Ingabire first came to world attention in 2010 when she returned to Rwanda, from exile in the Netherlands, to contest the country’s presidential elections. . File Photo.
Thirty years on, since Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) forces, liberated Rwandans, from a hellish abyss, into which they had been plunged by a genocidal system, intent on wiping out a section of the population from the face of the earth, Rwanda is now a nation healed, striding confidently into the future. But buttressed by their Western backers, adherents of the ideology of division and genocide, have never given up on efforts to undermine the rebirth of a nation they had all but destroyed. Few of these have been more determined than Victoire Ingabire.
Western parliamentarians visiting Rwanda, beat a path to her door, as though on a pilgrimage, major newspapers, set aside coveted space for her Western media and communications representatives, to ghostwrite anti Rwanda diatribes for her, and universities roll out virtual red carpets, for her to declaim to the world about the supposed lack of freedom and democracy in Rwanda.
No mention of Victoire Ingabire, is ever without the obligatory, “prominent opposition figure.” That is in itself instructive. For Westerners, ill at ease with Rwanda’s temerity to stand by their sovereignty, to govern themselves without seeking permission from every Western Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Ingabire serves as a stick with which to strike a rebellious Rwanda at every turn. The reality of Rwanda as it actually is, of little consequence to Ingabire herself or her Western backers.
It would not matter if Rwanda were the very acme of earthly governance, it is not in their image, therefore it must be condemned. Were it otherwise, were she anything more than their foghorn, Ingabire’s Western champions, might pay a little more attention to the kind of person they have chosen to anoint as the plucky warrior for Democracy and freedom.
Ingabire first came to world attention in 2010. She arrived in Rwanda, she says, from exile in the Netherlands, to contest the country’s presidential elections. None of her Western supporters, who include human rights organisations, and self styled Rwanda experts, in the media, academia and elsewhere, seemed interested in anything more than these bland statements, so ready are they to take whatever she says at face value.
And that of course, is perfectly understandable, since it matters not a jot to them, whether or not she is a fit candidate for any office, let alone as head of state. She serves her purpose. The history of her arrest, trial and imprisonment, has now been mythologised to fit the narrative of a heroic fighter for Democracy, against a “dictatorship.”
According to the narrative of her fondest wishes, which Western media has created for her, she was imprisoned on “trumped up” “politically motivated” charges. The reason for all the effort to arrest, put her on trial (and it should be noted, be defended by lawyers of her own choosing) was we are told, because she was “the main opposition.”
It does not occur to any of her Western backers, to ask how an unknown name, lands in a country on the eve of elections, and suddenly becomes the “main opposition.” Such questions are regarded as an irrelevance, because all that matters, is that she is a convenient vehicle for Western attacks against the Rwanda leadership. As long as she spouts the platitudes about democracy, freedom, equality that they give her, she continues to be rewarded with being hailed as “the prominent opposition.”
Unlike her Western cheerleaders, Rwandans did of course, take a close look at Ingabire, and she has quite the story and history.
In the Guardian Newspaper, one of the world’s major newspapers, which seems to have taken the editorial decision to demonise Rwanda, Ingabire complains about a tweet by the Rwanda government spokesperson, which bluntly states that she, Ingabire, is no politician, but “an unrepentant criminal.”
The Financial Times, gives her, or rather her ghost writers, space to decry what she terms “violent language” from President Kagame, dramatically insinuating “threats against me by Paul Kagame…” She quotes the Rwanda head of state, as telling his audience that when those who distort the truth about Rwanda tell their lies, “refute what they say…if they cross the line, the consequences are clear…”
“No Rwandan will have difficulty in understanding what was meant by those words” she wails, “it is this kind of violent rhetoric in political discourse that must be condemned by all who support the rule of law and democratic freedoms. These freedoms remain unavailable in Rwanda. This is the reality that motivates me to continue.”
To this, her Western supporters rise in ovation. Whatever absurdity she claims, they applaud, as long as it is anti Rwanda. And yes, no Rwandan, except it seems her, would have had any difficulty in understanding Paul Kagame’s words, the RPF leadership has after all been emphasising them for the best part of thirty years.
