By Ann Garrison, BAR contributor
Washington’s closest ally in Africa is a minority regime that kills and jails dissidents like Victoire Ingabire, who has lost many comrades.
“I am not afraid of being assassinated because I know I will pass away with honor because I served my people.”
Human rights organizations and Rwandan opposition members have called on the Rwandan government to conduct credible investigations into the latest in a long line of suspicious disappearances and deaths in Rwanda, a longstanding ally and military partner of the US. I spoke to Victoire Ingabire, leader of the United Democratic Forces of Rwanda, about those her party has lost.
In 2010 Ingabire returned home from the Netherlands to Rwanda to run for president against incumbent autocrat Paul Kagame. Kagame’s government did not allow her to run or register her party, and instead arrested and imprisoned her in October of that year. Although she adamantly advocates nonviolence, the government accused her of conspiring with a terrorist group and encouraging Rwandans to rise up. It also accused her of “genocide ideology,” which means disagreeing with Rwanda’s legally enforced history of its 1994 massacres and genocide. FULL STORY