Regional
Rwanda: Why Ingabire should be in prison
Victoire
Ingabire continues to stage her usual lies in international media, and human
rights platforms. Most recently it was on CNN and Open Democracy.
In
her CNN Op-Ed, Ingabire lies that she was denied political space in Rwanda
simply because she wanted to register a political party and compete in
presidential elections.
“But
a few months after my arrival I was arrested and taken to the police station,
where I was handcuffed and locked in an empty room, devoid even of a mattress,”
she wrote.
Even
if Rwanda was a rouge country, which is not the case, one wonders how an
innocent person gets arrested for having ambitions to run for president! Ingabire is a serial liar, a wolf in sheep’s
skin. Many outsiders do not know her double genocide ideology.
An
opinion article published by CNN on October 3, titled “Inside the prison where
sunlight ceases to exist,” pushes new UK Prime Minister, Liz Truss, to drop the
Asylum seekers deal with Rwanda, using Ingabire’s false narrative of “human
rights violations” in a prison cell in Rwanda.
Second,
it intended to tarnish the image of Rwanda before the international community.
However,
before Ingabire wrote the article, or got the article written for her by CNN,
she forgot that after her release, she gave an interview in which she praised
the prison authorities on how she was well cared for while serving her
sentence.
Linking
Ingabire’s prison experience to stopping the UK asylum seekers deal misses the
point. The asylum seekers will not be sent to Rwanda as criminals going to
serve sentences in prison.
It
is true that the large number of prisoners in Rwanda has its own historical
background. Genocide suspects who committed the crime in hundreds of thousands
could not be let free. Critics though, do not provide an option that can
decongest the prisons at the same time deliver justice to the victims.
In another Op-Ed
published by Open Democracy on October 5, under the title, “It’s time for
Rwanda to give non-violence a chance,” Ingabire claims that Rwanda is
responsible for the violence in the Great Lakes region. But a peek into her
sinister past tells a different story, considering her ties to the perpetrators
of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi who continue to maraud in eastern
DRC and other parts of the world, including the Netherlands where she lived for
a long time.
If there were no genocide
ideologues like Ingabire and militia like FDLR who have intentions of
continuing the genocide against the Tutsi, the region would be peaceful.
Ingabire is wasting her time confusing the world
that she is a Rwandan politician. The
law of Rwanda is very clear on the requirements of who should be a politician
in the country. She does not qualify to be a politician or to head any
political organization.
Organic Law n° 10/2013/0L of 11/07/2013,
governing Political Organizations and Politicians 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.
Ingabire served eight
years on genocide related crimes. She was not acquitted but released on
clemency. Therefore, her “political
credentials’’ in Rwanda are null and void.
The DALFA Umurinzi ‘political
party’ she claims to own is not legally registered and only exists by wishful
thinking. Outsiders who wish to impose
Ingabire on Rwandans, as a politician, are frogging a dead horse.
Here is the true story of who Ingabire is and what she stands
for.
Soon after the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda,
in 1995, Ingabire was among the founder members of the Rally for the Return of
Refugees and Democracy in Rwanda (RDR) - a party of the defeated genocidal
regime in exile in the then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
At the time, the man who recruited her, Lt Col Juvenal Bahufite, an
intelligence chief in the genocidal regime, saw an asset in her. Ingabire
was 'clean' since she could not be directly linked to the 1994 genocide - despite
her parent’s direct participation in the massacres.
Ingabire went to The Netherlands in 1993.
Despite her vehement denials, her mother, Thérèse Dusabe, a midwife at the Butamwa
Health Center in Kigali nicknamed "the doctor of death" for her
cruelty during the genocide first killed Tutsi pregnant women and then killed
babies by hitting them on the wall.
Ingabire’s father, Pascal Gakumba, who was a bourgmestre
for Kibilira commune between 1994 and 1996 was active in inciting people in his
commune to carry out genocide. When Ingabire joined RDR, it was reorganizing to return
to Rwanda and kill the Tutsi who had survived the genocide.
In 1997 RDR tactically changed its name to Partie
pour la Libération du Rwanda (PALIR). Its armed wing became Armes
de Libération du Rwanda (ALIR). Ingabire continued representing the
terror group even as it continuously changed names to escape the genocide tag
and sought to rebrand as a legitimate opposition party intent on playing a role
in Rwandan politics.
In 1999, ALIR militia
members murdered eight tourists in Uganda's Bwindi Forest, near the DRC. The US
government slapped ALIR with sanctions and designated it as a terrorist
organization. In May 2002, ALIR rebranded again and turned into the Democratic
Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) with an armed wing called the Force
Combattante Abacunguzi (FOCA).
On January 16, 2010 Ingabire landed at the Kigali International
Airport, from the Netherlands, and went to the Gisozi genocide memorial site
where more than 250,000 Genocide victims are laid to rest. She questioned
members of staff there about why there were only remains of the Tutsi, yet the
Hutu were also killed. She was blunt when advancing the double genocide
ideology.
Ingabire and her minders continue to allege that the
Rwandan government does not tolerate dissenting voices but they don’t want the
world to know that the Rwandan government actually does not tolerate genocide
ideology and terrorism. The politics of hate speech and divisionism have no
place in today's Rwanda.
Ingabire is also affiliated
with terror groups, including FDLR. But these facts are swept under the carpet
by Western media and human rights organizations which promote her as a
politician.
Among others, the United
Democratic Forces – Inkingi, or FDU-Inkingi, which she led collaborated with
FDLR commanders. Evidence provided to Rwandan prosecutors by Dutch Police after
a search of her home in the Netherlands, shows that Ingabire travelled from
Europe to meet FDLR commanders in Kinshasa. Dutch authorities also shared a
document with minutes of the Kinshasa meeting including military deployment
plans.
Rwandans deserve better. They
deserve progressive politicians. Not
collaborators with terror groups.
Like many
other children whose parents committed genocide, Ingabire uses the smoke screen
of “politician and human rights activist,” as a cover-up to defend her mother
and other genocide perpetrators.
There are
many other children of Genocide suspects overseas who used their connections to
reach out to the media and rights organizations to tell lies about their past
so as to receive sympathy and cover up their parents’ role in the Genocide
against the Tutsi.
It has become a common pattern. Western media
and rights organizations easily buy into the lies of people like Ingabire and
become accomplices.
Rwandans know who their politicians are.
Ingabire is not one of them.
Like everyone who harbours the genocide
ideology, Ingabire should be in prison. She is a danger to society, especially
the Rwandan society which is still healing.