Engage in the kind of divisive politics that led to the mass murder of over a million men, women and children, and you will face the full force of the law, as indeed Ingabire herself did. But acknowledging that would not have served hers and supporters’ purpose.
It is extraordinary that the world’s renowned news organisations, like the Guardian and the Financial Times, can fail to ask the most basic of questions, before they print propaganda aginst a country’s head of state.
And love him or loathe him, Paul Kagame, is acknowledged by friend and foe alike, as one of the most outstanding political leaders, of any generation, on the world stage today. In Rwanda, itself, he is the object of universal affection and unqualified admiration. The notion that such a man, would go in public to threaten anyone’s life, is so ludicrous that it would have rung alarm bells for any half decent editor. Time and again, however, these newspapers have pressed the off button on such alarm bells, and continued their anti Rwanda absurdities.
News organisations like the Guardian or Financial Times, cannot of course, be said to lack journalistic rigour, or be ignorant of its ethics, they simply choose to switch them off, when it comes to Rwanda.
What we are then left with, is that anyone wishing to understand the truth about Ingabire, and the extraordinary forbearance Rwandan authorities allow her, needs to ignore Western hysterics, and posturing about “freedom” “human rights” and that old favourite, “lack of political space,” and look closely at who Ingabire is, and what really drives her.
They could begin with her claim of “exile.” Exile from what, from whom? Both her parents have been convicted in absentia of crimes of genocide. As a child of perpetrators of the Genocide Against Tutsi, she will have had no cause to flee the country.
And she does indeed have some prominence, although not the kind she and her Western supporters unceasingly tout.
Ingabire is the defacto leader of the defeated genocidal groups worldwide, a position to which she was appointed from the jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), or Zaire as it was then, in the 1990s, by the leaders of the defeated genocidal establishment, as they planned their return to Rwanda, in their words, to “finish off where they had left.”
Under the chairmanship of former head of Rwanda’s military, Augustin Bizimungu, the genocidal “government in exile”, met to decide how they would regroup to not only recapture Rwanda from the RPF forces, but to convince the outside world that there had been no genocide, merely a “civil war.”
And in an effort to have the torture and mass murder of over a million men, women and children, slowly recede in the world’s memory, it was agreed that those directly involved in the planning and perpetrating the mass murders, would withdraw into the background, and younger people, who could not be connected directly to the genocide, would be nurtured to be the face of the new, subtle, more nuanced fight back.
A younger Victoire Ingabire, was appointed to lead the Netherlands chapter, of a new organisation, the Rally for the return of Refugees and Democracy (RDR). By the year 2000, the extremists’ rising star, had so impressed her mentors, that she was elevated to lead the organisation worldwide. Under her it soon became the Republican Rally for Democracy in Rwanda.
The RDR, was effectively the political wing of the FDLR or Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.
It is worth paying close attention to the menu of the constantly changing alphabet soup of acronyms, RDR, FDU-Inkingi (United Democratic Forces) DALFA-Umurinzi (Development and Liberty for All), on and on. Rwanda genocide researcher, Tom Ndahiro observes, that for Ingabire, and the other genocidal HutuPower (Hutu supremacy) ideology faithful, the letter D, in these acronyms, stands not for Democracy, as they would have the unwary believe, “but for a selected demography.”
Such is the complexity of Rwanda’s history, that seemingly innocuous, even noble words, like democracy, the Republic, the people, are in fact dog whistles to every extremist. When the planners and perpetrators of the Genocide Against Tutsi, talk of democracy and the people, they mean the political system based on the genocidal HutuPower ideology, which divides Rwandans along ethnic lines. For them, Democracy is the demography of the Hutu population, to the exclusion of all others, especially the Tutsi. And when they talk of the “Republic”, as in RDR, they mean not Rwanda, but the sectarian HutuPower leadership.
The creation of FDU-Inkingi (the United Democratic Forces), was intended to unite all the disparate groups that mushroomed, following the defeat of the genocidal forces, under one umbrella. Its establishment was little more than a necessary façade, behind which Ingabire could conceal her leadership of the RDR.
When as part of the so called P5, parties which included the Rwanda National Congress (RNC), FDU-Inkingi was identified by the UN as making common cause with terrorist activities, Ingabire quickly found herself a new mask, Dalfa-Umurinzi was born.
