If you follow Rwanda’s history and politics closely, you might have come across the name Victoire Ingabire. The 54-year-old woman is no stranger to anyone interested in the country’s recent history. But who, really, is she?

 

Here are 10 things about Ingabire, a genocide ideologue who wants the world to know her as a well intentioned politician.

 

1.    Hired without qualifications

 

One of the rarely known facts about Ingabire's past is how she failed national exams and joined a nuns’ run vocational training school at Cyahinda ‘Centre de Formation des Jeunes’, to do basket weaving and tailoring in the former Gishamvu Commune, Butare Prefecture, now Huye District. She gained a certificate after four years, in June 1987.

 

Despite her lack of qualifications, few months after completing her vocational training, Ingabire was hired in the Customs department, then under the Ministry of Finance.

This was a favor from her mother’s concubine, Dr. Akingeneye Emmanuel, who was a personal physicist of President Juvénal Habyarimana. This physicist and his boss died together in a plane crash on April 1994.

 

2.   Husband’s Dutch citizenship revoked

 

Notoriously known for his double genocide ideology, Ingabire’s husband, Lin Muyizere, saw the immigration service in the Netherland revoke his citizenship, in 2014, after three years of enjoying njoying Dutch citizenship. This was after his role in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi was revealed.

 

As if that was not enough to stop spreading his genocide ideology, Muyizere continued to support his wife in advocating for double genocide propaganda.

 

3.   Assisted génocidaire mother to flee justice

 

Nicknamed ‘the doctor of death’, Ingabire’s mother, Therese Dusabe, during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, executed pregnant Tutsi women in Butamwa health center where she worked as a nurse. She often removed their fetuses and slaughtered the new borns by hitting them against walls.

 

Her atrocities drove her into exile in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after the genocide.

 

Ingabire‘s connections in DRC made it easy for her to find travel documents and assist her mother to flee to the Netherlands.  Dusabe was tried in absentia in 2009 by Rwanda’s Gacaca courts and sentenced to life in prison but she is still living freely in the Netherlands.

 

4.   Father arrested for Genocide crimes

 

Pascal Gakumba, the father of Ingabire was never ‘left behind’ in accelerating killings during the Genocide against the Tutsi, from 1990 to 1994.    After the RPF liberated Rwanda, in late July, he was appointed Bourgemester (Mayor) of Kibirira Commune, until 1996. He was also on a list of senior politicians who were to be Deputies in the first post-1994 Parliament which was composed in 1996.

 

However, three days before swearing, he was arrested on suspicion of taking part in the massacre of the Tutsi in 1990, and the 1994 genocide in Kibirira where he lived.

 

Gakumba was charged for inciting people to kill their Tutsi neighbors in the Genocide. After four years in prison he was released in 2002. He committed suicide in 2004.

 

5.   Headed  genocidaire movements

 

She got a warm welcome in the Rassemblement Republicain pour la Democratie au Rwanda (RDR), in 1997. Ingabire lived in the Netherlands during the Genocide. She was nominated as RDR leader worldwide in 2000 after serving as its coordinator in The Netherlands, since 1998.

 

Formed in March 29, 1995, by the remnants of the genocidal regime, army and Interahamwe militia in Mugunga refugee camp, in DRC, RDR’s objective was nothing but to re-organise, re-arm, and forcefully return to Rwanda and finish the mission of exterminating the Tutsi.

 

Ingabire also headed RDR’s successor, Forces Democratique Unifies (FDU-Inkingi) since 2006. The former was a combination of number of genocidal groups aimed to topple the RPF-led government.

 

6.   Double genocide Ideology

 

After living in the Netherlands for 16 years, Ingabire returned to Rwanda in January 2010 to register her genocidal party, FDU-Inkingi, and contest in the presidential elections scheduled in August that year.

 

After landing, she visited the Kigali genocide memorial centre where she delivered a speech questioning why there is a memorial of the Genocide against the Tutsi only while – according to her – there were Hutu victims also to be remembered.

 

Four days later, on January 20, Ingabire visited the grave of Dominique Mbonyumutwa, Rwanda’s first president. Mbonyumutwa was one of the architects of Parmehutu, or Parti du Mouvement de l’Emancipation du Peuple Hutu, or the Party for Hutu Emancipation, the extremist party that introduced ethnic cleansing targeting the Tutsi. Parmehutu initiated the exterminations against the Tutsi in 1959 and the following years.

 

Ingabire’s words at the memorial site in Kigali and her visit to Mbonyumutwa’s grave, within one week of her arrival in Rwanda, exposed her double genocide ideology and shade light on her strong support of the Parmehutu ideology.

 

7.   Arrested and tried

 

Ingabire’s genocide ideology, her collaboration with terrorist groups and conspiracy against the government, got her arrested three months after arriving in Rwanda.

 

In April 2010, she was arrested after being implicated by Maj Vital Uwumuremyi, a former commander in the FDLR terror group who was intercepted trying to sneak across the DRC – Rwanda border. Uwumuremyi was behind a terrorist organization known as Coalition of Democratic Forces (CDF), a military wing of the FDU-Inkingi.

 

In 2012, Ingabire was found guilty of terrorism, genocide denial and planning to cause state insecurity. She was sentenced to eight years in prison. The sentence was increased to 15 years after appeal.

 

8.   Pleaded for presidential pardon and released

 

In prison, Ingabire a penned number of letters to President Paul Kagame asking for pardon.

 

In her “Gusaba Imbabazi” – translated as “asking for forgiveness” – she promised the Head of State that, upon release, she would become a better citizen who will contribute to Rwanda’s development.

 

In the last paragraph of Ingabire’s pleading letter dated June 25, 2018, she wrote: “Your Excellency President, in your discernment if you find that I deserve pardon and release me from prison, personally I am committed to working together with all Rwandan citizens peacefully towards our country’s sustainable development.”

 

On September 15, 2018, after serving eight of her 15 year prison sentence, she was released on presidential clemency.

 

Right after being discharged from prison, Ingabire told local media that she is “grateful for the presidential mercy because the president decided to pardon me so that I can go out and live a normal life.”

 

Once outside prison, the ungrateful and arrogant Ingabire told foreign media that she was released due to international pressure.

 

9.   Formed DALFA-Umurinzi after her release to cover up

A year after her release, Ingabire formed a new political party and called it the ‘Development and Liberty For All (DALFA-Umurinzi) as a cover for FDU-Inkingi's agenda. But Ingabire of RDR is no different from the Ingabire of Inkingi, or Umurinzi. She was the same extremist, the same criminal.

 

Her new deception project, DALFA-Umurinzi, came to covertly carry on propagating her genocide ideology and agenda.

 

Due to her Parmehutu’s ideology, Ingabire is not allowed to form a political party. In addition, Rwandan law prohibits anyone who has been sentenced to an imprisonment equal to or exceeding six months; or  committed crimes of Genocide against the Tutsi, to be in the management of a political organization. 

 

10.        Uses Western media connections to promote her agenda

 

Ingabire is a darling of the West despite her criminal record. Western journalists have shown a great deal of creativity in spreading fake news about her real purpose and intent, including and mainly through a denial campaign of the genocide against the Tutsi translated into a persistent negation of Rwanda’s self-realization since July 1994. Western media Houses tirelessly publish her articles criticizing Rwanda’s system of governance while turning a blind eye to her genocide ideology.

 

From Aljazeera to BBC and CNN, Ingabire always plays a victim of political oppression, violation of rights and freedom of expression. But she lives an unhindered cozy life, often having her friends from the West over for wine and subversive talk against Rwanda.