The Rwandan government and the RPF have strongly resisted any political opposition or broader challenge of their policies by civil society. On several occasions, the government has used accusations of participation in the genocide, or “genocide ideology,” as a way of targeting and discrediting its critics. The current RPF-dominated government has been in power in Rwanda since the end of the 1994 genocide.
Victoire Ingabire, former president of the FDU-Inkingi and current president of the DALFA-Umurinzi party she founded in Rwanda, both of which are considered illegal organizations in the country has faced an intensive campaign of public vilification since she returned from exile in the Netherlands in January 2010. She has been widely condemned in official and quasi-official media and described as a “negationist” of the genocide for stating publicly that crimes committed against Hutu citizens by the RPF and the Rwandan army should be investigated and those responsible brought to justice. Released by a presidential mercy, she was submitted under judicial conditions whereby she cannot join her family living in Netherlands and the application for rehabilitation she resorted to in 2024 with the casefile RP00101/2023/HC/KIG was rejected by the Rwandan high court stating that her appeal was not filed within the required timeframe as stipulated by legal provisions. Worse, during presidential campaign of 2024, President Kagame verbally defamed her in a press conference as a small, ambitious woman who believed she was a potential presidential candidate and supported by the West, accusing her of being a descendant of the genocidaires. Recently addressing the parliament, during the swearing-in ceremony of the new President and Vice President of the Supreme Court, he again indirectly threatened her and requested an urgent review of her case. t’s finally done because she is now detained for new cleverly manufactured charges. What is the extent to which does this woman threaten the regime of Kigali to the point that she is constantly persecuted? Why does the Kigali regime fear political opponents and criticisms? What is his modus operandi to silence the protesters?
The Rwandan authorities rearrested Victoire Ingabire, the head of an unregistered political party, on June 19, 2025, as a part of a drawn-out trial that targets political opposition figures, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should release Ingabire and other people detained on politically motivated grounds and guarantee the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly. Ingabire was arrested at her home in the capital, Kigali. A tweet by the Rwanda Investigation Bureau said that the Public Prosecutor’s Office requested her to be arrested in connection with the ongoing trial of members of her party. It said she is being prosecuted for forming a criminal group and planning activities aimed at inciting public disorder. “Ingabire’s arrest and this trial are only the most recent example of the dangers of political opposition in Rwanda,” said Lewis Mudge, Central Africa Director at Human Rights Watch. “The prosecuting authorities’ message is clearly that if you dare to seek political office outside of the ruling party, you risk imprisonment.” Ingabire previously spent nearly eight years in prison, from 2010 to 2018, following a politically motivated trial. In 2012, Ingabire was sentenced to 15 years for conspiracy to undermine the established government and denying the country’s 1994 genocide after she sought to contest the 2010 presidential elections. She was pardoned and released in September 2018. In March 2024, a Kigali court rejected Ingabire’s request to expunge her criminal record and allow her to run in the July 2024 presidential election. President Paul Kagame won with over 99 percent of the vote. Ingabire, having previously been the president of the unregistered opposition party United Democratic Forces (Forces Démocratiques Unifiées or FDU-Inkingi), created another party – the Development and Liberty for All (Développement et Liberté pour tous or Dalfa-Umurinzi) – in November 2019. Rwandan authorities have refused to register the party or allow it to take part in elections and have repeatedly arrested, jailed, and harassed its members. Since 2017, five members of these parties have died or disappeared in suspicious circumstances. In October 2021, seven members of Dalfa-Umurinzi were arrested. Sylvain Sibomana, Alexis Rucubanganya, Hamad Hagenimana, Jean-Claude Ndayishimiye, Alphonse Mutabazi, Marcel Nahimana, and Emmanuel Masengesho were all detained in the days leading up to and following the party’s declared “Ingabire day,” scheduled for October 14. On that day, Ingabire was planning to speak about political repression in Rwanda, including suspicious deaths, killings, disappearances, and abusive prosecutions.
