Amidst fear and intimidation the elections in Rwanda on Monday have been reduced to a formality as current Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) simply barred all genuine opposition parties from participating.
The suspension of independent press, and the intimidation and imprisonment of political opponents in the run-up to the elections tarnished Rwanda’s image as having become a relatively corruption-free, democratic African nation.
The murder of a journalist critical of the government and the beheading Mr. André Kagwa Rwisereka, vice president of opposition party the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, highlighted in the eyes of the opposition, that the ruling party does not appreciate contradiction, nor is it willing to risk a legitimate loss of power.
The RPF issued a statement in which they strongly denied the accusations.
The opposition, left with little few options, has appealed to the international community to exert pressure on the regime to include all parties in the elections, to stop to the violence, and release all political prisoners.
“The problem is that we want to have a situation in Rwanda where someone should not be imprisoned or killed because they have a different idea,” Mr. Habineza, the president of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda was reported as saying by the BBC.
At beginning of this year, the leader of another opposition party, the United Democratic Forces (UDF) was assaulted when she attempted to register her party for the elections. She is still under house arrest in Kigali and her passport confiscated. Her assistant was jailed on alleged charges of genocide, while another member of the party, Ms. Béatrice Uwimana, has been missing since a police crack down on June 24.
UDF has criticized the international community for not supporting democracy in Rwanda.
“The disappointing shyness of the international community to accompany the whole election process as well as the lack of a clear public position vis-à-vis the closure of political space and harassment of opposition by the current regime prove that they [the international community] are inevitably following the same pattern of abandoning the Rwandan people,” the UDF said in a press statement.
Sixteen years ago, it was Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front that had put an end to the Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 or 20 percent of the population were slaughtered over the course of 100 days. Paul Kagame has also been credited by the West for the economic recovery of the nation since that time.
The suspension of independent press, and the intimidation and imprisonment of political opponents in the run-up to the elections tarnished Rwanda’s image as having become a relatively corruption-free, democratic African nation.
The murder of a journalist critical of the government and the beheading Mr. André Kagwa Rwisereka, vice president of opposition party the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, highlighted in the eyes of the opposition, that the ruling party does not appreciate contradiction, nor is it willing to risk a legitimate loss of power.
The RPF issued a statement in which they strongly denied the accusations.
The opposition, left with little few options, has appealed to the international community to exert pressure on the regime to include all parties in the elections, to stop to the violence, and release all political prisoners.
“The problem is that we want to have a situation in Rwanda where someone should not be imprisoned or killed because they have a different idea,” Mr. Habineza, the president of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda was reported as saying by the BBC.
At beginning of this year, the leader of another opposition party, the United Democratic Forces (UDF) was assaulted when she attempted to register her party for the elections. She is still under house arrest in Kigali and her passport confiscated. Her assistant was jailed on alleged charges of genocide, while another member of the party, Ms. Béatrice Uwimana, has been missing since a police crack down on June 24.
UDF has criticized the international community for not supporting democracy in Rwanda.
“The disappointing shyness of the international community to accompany the whole election process as well as the lack of a clear public position vis-à-vis the closure of political space and harassment of opposition by the current regime prove that they [the international community] are inevitably following the same pattern of abandoning the Rwandan people,” the UDF said in a press statement.
Sixteen years ago, it was Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front that had put an end to the Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 or 20 percent of the population were slaughtered over the course of 100 days. Paul Kagame has also been credited by the West for the economic recovery of the nation since that time.
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