To the people of Rwanda, Ingabire Victoire is a criminal seeking to disturb the peace they’ve been enjoying all these years, and deserves to be in jail
Since the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, Rwanda has prioritised national unity and rejected all forms of divisionism and extremism. The trauma of the genocide has shaped a firm stance against genocide ideology.
Yet some Western governments and organisations, under the banner of “democracy,” have sought to present Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza as a legitimate opposition figure. She is neither a politician nor a dissident, but a convicted criminal whose activism serves to normalise genocide denial and criminal conduct.
Ingabire is the daughter of Thérèse Dusabe, a woman known during the genocide as the “doctor of death” for killing pregnant Tutsi women and dashing their babies against walls. That inheritance alone is not a crime, but Ingabire has made it her own by embracing the ideology that drove the genocide.
In 1995, she was chosen to lead organisations formed by genocidaires who had fled Rwanda with the aim of returning to complete the extermination of the Tutsi. She headed the RDR, ALiR, and later the FDLR, all of which operated in eastern DRC.
She went on to preside over FDU-Inkingi, a political front whose leadership includes known genocide fugitives such as Hyacinthe Bicamumpaka, Marcel Sebatware, and Charles Ndereyehe, all of whom continue to propagate genocide ideology.
Ingabire’s true colours were laid bare on 16 January 2010, when she arrived in Rwanda from the Netherlands. Her first stop was the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where she engaged in genocide minimisation, a crime for which she was later convicted.
During her 2011 trial, evidence showed she had been in regular contact with senior FDLR officers. Her co-accused, all former FDLR commanders, pleaded guilty to charges of attempting to destabilise Rwanda.
She was released on a presidential parole in 2018 after serving eight years of a 15-year sentence, but was rearrested on 19 June 2025 for inciting public unrest, among other capital offenses. Her Western backers have since mobilised, giving platforms to journalists, activists, and even her son to advocate for her release. Their efforts will be in vain.
Rwandans know Ingabire not as an opposition figure, but as an ideologue of the same school of thought that gave rise to the 1959 Hutu “revolution” of Grégoire Kayibanda and the regime of Juvénal Habyarimana. Western powers have backed her tirelessly, in part because they have never fully accepted the RPF’s independence from their influence.
Ingabire’s connections with diplomats from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom are well-documented. In September 2012, 42 European MPs nominated her for the Sakharov Prize. In December 2019, she received the International Human Rights Award from Spain’s APDHE. During the 2022 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kigali, a British delegation visited her at home, as did Danish and Dutch MPs. None of them met with Rwandan officials.
Ingabire is a creature of Western patronage, not a credible voice of opposition. However much her supporters dress her up as a champion of democracy, she remains a convicted criminal whose politics are inseparable from genocide ideology.
In the new Rwanda, such figures cannot be allowed to play politics, least of all above the law.
