Hidden agenda in Ingabire’s campaign for intra Rwandan dialogue

In recent weeks, self-styled Rwandan politician Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza has been actively waging a campaign in the foreign press for what she called an intra-Rwandan dialogue.

For those who don’t know, Ingabire is a diehard Hutu Power ideology zealot relentlessly trying to re-inject that murderous ideology into today’s Rwandan politics. To really understand what’s motivating her, one must travel back in time and understand her connections with the genocidal government behind the slaughter of more than one million Tutsi, in 1994.

Ingabire sprang to the scene in the wake of the defeat of the genocidaire government led by Prime Minister Jean Kambanda. The remnants of the genocidaire forces fled to eastern Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and immediately formed what they called the Republican Rally for Democracy (RDR). Defeated genocidaire leaders created it on April 3,1995. It  comprised the fallen regime's senior army officers who were responsible for the genocide against the Tutsi.

In their official statements, RDR officials declared that their goal was to establish liberal democracy in Rwanda. But their true goal was to reorganise, re-arm, forcefully return to Rwanda and finish off the genocide against the Tutsi.

Ingabire joined RDR in 1997, three years after the genocide, and, a year later, became its president. Since RDR was sullied by its bloody past, in April 2006, Ingabire participated in the creation of a new entity, FDU-Inkingi (United Democratic Forces), which she claimed worked for the installation of rule, respect of democracy and good governance, in Rwanda.

But as the French saying goes: “Dis-moi qui tu hantes, je te dirais qui tu es,’’ meaning: “tell me who your friends are, I will tell you who you are.”

Ingabire, the daughter of a genocidaire, Dusabe Thérèse, who was a midwife at the Butamwa Health Center in Kigali during the genocide, led FDU-Inkingi for several years.

During the 1994 genocide, Dusabe, was a midwife in Nyarugenge District and she collaborated with the Bourgmestre (mayor) of Butamwa Commune to prepare and chair all meetings that planned to start the attacks on the Tutsi.  Ingabire’s mother was nicknamed "the doctor of death" for her cruelty. She first killed Tutsi pregnant women and then killed their babies by hitting them on the wall.

Today, Dusabe and her daughter’s associates include Ndereyehe Ntahontuye, nicknamed “the butcher of ISAR Rubona” for his murderous campaign in central Rwanda during the genocide, and Marcel Sebatware, a mastermind of the genocide against the Tutsi at the CIMERWA factory in Bugarama, south western Rwanda.

Ingabire has never disassociated herself from these hard-core genocidaires or called for their arrest so that they face justice. She never condemned the evil deeds by her mother who is on the run.

FDU-Inkingi is in close collaboration with terrorist groups such the FDLR, based in eastern DRC, and is part of P5, a grouping of political associations recognised as terrorist by the UN group of experts. The latter armed outfit also includes the terrorist RUD-Urunana which, in October 2019, launched an attack on Kinigi village in northern Rwanda, killing more than 10 innocent people and wounding several others. Later, when Ingabire sensed that the true colours of FDU-Inkingi and this terrorist organisation had been noticed, she pretended to resign from its leadership and created another phoney political party called Dalfa-Umurinzi.

Ingabire was funding the FDLR, as proven by files handed over to Rwandan prosecution by the Dutch judicial authorities. This, together with genocide denial crimes she committed upon arriving in Rwanda in 2010 landed her in hot waters. She was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison. She was released in 2018 following a presidential pardon.

She can try to rebrand herself as much as she wants. But she cannot completely shed off her propensity to support the Hutu Power ideology and genocide denial and revisionism. In her Al-Jazeera pamphlet titled “Intra-Rwandan dialogue is crucial for peace in the Great Lakes,” she refers to the genocide against the Tutsi as the Tutsi’s genocide. What does this mean? That the Tutsi own the genocide, or that they perpetrated it themselves? Only the author knows what’s behind this twist of the universally agreed terminology - the genocide against the Tutsi.

In the same paper, she comes back to the same crime of double genocide theory which put her in prison in 2010.

She wrote: “The mechanisms to promote unity and reconciliation among Rwandans adopted by the national consultation of 1999 were commendable. However, the lack of public and official remembrance of the victims of war crimes committed in Rwanda before, during, and after the genocide against the Tutsis are creating conflicting views among citizens. This creates social grievances and weakens trust and cooperation among Rwandans.”

Clearly, she’s relaying the long-held grievance of her allied genocidaires who are eager to obfuscate the truth about what happened in 1994.

All the noise Ingabire is making about intra-Rwandan dialogue is for one particular constituent: proponents of the Hutu Power ideology who tried everything including armed rebellion against the current Rwandan government, to re-enter the Rwandan political platform they excluded themselves from when committing genocide.

In the meantime, on October 13, Rwandan authorities arrested a dozen members of Ingabire’s Dalfa group for involvement in subversive activities. These suspects are on trial in courts of law.

Every year, Rwanda holds Umushyikirano or National Dialogue in which all Rwandans participate, from grass-roots level to the President. Because of Covid-19, it has been impossible to hold it for the last two years. This is the only forum Rwandans need to iron out any lingering governance issues.

Rwandans today have come of age and don’t need the intervention of the international community to solve their problems.

All of Ingabire's attempts to bring, or insert, through the back door, her mother’s Hutu Power ideology in Rwanda's political mainstream will fail.