Our Statement on the Death of Anselme Mutuyimana, Assistant to Victoire Ingabire

On the morning of 9 March 2019, Anselme Mutuyimana, an assistant to Victoire Ingabire, president of the opposition United Democratic Forces (FDU-Inkingi) party, was found dead on the edge of the Gishwati forest in northwestern Rwanda, showing signs of strangulation. He was thirty years old. ## A persecutor's pattern, seen before Anselme had spent the previous six years in prison on charges arising from his political activism on behalf of FDU-Inkingi. Freed at the end of 2018, he had barely begun to rebuild his life when he disappeared and was found dead. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both documented the circumstances and demanded answers. The police opened an investigation; as with so many investigations into the deaths of government critics, it has produced nothing that the public is allowed to see. His death did not stand alone. Within months, fellow FDU-Inkingi figures Syldio Dusabumuremyi would be stabbed to death in front of his daughter, and Eugène Ndereyimba abducted and killed, a series of deaths so systematic that human rights organisations began speaking of the annihilation of a single political party, member by member. ## Our demands - The Government of Rwanda must permit an independent, international investigation into Anselme Mutuyimana's death, including the circumstances of his disappearance in the days before his body was found.

• The harassment, surveillance and imprisonment of FDU-Inkingi members must end, and every unresolved death and disappearance of party members must be reopened.
• The UN human rights system must treat the pattern of deaths around one opposition party as the systematic campaign it plainly is, and name it. Anselme served his sentence and walked out with his convictions intact. His death was meant to be the final word on his activism. The Global Campaign for Rwandans' Human Rights refuses to let it be.