Free Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza - Re-arrested

The New Arrest

On 19 June 2025, Rwandan police arrested Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza at her home in Kigali. She is the country's most prominent opposition leader, the president of the DALFA-Umurinzi party, and she had already spent eight years in prison for standing for the presidency. Now, years after her 2018 release, the state has come for her again.

The charges against her, described by prosecutors as subversion, include spreading false information or harmful propaganda with intent to cause a hostile international opinion against the government, and conspiring with members of her own party who were themselves arrested in October and December 2021. Human Rights Watch condemned the arrest as part of a wider pattern of repression against government critics, and Amnesty International has called for her release together with the imprisoned members of her movement.

A Pattern, Not an Accident

This is not the first time Victoire Ingabire has been criminalised for her peaceful political activity. In 2010 she returned from exile in the Netherlands to stand for the presidency, and was arrested within months. In 2013 her sentence was increased to fifteen years. The African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights later found that Rwanda had violated her right to freedom of expression and that her speech posed no imminent threat to public order. She was released by presidential pardon in 2018, but her parties were never allowed to register, and members of DALFA-Umurinzi were arrested, tried and imprisoned in proceedings the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention condemned as arbitrary.

Her re-arrest in June 2025 confirms what every Rwandan critic already knows: no one who challenges the regime is safe, not even after a presidential pardon, not even years later.

The Courts Close Their Doors

On 27 March 2026 the Rwandan Supreme Court rejected her challenge to the constitutionality of her June 2025 arrest and ongoing detention. She remains in the hands of the state, facing charges that could send her back to prison for many years.

Our Demands

The Global Campaign for Rwandans' Human Rights demands:

• The immediate and unconditional release of Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, and of every member of her movement imprisoned for their peaceful political activity.
• The dropping of all charges that criminalise free expression and peaceful opposition.
• An end to the persecution of DALFA-Umurinzi and the registration of political parties without interference.
• Respect for the African Court's ruling that her freedom of expression must be protected.

Free Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. Free all prisoners of conscience.