PETITION/ FREE Victoire INGABIRE UMUHOZA The rwandan opposition leader

FREE Victoire INGABIRE UMUHOZA The rwandan opposition leader

Innocent BIRUKA France

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Mrs Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, leader of the opposition, returned to Rwanda in January 2010, to register her political party and participate in presidential elections against General Paul Kagame. She saw directly thrown into jail. The ferocity of attacks against her demonstrated very clearly an intention to silence, and in the most brutal way, a great voice for the voiceless who dare ask for more justice and equal opportunity in post genocide. Rwanda.

The alleged crime committed by Mrs. Ingabire was to call in her speech at the Gisozi memorial, which reflected the political programme of her party FDU-Inkingi, for an all-inclusive inter-Rwandan dialogue on more justice, the only way forward for genuine reconciliation among Rwandans. Proposing an alternative to the repressive system in Rwanda, where any dissenting voice is brutally suppressed, sounded like a provocation in the mind of General Paul Kagame.

Mrs. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza denounced persisting lack of accountability for the events that led to the tragedy that befell Rwanda as well as the discrimination between the victims of genocide and widespread killings in Rwanda.

This quest for truth and justice raised an outcry in the circles close to power. Thus, in late 2013 she was sentenced to 15 years in prison after a sham trial.

When Mrs Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza lodged her complaint to the African Court of Human and Peoples' Rights to appeal against her politically motivated trial, the Government of Rwanda, after trying a series of strategies to prevent the applicant to appear before the African Court of Human Rights based in Arusha, Tanzania, ended up deciding not to appear at the hearing scheduled for March 4, 2016. The government did so by withdrawing from the Treaty that established the Court, to which it had acceded without reservations. This attitude of the Government Paul Kagame was unanimously interpreted as an admission of the purely political nature of the conviction of opposition leader Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza.   Indeed, if the Rwanda government, was sure of winning the case, it would have seized the opportunity to clear the tarnished image of its judiciary, accused of lack of independence from the Executive.

In view of the fact that the Rwandan government has implicitly admitted the widely acknowledged political nature of the trial by refusing an independent scrutiny of its court rulings, I ask for your massive support of this petition in order to bring the Rwandan government and President Paul Kagame to release immediately and rehabilitate the opponent Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza so that she continues her mission to unite and reconcile the deeply traumatised people of Rwanda.

For more information on the purely political nature of the conviction of Mrs Victoire Ingabire please see the read following sources :

-          http://www.europarl.europa.eu/ sides/getDoc.do?type=TA& reference=P7-TA-2013-0233& format=XML&language=FR

-          https://www.amnesty.org/fr/ latest/news/2013/03/rwanda- opposition-leader-s-right- fair-trial-jeopardy/

-          https://www.hrw.org/fr/world report/2015/country-chapters/ 268129

-          https://www.fidh.org/fr/ regions/afrique/rwanda/ Victoire-Ingabire-condamnee-a- huit-12370

Thank you !

Innocent BIRUKA, France