The party members have been held in pretrial detention ever since, though their trial only began in late 2024. Sibomana had previously spent nearly eight years in custody, from 2013 to early 2021. Human Rights Watch has monitored previous trials of these and other opposition members, during which the accused told the court that interrogators had tortured them to coerce confessions. Théoneste Nsengimana, a journalist who planned to cover Ingabire day, is also being held and tried with the party members. Two other people, Claudine Uwimana and Josiane Ingabire (no relation to Victoire) were also included in the case, with Josiane Ingabire being tried in absentia. The prosecution bases its accusations, such as conspiracy to incite insurrection, on the group’s acquisition of a book, “Blueprint for Revolution,” written by Srdja Popovic, and participation in a training session organized by the author’s organization, the Center for Applied Non-Violent Actions and Strategies, or CANVAS. The book and training focus on peaceful strategies to resist authoritarianism, such as nonviolent protest, noncooperation, boycott, and mobilization. The prosecution is using the contents of the book and training, including the use of Jitsi — an encrypted online communication platform — and the use of pseudonyms during the training, as evidence of criminal wrongdoing. The charges include “spreading false information or harmful propaganda with intent to cause a hostile international opinion against the Rwandan government” and “formation of or joining a criminal association.” On June 17, the court summoned Ingabire to appear on June 19 because she had been cited during the trial. After she was questioned in court about the accused and their statements, the three-judge panel, allegedly unsatisfied, ordered the prosecutor to investigate Ingabire directly and ordered for her to be detained. Social protests and mobilizations offer people the opportunity to communicate legitimate complaints and grievances to the authorities in a nonviolent way. Governments have a responsibility to create a safe and enabling environment for individuals and groups to exercise their rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, of expression, and of association, Human Rights Watch said. The ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front tightly controls the country’s political space through a combination of legal restrictions, surveillance, and intimidation of opposition figures and independent voices. Critics often face harassment, imprisonment, or exile. In recent years some political detainees have died in unclear circumstances. Civil society and media operate under heavy constraints, with red lines around criticism of the government or security forces or straying from official talking points about the genocide. Ingabire’s rearrest comes as Rwanda faces heightened international scrutiny over military support to the M23 rebel group in eastern Congo, accusations that have led to suspended Western aid and sanctions by the United States and European Union. “It is beyond troubling that Rwandan authorities consider a training on how to peacefully resist authoritarianism as the formation of a criminal group and fomenting unrest,” Mudge said. “Instead of detaining the opposition members and putting them on trial, the government should open the country’s democratic space to much needed political discourse.”
President Kagame still enjoys overwhelming international community support viewing him as a visionary who brought peace and stability to a country broken by genocide and attributing to him economic transformation, the fight against corruption, gender equality, mutual health insurance, etc. Nevertheless, civil and political rights remain severely curtailed, and freedom of expression is tightly restricted. Those who dare to criticize government policy or President Paul Kagame do so at great risk; and even those who’ve fled abroad to escape persecution aren’t safe. A series of reliable sources outline how the government of Rwanda keeps tabs on dissidents, both real and perceived, and how threats and acts of intimidation also happen across borders. The repression of Rwandans living abroad ranges from killings, kidnappings, beatings, and enforced disappearances to manipulated extradition requests, arbitrary detention, and attempted or successful renditions.
1)Rwanda is a very well-organized, very well-camouflaged dictatorship
The Rwandan government has said allegations of human rights abuses are “frankly insulting”. While it bridles at the criticism, it faces allegations that it has been involved in online attacks to undermine its foreign critics.
In March 2021, the British author Michela Wrong published a book on Rwanda which won plaudits from the critics for exposing the “dark underside” of the country. Do Not Disturb: the Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad was shortlisted for the Orwell prize, but publication turned into a frightening ordeal. Wrong was derided, smeared and vilified by online trolls. It was claimed she had been paid by Ugandan intelligence to write her book, and that she was a racist and a genocide denier.
