“Pour un Etat de Droit, la Démocratie et l’Egalité de chances”

Activities Report

Friday 22nd January 2009

This Friday 22nd January 2009 at 7: pm at ‘Mille Collines’ Hotel, Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza met with journalists from VRT (Vlaamse Radio-en Televisieomroep). They discussed a wide range of issues, including reason behind her return to Rwanda after 16 years in exile. Ms. Ingabire explained her return as a response to political climate that she finds not meeting the needs of Rwandans. People are constantly living in fear to express their views and opinion and she finds that such a situation must change.  

On the question of UDF party’s policy, Ms. Ingabire explained that her party stands for equality and freedom, for true democracy of every citizen of Rwanda, for the rule of law and, above all, UDF party wants to be a strong voice of voiceless people that are about 90% of the population mainly living in rural areas and those in suburban areas victim of campaign of land expropriations. The Chairperson of UDF Inkingi stated that true reconciliation is one of the party’s main principles it intends to put forward, as there have not yet been a purposeful reconciliation policy to heal the wounds resulting from tragedies that the Country experienced in the past. As such, people are still living in fear of reprisal for expressing their own views and own side of the story.

  In an interview accorded to the journalist of the Standaard, a Belgian magazine, later in the evening, Ms. Victoire Ingabire was asked her point of view on different issues in Rwanda today including ethnic groups issues that currently are not allowed to be mentioned in public . She stressed that the fact that there are three ethnic groups in the country is not an issue in any way. What the problem is, she said, is when politicians use ethnicity to access or to hang to power. In her opinion, Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza found that to ban any mentioning of any ethnicity in Rwanda while the population is recovering from an inter-ethnic conflict in the country would be nothing but moping the real issue under the carpet. 

UDF-Inkingi believes that the solution must come from Rwandans from all different ethnic backgrounds, different political opinions and different religious beliefs, to sit together, debate and stamp out all root causes of such conflicts. She stressed that anyone that has been involved will have to accept his or her responsibility and fair institutions to guarantee the right to life and personal safety of every citizen will have to be established.  

They later discussed on the volatile situation in the Eastern Congo. The Chairperson of the UDF-Inkingi party told journalists that should UDF access to power, it will seek to establish a good relationship with the Congo. She reminded them that the war that Rwanda has exported to Congo, its former friendly neighboring country, has caused the deaths of over five million people, a potentially dangerous situation to the future of Rwanda if a future militarily stronger Congo seeks revenge. 

Office of the Chairperson

Kigali, RWANDA