Politics

Another Rwandan opposition party leader ‘disappears’. Why it matters

Published

6 years ago

October 9, 2018

The jailed vice president of Rwanda’s opposition FDU-Inkingi party escaped from prison on Sunday, according to the country’s correctional service.

Boniface Twagirimana was missing from a routine headcount at the prison Monday, local media reported, quoting a Rwanda Correctional Service spokesperson. The spokesperson said that Twagirimana and another prisoner had managed to escape by jumping over the complex’s fence and said that an investigation had been launched.

But members of the FDU — an unregistered political party — are calling “foul play” and fear that Twagirimana’s life could be in danger.

In a statement released Monday, the FDU party questioned how Twagirimana could have escaped out of a high security prison he had been transferred to only five days prior and called on the Rwandan government for answers.
“This information…leaves us to believe that there could be foul play by Rwandan security services,” the statement said.

“We call on the Rwandan government to inform the family, the party FDU-Inkingi and the general prison about the circumstances of the disappearance of Twagirimana. Mr Twagirimana was in the custody of the state which is accountable for his safety,” it added.

In September 2017, Twagirimana and eight other FDU party members were arrested on charges of forming an armed group and seeking to overthrow the government, charges Twagirimana denies.

The FDU members were placed in a Kigali jail where their party leader, Victoire Ingabire, was serving out a sentence for charges related to comments she made about the country’s 1994 genocide and collaborating with a “terrorist organization.”

Ingabire has long said her sentence was a result of her work as a prominent government critic and that the charges effectively criminalized her freedom of expression. International organizations such as Amnesty International and a 2017 African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights ruling have supported those views.

Last month, Ingabire was granted a presidential pardon by Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and was released from jail after serving eight years of her 15-year sentence.

Immediately after she was freed, she called on the Rwandan government to open the country’s political landscape to the opposition and asked them to free all other political prisoners, including Twagirimana and other members of her political party.

On October 3, Twagirimana was moved from Kigali’s Mageragere prison to Mpanga prison, in the country’s southern Nyanza District. The authorities did not inform Twagirimana’s family that he was being transferred or give any explanation for the move, according to Twagirimana’s wife.

Rwanda’s National Police and Rwanda’s Correctional Service have not immediately responded to CNN’s request for comment.

Twagirimana is not the first FDU member to go missing.

In May 2017, party member Jean Damascene Habarugira disappeared after he was called to meet an official responsible for the security of his locality. A few days later, Habarugira’s family were called to collect his body from a local hospital.

Twagirimana denounced Habarugira’s murder as an assassination. In a statement, the FDU said that Habarugira was “assassinated in cold blood” because of his opposition to the local authority’s agricultural policies and concerns over police brutality.

Click to comment

Politics

Burkina Faso investigating reports of northern killings

Published

13 hours ago

April 28, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

A government spokesman has revealed that Burkina Faso is looking into reports that 223 people were killed by the Burkinabe army in two villages in the north in February.

The killing was first reported by the Human Rights Watch (HRW), causing a rift between the junta-led West African state and some foreign media that published the report. The HRW report released on Thursday said that the military had executed residents of Nodin and Soro, including at least 56 children, as part of a campaign against civilians suspected of working with jihadist terrorists. The report was based on interviews with witnesses, members of civil society, and other groups.

Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo, a spokesman for the government, said that HRW’s claims were “peremptory” and that the junta was not unwilling to look into the claimed crimes.

“An investigation has been launched into the killings in Nodin and Soro,” Ouedraogo said in a late-evening statement, quoting a statement from a regional prosecutor on March 1.

Since Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger’s militaries took over in a series of coups from 2020 to 2023, violence in the area has gotten worse. This is because of the ten-year fight with Islamist groups related to Al Qaeda and Islamic State.

Attacks on Burkina Faso got much worse in 2023, with more than 8,000 people killed, according to the U.S.-based crisis-monitoring group ACLED.

Politics

S’Africa lengthens troop deployment in Mozambique, Congo DR

Published

3 days ago

April 26, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a speech that South Africa’s military would keep sending troops to Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which are both in the middle of wars.

The extension will leave 1,198 members of the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) in eastern Congo for an unknown amount of time. They are there as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force helping Congo fight rebel groups.

The statement also said that 1,495 members of the SANDF would keep working in Mozambique, where they have been since 2021 helping the government fight dangerous extremism in the north.

After two SANDF troops were killed and three were hurt by a mortar bomb in Congo in February, South Africa’s military operations abroad have been looked at more closely at home this year.

Meanwhile, the major opposition party in South Africa, the Democratic Alliance, said that Ramaphosa sent troops into a war zone without being ready.
Under the supervision of the UN, the SANDF has taken on many dangerous and difficult peacekeeping tasks over the years to help war-torn African countries stay stable and peaceful.

In 2003, South Africa was one of the first countries to send troops to Burundi to help the peace process. During the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) peacekeeping mission in 2000, the SANDF led attempts to stabilize the country’s politics, rebuild and improve infrastructure, and train DRC troops.