Wrong had a compelling story to tell about former Rwandan intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya, who was strangled to death in a hotel room in Johannesburg in January 2014. South African police identified four suspects who they said were “directly linked” to the Rwandan regime. The Observer and Led by Donkeys have seen the details of a dossier compiled by a western intelligence agency on the campaign against Wrong, alleging the attacks in the UK were orchestrated by the Rwandan regime. It claims employees at the London-based PR firm Chelgate, which advised the regime, set up anonymous social media accounts, accusing her of racism and campaigning for her book launch to be cancelled. The file does not link Chelgate to the most scurrilous posts targeted at Wrong. Chelgate this weekend denied operating sock puppet accounts or being involved in trying to no-platform Wrong.
Chelgate employees also helped set up the website Rwandafacts.com. In 2021 it published an article and a YouTube video denying that hotelier turned human rights activist Paul Rusesabagina, whose efforts in saving more than 1,200 people from death were portrayed in the film Hotel Rwanda, had been kidnapped by agents of the Rwandan government. The UN later concluded he had indeed been abducted and arbitrarily detained.
In September, Chelgate chair Terence Fane-Saunders admitted to an undercover reporter that his firm had been advising the regime on its public relations strategy, yet despite the official line he considered Rusesabagina had been kidnapped. “Things happen in Rwanda … People have disappeared who have been captured,” he explained. “Critics can be locked up.”
The online invective towards Wrong prompted security concerns. In April last year, an event she was due to hold at a Paris hotel was cancelled because of security concerns. The next month organizers of a talk in Brussels changed venue after a storm of abuse on social media. In 2022, a South African thinktank, the Institute for Security Studies, cancelled a Pretoria event after complaints from Rwandan officials.
Wrong is not the first journalist to have been targeted. Some have endured more significant security concerns, but there is no evidence any PR firm or any company linked to the Rwandan regime was involved.
The Canadian writer Judi Rever, a former Agence France-Presse reporter, has faced years of online harassment and threats during her work on Rwanda. In December 2013, she published an investigation in the Foreign Policy Journal which examined the record of Kagame’s troops and allegations of death squads. Her work has been controversial because of her allegations about the scale of the alleged war crimes by the Rwandan Patriotic Army, the armed wing of Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front.
She recounts how, five days after the article was published, a message was left on her answerphone at her family home in Montreal. It was a woman’s voice simulating the sounds of an explosion and gunfire. She then said the name of Rever’s six-year-old daughter, according to an account in Rever’s award-winning 2018 book In Praise of Blood.
Seven months later, Rever arrived in Belgium to conduct research on Rwanda and was told by state security officials there was intelligence of a threat from the Rwandan regime. “I was driven to all my interviews and was accompanied by two armed bodyguards,” she told the Observer.
Anjan Sundaram, author of Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship, says foreign critics of the regime face an “army of online trolls” and intimidation. His book lists more than 50 journalists who have been killed, disappeared, assaulted, arrested, expelled or treated inhumanely since 1995.
When Sundaram was in England in 2016 to promote his book, he was visited by two Scotland Yard detectives and given a hotline to call in the event of any security threats. “This is a very sophisticated and capable dictatorship,” he said. “You don’t feel safe, even if you are outside Rwanda.”
Lewis Mudge, central Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said: “[The UK government] knows about the political opponents who are rounded up, held incommunicado and tortured, many of whom never appear again. They know it’s a sham democracy.” The 2022 US state department human rights report on Rwanda warned there were credible reports of unlawful killings and arbitrary detention, and of the repression of individuals outside the country, including killings, kidnappings and violence. It also said sources had reported the government often enlisted individual as “proxies” to harass critics online. Fane-Saunders denied that Chelgate had operated any “sock puppet” campaign against Wrong, and he strongly opposed any attempts to no platform people. He confirmed that Chelgate had previously worked with Rwanda on its international communications and he remained an admirer of the country and its government’s efforts to rebuild it. Fane-Saunders said it was wrong to state that he considered Rusesabagina had been kidnapped. He said he was “speaking lightly” at the time, and the definition of kidnapping might depend on jurisdiction. He said the firm had helped to set up the Rwanda Facts website to provide an information resource about the country. The Home Office says Rwanda has a track record of welcoming asylum seekers and looking after refugees, and the supreme court recognized changes could be made to make its partnership work. A Home Office spokesperson said it did not comment on specific cases. The High Commission of Rwanda did not respond to a request for comment.
