RWANDA ,Kigali, 02 September 2011
- Ms. Victoire Ingabire in Court
The Rwandan victor’s justice starts on 05 September 2011 the political trial of the opposition leader Madame Victoire Ingabire, FDU-INKINGI chair, detained since October 2010. The governement is pushing for a life sentence.
Today, the visit of 10 members of the party FDU-INKINGI to their leader in Kigali maximum security was again refused. She has been in isolation since April 2011 and was denied the right to be seen by a doctor of her choice.
The indictment of Ingabire is based on very questionable and coerced confessions of under cover intelligence agents. This political trial is burnished with legalisms, she is prosecuted because she is seen as a political enemy of the ruling party and its state machinery that operate the tribunals. The legal foundation of the trial is explicitly retroactive and based on vague laws of genocide ideology, divisionism, terrorist acts against the authoritarian rule. Those laws are selectively applied against all opposition leaders, some military leaders, defeated politicians and second class citizens.
Madame Ingabire is not going to the butchery expecting some kind of justice. She knows that the regime does not tolerate any competition and that she is a real threat to the power of General Paul Kagame. In this case, no judge and no tribunal would try to restrain the government. Why would the Kagame government allow itself to be restrained by judges they have appointed?
Her political actions constitute a light that will overcome the darkness of the dictatorship, sweep despair, bring hope for a long lasting solution in Rwanda.
We call upon Rwandans inside and outside to stand for their rights and for a better future for all our children.
FDU-Inkingi
Boniface Twagirimana
Interim Vice President.