Ingabire trial: genocide ideology laws face revision

It was a trial within a trial last Tuesday at the Supreme Court of Rwanda, as Victoire Ingabire and her lawyers challenged the constitutionality of the genocide ideology laws. Ingabire, the president of the opposition party Unified Democratic Forces (UDF), has been charged with complicity to terrorism and ideology of genocide.

By Clive Muhenga, Kigali
[related-articles]“This law violates the freedom of expression enshrined in our constitution. It is so vague that people voicing their opinions on the genocide, or any related questions, hardly know where to draw the line,” says Gatera Gashabana, one of Ingabire’s lawyers.
According to Gashabana, the genocide ideology laws are there to silence “researchers, politicians and journalists”. He also thinks that the text can be a source of confusion for the judge. “It could lead to an arbitrary enforcement of the law, as those in charge of reprimanding the behaviour in question often fall prey to subjective interpretations of the law”.
Controversial statement
In January 2010, Victoire Ingabire, who had just returned to Rwanda after 16 years of exile in the Netherlands, declared that true national reconciliation would not be achieved as long as the country continued to honour only the memories of Tutsis killed during the genocide. According to her, the Hutus massacred by soldiers of the current ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), should also be remembered.
The statement was made at the memorial of Tutsi genocide victims in Gisozi, Kigali in front of national and international press, and represented Ingabire’s first act of opposition against President Paul Kagame’s regime.
Ingabire was placed under house arrest and interrogated on numerous occasions by police. It put an end to her ambition to run against Paul Kagame in the August 2010 presidential elections. In October she was jailed.
In the trial, which began in September 2011, the court found her statements in Gisozi to be in clear violation of the genocide ideology laws of July 2008.
Controversial law
Ingabire’s lawyer, Gatera Gashabana, has also denounced the “disproportionate penalty with regards to the norms and practices of international law.” The UDF leader is facing between 10 to 25 years of jail for the genocide ideology charges alone.
Human rights organisations have also criticised the law. In a press release from 2010 entitled “Vague laws used to criminalise criticism of government in Rwanda,” Amnesty International denounced the ambiguous law that had “Rwandan populations living in fear of being punished for saying the wrong thing.”
The human rights organisation also claimed that a number of Rwandan judges had also pointed out that the text was vague and abstract.
Announced revision
The Rwandan government has consistently denied using the genocide ideology laws to suppress any opposition to the regime. President Paul Kagame has often declared that no one was in a position to teach Rwandans anything about human rights. Although the Justice Minister, Tharcisse Karugarama, had announced plans to revise the controversial law in 2010, the text is still yet to be debated in Parliament.
On 13 April, the Supreme Court is expected to deliver its verdict on Victoire Ingabire’s request for the revision of the law. Meanwhile, the opposition leader will continue to face the genocide ideology charges when her trial resumes before the High Court on Monday.