2)Tactics used by the Rwandan government to silence opponents abroad
The Rwandan government uses a whole playbook at its disposal to go after critics. In the east and southern African countries, Rwandans have been killed, forcibly disappeared, kidnapped, arbitrarily arrested, physically attacked, or threatened to be sent back to Rwanda. In western countries, Rwandans deemed to be against the government are afraid of being spied on. They also fear the Rwandan government’s manipulation of Interpol (the International Criminal Police Organization), and their Red Notices, alerts seeking the arrest and extradition of a wanted person. The fact that some refugees have been warned to take measures to protect themselves by domestic law enforcement or intelligence agencies adds credibility to the threats they face. But one of the Rwandan authorities’ most effective – and insidious – ways to intimidate those living abroad is by targeting their relatives in Rwanda. It means that even people living in countries where their rights and security should be protected do not express themselves freely for fear of seeing their families suffer the consequences. One Rwandan activist in a western country said that after he left, one of his relatives was detained and brutally tortured. In another case, two brothers of a Rwandan refugee who now lives in Australia were forcibly disappeared.
3)Effect of these repressive tactics on Rwandans abroad
Even abroad, Rwandans who are deemed opponents of Rwanda’s government do not feel safe. They are worried about socializing, not knowing who they can trust. They talk about being afraid when a car pulls up behind them or when someone visits their workplace. Some have gone so far as to change their names, refuse to socialize with others in the community, or avoid traveling to certain countries altogether. They regularly change phones, worry about surveillance and attacks. Many who have chosen to continue their public criticism of Rwanda’s government while living in exile had to cut ties with their relatives in Rwanda to protect them from harassment or worse. They spoke of a palpable fear. If someone from the Rwandan community dies under suspicious circumstances, it causes fear and paranoia in parts of the community.
4)New abusive tactics
Human Rights Watch has been documenting cases involving attacks or threats against critics outside Rwanda since the late 1990s. Like today, those cases from the past revolve around victims that were likely to have been targeted because of their criticism of the Rwandan government, the ruling party, or President Kagame. A striking example from 10 years ago is the murder of Patrick Karegeya, which took place in January 2014. Following his murder in South Africa, Rwanda’s president, prime minister, and ministers of foreign affairs and defence all publicly used strong language, branding Karegeya as a traitor and an enemy and implying that he got what he deserved.
Rwanda was among the countries that actively sought to utilize new technology that would allow it to hack into the phones of opposition members.
5)The most striking cases of transborder repression
In Mozambique, human rights abuses against the Rwandan refugee community there have increased since Rwandan troops were dispatched to combat an insurgency in the country’s northernmost province, Cabo Delgado. An influential businessman was killed under murky circumstances and are reported several attempted kidnappings and an enforced disappearance, such as that of Ntamuhanga Cassien, a former journalist and opposition activist. He was taken into police custody in May 2021 in the presence of someone who spoke Kinyarwanda, Rwanda’s national language. He has not been seen since. The disappearance had ripple effects across the entire community: no one feels secure. In Australia, refusing to work for the government triggered a cascade of harassment that resulted in a former refugee’s relatives in Rwanda being arrested arbitrarily and tortured – his brothers were then disappeared – and repeated attempts by pro-government media and government officials to discredit and intimidate him. In the US, Rwandan authorities issued an Interpol Red Notice against a former government official, which Interpol later reviewed and deleted. Rwanda’s authorities also tried to get the lawyer of a former government official, Ambassador Gasana Eugene Richard who become a dissident, to drop him as a client and to get some of his professional connections to cut ties with him.
