Our Statement on the Death of Jean Damascene Habarugira

In May 2017, Jean Damascene Habarugira, a local representative of the opposition United Democratic Forces (FDU-Inkingi) party in Ngoma district, disappeared after being summoned to a meeting with an officer responsible for local security. Days later, his family was called to collect his body from Nyamata Hospital in Bugesera on 8 May. What happened in between, and who is responsible, has never been established. ## Summoned, then silenced The sequence of events speaks for itself: a summons by a security officer, a disappearance, and a body returned to the family without explanation. Amnesty International documented the case and called on the authorities to account for what had happened. No credible investigation followed, and no one has been held responsible. Jean Damascene's death sits inside a wider pattern that by 2017 had become undeniable. His party's members were being threatened, beaten, imprisoned and killed: Illuminée Iragena had vanished a year earlier, and Anselme Mutuyimana and Syldio Dusabumuremyi would die within two years. Local activists, the people who keep a party alive in its villages and districts, were hit first. ## Our demands - The Government of Rwanda must explain who summoned Jean Damascene Habarugira to that meeting, and account for the days between his disappearance and the return of his body.

• An independent international investigation must be allowed into his death and the deaths of every other FDU-Inkingi member killed since 2010.
• Security officials who summon opposition members to meetings from which they never return must be named, investigated and prosecuted. His family was handed a body and no answers. The Global Campaign for Rwandans' Human Rights will keep demanding those answers until they are given.