Press release
11 September 2017
As predicted, Kagame won unopposed last month’s presidential elections with 99% of the electoral vote. The Stalinist results are not likely to change his iron rule characterised by brutality and oppression. As expected , a presidential hopeful, Ms. Diane Shima Rwigara, was denied nomination by the rubber stamp national electoral commission. Because she dared to express her inalienable right to run for the presidency, Ms. Rwigara and her whole family have suffered Kagame’s wrath and inhuman treatment. This coercion has reached new heights with the arrest, last week, of all FDU Inkingi local leaders in the country.
These political developments take place against a background of many years of grave abuses of human rights that has become the distinguishing characteristic of the Kagame/FPR/ regime. Its victims can be found across the Rwanda’s ethnic and political divide. Before Ms. Rwigara, a Tutsi, was barred from participating in Presidential elections and now suffers injustice, another courageous Rwandan Presidential hopeful, Ms. Victoire Ingabire ( FDU-Inkingi) and many other political prisoners like Deo Mushayidi were treated the same way and remain in prison on trumped up charges.
The Ishakwe-Rwanda Freedom Movement (RFM) condemns this cruelty that Ms Diane Rwigara, her mother, sister, and FDU Inkingi members Boniface Twagirimana, Ms Léonie Gasengayire, Fabien Twagirayezu, Gratien Nsabiyaremye and others have suffered at the hands of the Kigali regime.
All these developments show that the Kagame/FPR/DMI regime is still on course to rule Rwanda through coercion, division and deception. Sadly, just as the international community abandoned Rwandans from both ethnic groups in their hour of need in 1994 and thereafter, today the same international community has retreated from the responsibility to protect Rwandans. The opposition needs to take note of this, cultivate internal self-reliance, build a cohesive ideological and organizational capacity, review its strategic agenda in order to empower Rwandans to participate in resisting the Kagame dictatorship and its foreign backers towards fundamental and durable change.
Done in Washington DC
USA
Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa
Chairman
ISHAKWE—Rwanda Freedom Movement
Contact: [email protected]
Ishakwe Rwanda Freedom Movement