as well as supporting terrorist groups in a bid to destabilize Rwanda.

Ingabire claims that Rwanda violates freedom of speech, yet she has written hundreds of articles and was interviewed by dozens of media outlets and abused the government of Rwanda, and nobody arrested or harassed her.

What freedom of speech is she speaking of then?

Ingabire claims, in her Western media articles and interviews, that Rwanda is not safe for asylum seekers from the UK. The question remains: how has she managed to live in an “unsafe” country for all these years?  

Has she deployed a battalion for her own protection so as to survive in Kigali?

Contrary to the lies Ingabire continues to spread, Rwanda is one of the safest countries on the continent, and in the world. Rwanda, Ranking as number 72 on the Global Peace Index, has long been considered one of the safest countries in Africa to travel to. In 2022, Rwanda was named as the sixth safest country in the world and safest country in Africa for solo travelers.

Earlier, in a 2018 Global Law and Order study by Gallup, an American analytics and advisory company, 88 per cent of Rwandans said they felt safe to walk alone at night, the same figure as in Finland, Slovenia and Tajikistan.

Rwanda has been welcoming refugees for almost three decades.

As of October 2023, over 135,000 refugees and asylum seekers were registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Predominately, the refugees come from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Burundi. There are others from Eritrea, Libya, and Afghanistan, among others.

In June 2022, the UNHCR applauded “Rwanda’s generosity to people forced to flee, calls for more global solidarity for the refugee response.”

Again, when UN High Commissioner for refugees Filippo Grandi visited Rwanda, in April 2021, he praised Rwanda “for offering life-saving haven for refugees”.

Is there anything special with the asylum seekers from the UK?

Ingabire’s allegations are simply baseless. In 2020, her daughter and her two grandchildren visited her in Kigali. Did anything bad happen to them? Absolutely no.

Ingabire is only motivated by her anti-RPF and anti-Kagame agenda.

She has never acknowledged the transformation of Rwanda, from a devastated state to a successful story. She only invests in tarnishing the image of the RPF-led government, and destabilizing Rwanda by supporting terrorist groups like FDLR and P5, which plot to ruin Rwanda.