Rwanda: ten members of opposition arrested

Victoire Ingabire the leader of the DALFA-Umurinzi party

By Erasme Rugemintwaza

In Rwanda, to have a dissonant voice in Kagame’s ears, or to dare to criticize the Kigali regime, is to throw yourself into the fangs of a hungry lion. The multiple arbitrary arrests since October 14, 2021 illustrate how irreversibly and inexorably the Kagame regime is on the authoritarian path. Everyone sees it, everyone knows it, but the worst thing is that everyone is silent about it! And each day brings its share of prisoners!

After that on the night of Wednesday October 13 to Thursday October 14, 2021, the Rwandan Investigation Bureau (RIB) announced via twitter that it had arrested 6 people including journalist Théoneste Nsengimana, accusing them of spreading rumors to create unrest and uprising of the population, Victoire Ingabire the leader of the DALFA-Umurinzi party declared that out of the 9 people arrested, 7 are members of her DALFA-Umurinzi party.

Victoire Ingabire said on Saturday October 16, 2021, via Facebook and Twitter:
“Nine people are in the hands of the RIB, of which 7 are our members of the DALFA-Umurinzi party, and these people are suspected of having caused unrest among the population in preparation of the event called ‘Ingabire Day’. Those arrested persons met with a lawyer. We thank for this opportunity. I urge the authorities to carefully consider the suspicions upon these persons, as DALFA’s programs include sustaining the achievements and fighting for a better future.”

This Sunday, October 17, 2021, Ingabire Victoire again addressed the public via his Twitter account to announce that a dozen people had been arrested. She wrote: “As of 10/17/2021, the number of people arrested by the security forces is ten. Yesterday they arrested a friend of me, Régine Kadoyimana. We ignore until now the motives of their arrest.”

We’d like to remind that after these successive arrests, Victoire Ingabire told the media that members of her DALFA-Umurinzi party had been arrested in various parts of the country, such as the city of Kigali, the western province in Rubavu district and the estern Province, in Ngoma district.

The information The Rwandan was able to obtain is that the detainees are assisted by Me Gatera Gashabana, who is well known for defending dissident politicians.

Although all of the arrests appear to have been a direct link to Ingabire Victoire and the DALFA-Umurinzi party, RIB spokesman Thierry Murangira told VOA on Thursday that the detainees had not been arrested because of their membership to a particular political party.

We wait impatiently to see the impact of Victoire INGABIRE’s alarm, to the authorities of Kigali first but specially to the international community which seems deaf-blind to the violations of human rights by Kagame regime.