Ironically, every one of these democratic this, that, and the other organisations, were, and remain intended to undermine the RPF’s policy of reconciling and reunifying Rwandans. That reconciliation and unity, are the true enemies of all those who sit under the RDR umbrella.
It is as a candidate of FDU-Inkingi, a clearly extremist organisation, that Ingabire intended to contest the presidential elections, in a country still recovering from the genocide those behind her, had planned and perpetrated.
In language her Western observers would understand, it is as though the neo-Nazi offspring of the planners and perpetrators of the Holocaust against the Jewish people, had formed a vehicle for the return of Nazism, in another guise, to contest elections in Germany.
In the Guardian newspaper, Ingabire claims that she was “immediately arrested after openly criticising the Rwanda government’s reconciliation policy, in relation to the 1994 genocide…”
What neither she nor her supporters at the Guardian will add, is that, as the leader of the RDR, this “criticism” of Rwanda’s reconciliation policy, entailed peddling the claim of a “double genocide,” leading to the eventual assertion that there really was no genocide, merely a spontaneous uprising that descended into mass murder.
Like all countries that have suffered genocide, including Germany, Rwanda’s laws against genocide denial are clear. Ingabire was not “immediately” arrested, she was eventually arrested, and tried, after repeatedly trampling on those laws, rubbing salt in the still open wounds of survivors.
And the charges against her, included her support of the FDLR, the main evidence of which was taken from her computer’s hard drive, by the Dutch police, and handed to Rwandan prosecutors. In no country in the world, could Ingabire have avoided a jail term.
When in the Guardian, her minders denigrate the RPF’s achievements, with the somewhat risible claim, that had she been allowed to contest elections, she would have presented the “real issues” to the electorate, like the “Rwandan refugees…scattered across the world,” to use her own words, no Rwanda has difficulty understanding what that kind of language means.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), has declared that there is no longer any reason for any Rwandan to consider him or herself a refugee, from their land of origin. In reality this became true the moment the RPF forces defeated the genocidal establishment, in 1994. The “refugees” to whom Ingabire refers are members of the RDR, fleeing from justice, or to borrow from the great African-American civil rights leader, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, fleeing from a Rwanda where they are judged not by ethnicity, but on the content of their character. These are Ingabire’s refugees. These are her “real issues.”
The most sacred duty of any government is to protect the people it governs. By any measure, Rwanda stands as an ineffable example of the triumph of the best in humanity, over the very worst. It is a triumph that has come at the cost of immeasurable suffering and sacrifice, and the need for vigilance against sliding back into depravity remains.
Few countries are more punctilious in observing the rights of individuals, found guilty of the most unspeakable of crimes. The observation of the letter and the spirit of the law, is augmented by the Rwandan culture of seeking consensus, of offering an offender every opportunity to make amends, and return within the community against which he or she had offended. That patience however, the forbearance, although certainly broad and deeply ingrained, is not infinitely elastic.
Only a few days ago, a genocide survivor in her sixties, Pauline Nduwamungu, was murdered by those among her neighbours, in whom the seed of genocidal hatred is still nurtured.
When President Kagame warns of consequences for those who distort the truth about Rwanda, no Rwandan indeed has any difficulty in understanding that their head of state is fulfilling that sworn sacred duty to protect them. Any responsible politician would have sought to associate themselves with President Kagame’s statement. Victoire Ingabire, decries words that are for the protection of the entire nation.
When in the Guardian she writes that in 2018, she was released “from prison by Kagame,” she characteristically carefully bends the truth. After letters asking for a Presidential pardon, she was eventually granted one, on specific conditions, including not continuing the activities that had got her sentenced before a judge and imprisoned, none of which were politics, or criticism of the government.
That is what the government spokesperson means, when she reminds anyone interested in the truth, that Ingabire is no politician, but “an unrepentant criminal.” The spokesperson might have added that if she continues to flout the conditions of her release, Ingabire may well find herself once again, before a judge, almost certainly heading back to jail.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. Rwanda knows only too well how ill judged the nursery rhyme is. Thirty years after words birthed the horror of one of the worst genocides of any generation, it may be time to unmask what really drives Victoire Ingabire, and for her Western supporters to fully acknowledge who and what it is they champion.
