Kigali, Rwanda — In the darkness of the Kigali night, Eric walks through a maze of cement homes crowned in corrugated metal. Using his phone he lights the road under his feet, a path of compressed red earth still drying out from the rainy season.
After nearly an hour of walking through a series of dizzying hills that make up the Rwandan capital, he reaches his safe house. Eric — whose name has been changed for his safety — says he’s being watched by the government.
Staying more than one night is too risky. Tomorrow he’ll move again.
“Eric” and another Rwigara supporter at their safehouse in Kigali.
Inside a two-room house, illuminated by a single light affixed to a cement wall, he starts his story. It begins with one name: Diane.
Diane Rwigara is a former presidential hopeful and women’s rights activist who is currently in prison outside central Kigali awaiting trial.
The 37-year-old accountant, a fierce critic of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, launched her election bid three months ahead of the August 2017 vote. She was Kagame’s sole female challenger in the poll.
But her campaign was short-lived. Electoral authorities disqualified her, claiming she doctored the number of signatures needed to qualify and accusing her of submitting the names of dead people, which she denied.
With her presidential bid over, Rwigara launched the People Salvation Movement (Itabaza), an activist group to “encourage Rwandans to hold their government accountable.” Shortly after its inception, she was arrested on charges of incitement and fraud, which her family and supporters say are politically motivated.
Diane Rwigara, far left, is seen in a family portrait at the Rwigara home in Kigali.
Rwigara’s supporters like Eric, who fear for their lives, say a state-sanctioned atmosphere of harassment, censorship and threat of violence make it nearly impossible to speak out against the government.
After Rwigara’s August arrest, Eric was detained overnight with around 10 other supporters. Speaking to CNN in a Kigali safe house, he molds his hand into the shape of a gun and places two fingers inside his mouth. This, he says, is how he was told by police to stop supporting her.
Another Rwigara supporter who was with Eric at the time says he watched an officer threaten him with a gun, adding that he was beaten by another group of police also on the scene.
Rwanda is often described as the best place in the world for women in politics, with more female lawmakers in parliament than any other country, but it’s not the case if you challenge President Kagame, Eric says.
Last year, Kagame won the presidential election Rwigara had hoped to contest with almost 99% of the vote.
The 60-year-old — who in 2015 cleared the way to potentially stay in power until 2034 — has been president since 2000, but has long been an instrumental leader in the country’s modern history.
In 1994, Kagame led the armed wing of the Rwandan Patriotic Front or RPF (what is now the ruling party) into Kigali. That act helped to bring an end to a genocide that saw an estimated 800,000 people killed — mostly from the Tutsi ethnic group — in just 100 days. Two million people also fled the country.Since then, Kagame has been widely credited with the nation’s remarkable turnaround. His fiscal and social policies are widely touted by supporters — and many in the international community — as a blueprint for success in the region.
Part of that success has been measured by his commitment to gender parity. A post-genocide population skewed Rwanda’s female population to 70%. Kagame placed value on women’s roles and spearheaded many reforms to help build women’s capacity in civil society.
The most notable is a constitutional law that requires at least 30% of all parliamentary seats to be occupied by women. Today, Rwanda far surpasses that quota, with 61.3% of its parliament made up of female lawmakers (compared with the global average at 23.8%). Four out of seven Supreme Court justices are women, and the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion ensures gender representation and equality in local politics across the country.
Women make their way to a morning market in Kigali.
Female lawmakers have been praised for supporting policy changes around domestic violence, land rights and inheritance. But Rwigara’s supporters say this is a veneer masking a lack of real opposition and freedoms.
In a modern, luxurious Kigali villa only miles away from Eric’s hideout, Rwigara’s sister Anne and brother Arioste explain more.
Diane Rwigara lived much of her life outside Rwanda, traveling between California and Kigali. A family photo hanging on the wall of the living room shows a young, smiling Rwigara holding onto the shoulders of her father. She, like her father Assinapol Rwigara — a successful businessman — were at one time strong Kagame supporters.
“Blinded by how clean the streets are, how beautiful the city is… she thought it was the miracle country that had been talked about,” Anne says.
“But when she got on site it was a different story.”
In 2015, Rwigara returned to Rwanda from California after her father died in a car crash in suspicious circumstances. The official police report said that a truck driver had crashed into Assinapol’s car, which resulted in his death. But the Rwigaras allege that members of Kagame’s party harassed Assinapol — who was an important financier of the RPF in the early 1990s — after he refused to allow the government to seize control of his business and that he was killed on the president’s orders.
Arioste and Anne Rwigara, at home in Kigali.
The Rwigaras wrote to Kagame calling the crash an assassination and asking for a full and transparent inquiry.
“They will come in and take over what you worked for your whole life,” Anne says.
“Next thing you know you won’t have that business, you will be working for them… at best… they will kick you out of the business.”
Rwanda’s National Police, the Office of the President and the RPF have not responded to CNN’s request for comment.
Anne Rwigara looks outside, beyond the metal gates that guard the house.
There, two stationary cars, sit for hours at a time watching the residence. Anne and Arioste say they are government surveillance vehicles.
The 2018 World Bank Doing Business Report named Rwanda the second-best place to do business in sub-Saharan Africa and it’s ranked among the least corrupt countries on the continent, according to Transparency International’s 2017 Corruption Perception Index.
But when Rwigara sought to learn more about her father’s death, her family says she found a very different picture. This was the “catalyst” for Diane’s political awakening, her siblings say.
She questioned what she saw as suspicious deaths and disappearances of prominent businessmen, lawyers, journalists and a former intelligence official, among others, Anne says. Groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International previously have highlighted those cases.
Rwanda’s National Police and the Office of the President have not responded to CNN’s request for comment on those cases.
Anne Rwigara: “We don’t hide… you just reach a point and stand still and face what comes your way. They use a lot of pressure and fear to just silence people. You get to a point you realize you can’t take it, you can’t keep running and hiding. You feel better, when you are speaking the truth.”
The family say police bashed in this door and damaged other parts of their property when Diane, Anne and Adeline Rwigara were arrested.
Early morning traffic near Kigali’s Nyabugogo bus station.
