Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza’s arrival in Rwanda, an utter reminder of the RTLM!

Indeed, since the vitriolic vocal president of the coalesced nostalgic so-called opposition political parties in exile, a.k.a FDU-Inkingi, announced in September last year the party’s decision to come and compete in the 2010 Presidential elections, we have in this column, informed the public of who they are but also encouraged them to come in the hope that their leader would get an opportunity to erase her totally antiquated image of Rwanda with the sparking reality on the ground. It was however a shock to me and others in the Rwandan boat of today, when she on arrival proactively continued with her boots of a hardened genocide denier in her characteristic divisionist/hate ideology. Some among us got the utmost scare of the year when we woke up to her voice and messages on airwaves that sounded identical with that of Ms Bemeriki Valerie on the infamous RTLM during the man-made ‘apocalypse’ of 1994. She went on to claim that “I am a daughter and a mother, moved by the misery and humiliations of my people…..” Here I got utter consternation, a self-styled presidential contender and sorry to say, munyarwanda mother, agitating and propagating ethnicity, hate and divisionism well knowing where Rwanda was in April 1994? With Ingabire Victoire’s latest clarity of what her intentions are as testified in her maiden speeches and acts since her arrival in Rwanda on 16 January, we are pretty convinced now than ever that she did not ‘live in the past Rwanda’ while in Holland out of shear ignorance of what Rwanda today stands for but rather behaved as she did out of an ideological conviction that extremism and ethnicity is the route to achieve her political dream and the cherished high office of the land. A friend intimated when he read the infamous ‘revolutionary’ I mean hate speech of Ingabire, that both the latter and some Rwandans were only lucky that she was out of the country during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, otherwise she might also have participated, and probably would, with the help of Interpol or others, now have been in the gallows. Aware of the threat that reconciliation and other relevant policies like Gacaca and TIG are a threat to Ms Ingabire’s extremist ethnic ideology which she has as a tool for her political ambitions, the controversial Rwandan lady is out in arms to target these government policies in the hope that she could derail these bonafide Rwandan initiatives that aim at building a Rwandan State that belongs to all Rwandans. Ingabire should, in this regard, be asked to state in very clear terms her position as regards three crucial issues concerning national security, reconciliation and sustainable stability. Although in the Imvo n’Imvano programme on BBC of 9 January 2010, Ingabire dismissed her FDU-Inkingi’s roots in the RDR as RPF propaganda, we believe that this fact should not be taken lightly. We find it necessary to remind the public what RDR really is and what it stands for so that whatever Ingabire pretends, she together with her party are seen in their true context…. “RDR is the first criminal organization to acquire international recognition through Genocide laundering. It was officially launched on 3 April 1995, with offices in France, Belgium, Netherlands and Canada,” according to Jean Kambanda’s testimony at the ICTR. Ex-FAR military leaders, including Col. Bagosora, orchestrated the creation of RDR and, from the outset, sought to control it. As a matter of fact, on 29 April 1995, the High Command of FAR (Ex-Rwandan Army) issued a statement in Bukavu, divorcing itself from the Hutu ‘government in exile’, the group of Hutu extremists that had been its partner in the genocide. FAR believed that the exiled government had become ineffective in serving the interests of refugees in Zaire and extremist Hutu everywhere and instead declared its unswerving support for the RDR. In 1998, the RDR admitted that it was created to bypass or circumvent the embargo imposed on the genocidaire government in exile. Since then, there was a ploy by the group to — through the concepts and language used in the RDR’s numerous press releases and discourse — depict the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi as a “civil war”, “tragedy”, and “crisis”, or even as Ingabire has lately endeavored, insinuate a double Genocide. In the same strategy, the RDR, and lately the FDU-Inkingi, have relentlessly accused the RPF of “sensationalizing the Genocide and using their version of the facts” as political capital, in an attempt to win international sympathy and donor aid, “using, for political benefits, the tragedy which has plunged into mourning the Rwandan people…” (Quoted from RDR Political Platform) Most recently, the November 23, 2009 report of a UN Group of Experts confirmed with evidence that, being an emanation of genocidal forces, FDU Inkingi and thus RDR, is still in close collaboration with FDLR in a strategy of overthrowing the current government. The Group of Experts has gathered substantial evidence about existing collaboration between FDLR and FDU-Inkingi. It disclosed that the FDLR military leaders are in close contact with Diaspora members of the FDU-Inkingi political group in Belgium, including J.B Mberabahizi (FDU Inkingi’s Secretary General), and Naomi Mukakinani, wife to FDU’s Commissioner for Social Affairs, Michel Niyibizi. The Experts report also affirms that Victoire Ingabire has attended the so-called “Inter-Rwandese Dialogue” meetings along with FDLR supporters which they both strongly advocate for. Though unsurprising, given the common ideology and background, this collaboration between the FDLR and FDU Inkingi is rather disturbing and Ingabire Victoire had better come clear of these accusations if she is to earn any trust of Rwandans. She must also account for her role in her original party, the RDR, as it is the one ideologically leading the FDU-Inkingi coalition. In her end of the year 2009 propaganda speech, Ingabire Victoire stated that “Gacaca courts and even Interpol have become tools to harass or get rid of individuals on behalf of the Kigali regime!” She has several times vowed to close all the Gacaca courts once she gets into power. She seems to know that actually most of the said courts have already closed after they, more successfully than not, tried over a million cases of suspected genocidaires. The underlying issue here is that she is obviously a Genocide denier, and yet those tried by these courts are birds of the same feathers in ideology, thus her defense for them, including those warranted by the ICTR through Interpol as genocide suspects. This is indeed neither surprising as one of her RDR mission was to constitute defense support to ICTR prisoners prosecuted for the crime of Genocide. Ingabire should substantiate to the Rwandan public and the international community at large, her characteristic allegations against both the Gacaca and Interpol and come clear as to why she stands aside and advocates for the Genocide suspects who are the very people targeted by the two institutions. Another very sensitive issue that Ingabire must also come clear about is her unrelenting undermining of the concept of “Genocide ideology” as defined in the Rwandan Constitution. In the mentioned BBC program and her other numerous propaganda speeches, she shamelessly sustains that “the Genocide ideology is an RPF invention to deny those opposed to it …” For an uprightly thinking Rwandan, except when he/she is still committed to pursuing the “unfinished genocide”, to state that there is no Genocide ideology in a country that has just experienced the very Genocide, is simply tantamount to genocide denial, an expression of that genocide ideology itself, a crime in the Rwandan law and I dare add, even under the International law given the gravity of the crime of Genocide. The Rwandan public and peace lovers in the International Community should educate themselves on the true intentions of the likes of Ingabire, listen to their discourses and double-edged sword talk in order to appropriately get an informed opinion on what would happen if any of them was to, God forbid, rise to the highest office in Rwanda. After this long silence that was premised on the hope that Ingabire would be the ‘Prodigal daughter of Rwanda’ once she physically got the realities of the Rwanda of today, we are now motivated than ever to keep this column active and continue contributing as other peace loving people of the World, to the Never Again principle. muhetofe@gmail.com Ends