6)Murders deployed worldwide
network of associations with ties to Rwanda’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the Rwandan Community Abroad (RCA) and others close to the government are coercing refugees into joining them and are putting pressure on them to donate money or to return to Rwanda and stop criticizing the government. Lionel Richie Nishimwe, a lawyer and advocate for the Rwandan refugee community in Zambia, was one of those who caved to pressure and returned to Rwanda. There, he was put up in a hotel and pressured to divulge information about fellow refugees. He refused and has since disappeared. Rwandan agents are thought by some interviewees to have infiltrated domestic refugee agencies, too, which is why many Rwandans are wary of requesting asylum for fear of being targeted as a result. Embassies are also involved. At times, embassy staff in African countries were implicated in threatening refugees, saying they will meet the same fate as those who’ve been disappeared or murdered if they don’t return to Rwanda or toe the line. In some cases of attacks, the perpetrators were not identified, but spoke Kinyarwanda, and were suspected of working for the Rwandan government. For example, some of the victims were told they would be handed over to Rwanda or were accused of being enemies of Rwanda. The context of broader persecution of government critics inside Rwanda provides credibility to the allegation that these attacks were politically motivated. It also raises serious and plausible concerns about the possibility of official state tolerance, acquiescence, or even collusion in these attacks.
7)Why does the Rwandan government go to such extraordinary lengths to silence its critics?
The Rwandan government cares deeply about its image. It spends a lot of money on lobbying firms to bolster the perception it is a clean and safe country that invests in development, and where there is virtually no corruption. While some of this may be true, it also deals brutally and ruthlessly with critics who could challenge its hold on power and act as potential threats to its carefully manicured image of a country people would never want to flee.
8)Host countries passively aware of the repression
They are but appear to prefer inaction. The US government, for example, deported a former trade union official despite a leaked FBI report stating that a Rwandan intelligence agent had “almost certainly” planted false information against the accused during the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) investigation. In the UK, authorities told Rwandans for years to be wary of being tracked, until the British government struck a deal with Rwanda to send asylum seekers there. Both the French and UK authorities had to get involved in the cases of two naturalized Rwandans – now French and UK citizens, respectively, living in those countries – who were arbitrarily detained while on a visit to Rwanda, apparently in retaliation for their relatives’ political activities in exile.
In South Africa, investigations into suspected killings have stalled and one person’s relative was warned to stop pressing for answers. In Uganda, authorities told a Rwandan dissident traveling on an Australian passport to leave the country because Rwanda wanted him deported. In Tanzania, police arrested a Rwandan kidnapping victim and his kidnappers and put them all on trial for entering the country illegally. Although it’s one of the rare cases where judicial authorities openly recognized the involvement of Rwandan intelligence in the case, no kidnapping or attempted kidnapping charges were brought against the Rwandan intelligence agent.
In almost all cases of kidnappings, forced disappearances, or suspicious killings, investigations have stalled or failed to result in any arrests or prosecutions.
Turning a blind eye to Rwanda’s human rights record has allowed the country to position itself as a valuable partner for peacekeeping missions in Africa and a safe haven for refugees while at the same time exporting its repression globally.
9)Insecurity and threats against relatives still inside the country
The Rwandans living abroad urgently need improved protection, recognition of their situation, and a more principled approach to Rwanda from their host governments. They want Rwanda’s international partners to call out the many human rights violations the Rwandan government commits, and to demand an end to transnational repression. Some wouldlike that their family members be able to join them in exile, especially those whose relatives are still in Rwanda and are in danger of retaliation and that host governments take the threats they live under seriously and to investigate murders and kidnappings of Rwandans abroad.
Summing up, Rwanda turns out to be an open-air prison as far as are concerned freedom of expression and political openness. On national level, contesting media are banned and journalists who did not succeed to flee the country are jailed if not assassinated. On international level, Rwandan transnational repression is exceptionally broad in terms of tactics, targets, and geographic reach. Rwandans abroad experience digital threats, spyware attacks, family intimidation and harassment, mobility controls, physical intimidation, assault, detention, rendition, and assassination. The failure of the international community to recognize the severity and scope of the Rwandan government’s human rights violations, both domestically and abroad, as well as the ruling party’s growing hostility toward those it perceives as challenging its power, have left many Rwandans with nowhere to turn. Holding Rwanda accountable for its domestic human rights record is now a necessity to tackle the government’s extraterritorial repression.
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