Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza
Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza (born 3 October 1968) is a Rwandan politician. She is the Chairperson of the Unified Democratic Forces (UDF) a coalition of Rwandan opposition parties with a large base of active members in Rwanda, Europe, United States of America and in Canada. She has been elected by the political council of her party as the official candidate for the next presidential election in Rwanda in August 2010.
Family and career
Married and a mother of three, she trained in commercial law and accounting and graduated in business economics and corporate management in the Netherlands. Victoire worked as an official of an international accounting firm based in the Netherlands where she was in charge of its accounting departments in 25 branches in Europe, Asia and Africa. In April 2009, she resigned from her function to dedicate herself to a political career and to prepare her return to her homeland and, as the head of her political party, to contribute to rebuilding of her country. On 17 January 2010, Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza returned to her country, after 16 years in exile, as the main leader of the Rwandan political opposition.
Life and family
In 1993 together with her mother Odetta Dusabe, defected from Habyarimana’s MRND party to join CDR.
The CDR philosophy was, according to its co-founder Jean Bosco Barayagwiza, that MRND was not doing enough to solve “the Tutsi problem.” This man co-founded CDR with Hassan Ngeze, editor of the infamous Kangura which among other things published the notorious ‘Hutu Ten Commandments’ that among other things exhorted “all Hutus to stop taking pity on the Tutsi ‘snakes.’”
Ingabire’s mother Odetta Dusabe, according to the findings of a Gacaca court in Butamwa apparently was a faithful adherent of Barayagwiza’s philosophy of killing even unborn babies. The woman was a nurse at the Butamwa Health Centre and she used to do horrific things to pregnant Tutsi women. Suffice it to say that none of the Tutsi women that fell in the hands of Dusabe ever survived – that is after she dealt gruesomely with their fetuses.
Victoire Ingabire was born on 3 October 1968 in Gatumba (former Kibirira Commune) and she is the daughter of Pascal Gakumba. This man Gakumba too was an adherent of Barayagwiza and Ngeze and was a very active participant in massacres of Tutsis. International rights bodies like Human Rights Watch and other friends of Victoire Umuhoza Ingabire have not mentioned it, but Gacaca courts convicted both her parents, Gakumba and Dusabe of being very enthusiastic participant in the genocide, and that these convictions took place long before Ingabire ever declared her political intentions.
After a Gacaca court passed a life sentence on Dusabe the woman fled to Belgium where she is currently living. But Gakumba chose suicide after another court passed a similar sentence on him. The man drank rat poison and died.
Gakumba met Dusabe at a time the woman worked at a small health centre in Gatumba. It is said that Dusabe moonlighted as a sex worker during after work hours. Not long after her liaison with Gakumba Victoire Ingabire was conceived.
Among the other men Odetta Dusabe came to know was one Dr. Akingeneye who was one of Juvenal Habyarimana’s physicians. Akingeneye apparently was enamored of Dusabe’s charms and it is him who brought her to Kigali to work at the Butamwa Health Centre. Dusabe had two children with Akingeneye.
Ingabire grew up in a household of different fathers. She was not an adept student in her primary school years and failed to attain the pass mark to go to a government secondary school. So she went to G.S. Rambura for her secondary education. In the days of Habyarimana, and Kayibanda before him when tribal segregation was the order of the day, the authorities made provisions for failing Hutu children to attain higher education. On the other hand the system made sure even the most brilliant Tutsi never went beyond six years of primary school. G.S. Rambura where Ingabire did six years of secondary school was a school for mediocre Hutu students. Ingabire never went to university.
After her sixth year at G.S. Rambura in 1991 she went to work in the Customs branch of the Ministry of Finance. It was in 93, apparently unsatisfied that Habyarimana’s MRND was doing enough to foment the required levels of Tutsi hatred that Ingabire and her mother decided to join the more incendiary CDR. In CDR Ingabire was a very active grassroots organizer for this group of extremists.
According to Gacaca documents, her mother became even more active in the gruesome killings of Tutsi women and the unborn children in 1994.
In Holland Ingabire had three children. Information we have is that neither of them shares a father.
The membership of FDU Inkingi for which Ingabire is the leader is mainly composed of former members of Habyarimana’s MRND and Barayagwiza and Ngeze’s CDR.
When these people on 25 March 1995 formed something called the Rassemblement pour le Retour des Refugiés et la Démocratie au Rwanda (RDR) in the Mugunga refugee camp in the former Zaire they appointed Victoire Ingabire to be its point person in Holland. And in a big RDR meeting in Bonn, Germany on 17 August 2000 during the so-called third RDR congress Ingabire was made the overall leader of the RDR. In yet another of these congresses, again in Bonn, on 22 March 2003 the woman once again was made leader of RDR up to recently when it changed its name to FDU Inkingi.
Ingabire’s genocide affiliations have been out there in the open for anyone who wants to see.
One of the FDU Inkingi officials Joseph Ntawangundi for example had been convicted of genocide and crimes committed during the genocide and left Rwanda. But when they arrested the fellow after he returned to join Ingabire, FDU Inkingi together with Human Rights Watch and their friends set up a hue and cry that a member of the opposition was being jailed. That is until Ntawangundi himself admitted that indeed he participated in the Genocide. After that even Ingabire changed her statements when incontrovertible proof of Ntawangundi’s culpability was made public, and she tried to disassociate herself from him.
Criticism
On her arrival in the country, to honor the victims of Tutsi genocide, she visited the Gisozi Genocide Memorial Centre. In her speech, she stressed that those who committed Tutsi Genocide as well as those who committed other war crimes and crimes against humanity should be brought before the courts of justice[1].[1]
However, her critics argue that her speech, condemning the Genocide committed against Tutsi and denouncing other serious crimes against humanity and war crimes, was perceived by some as minimising or denying the Tutsi genocide.[2]
Publications
She is the author of numerous articles and publications where she expressed her views on important issues pertaining to current events in her country and that of the Great Lakes region. Among others:
"What is the Outlook for Peace in Central Africa? " (translation) (2001)([3]),
"International Justice After the Crisis in Rwanda" (translation) (2002),[4]
"Conflicts in the Great Lake region of Africa: Origins and Solution Proposals" (translation) (2003),
"National Reconciliation As a Requirement for Security and Sustainable Peace in Rwanda and in the Countries of the African Great Lakes" (translation) (2004)[5],
"Pleading for a True National Reconciliation in Rwanda, Requirements for Sustainable Peace" (translation) (2005).