Our Statement on the Disappearance of Illuminée Iragena

On 26 March 2016, Illuminée Iragena, a member of the opposition United Democratic Forces (FDU-Inkingi) party, went missing in Kigali. She has not been seen since. Fellow activists and human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have raised the alarm repeatedly; her family has never received any official information about her fate. ## Erased without a trace Illuminée is one of the many Rwandan opposition members who have simply vanished. There is no prison record, no charge sheet, no court date, only a last sighting and silence. Those close to her believe she was forcibly disappeared and fear she may have died in custody. Under international law, an enforced disappearance is a crime and a continuing one: every day without answers prolongs the violation. Her disappearance fits the pattern already visible by 2016, Victoire Ingabire herself under house arrest and facing new charges, party members jailed, beaten and killed, the party's structure being dismantled person by person. ## Our demands - The Government of Rwanda must immediately reveal Illuminée Iragena's fate and whereabouts, and return her to her family, alive or with the truth of what happened to her.

• Every enforced disappearance of an opposition member or government critic must be independently and internationally investigated.
• The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances must take up her case, and those of every Rwandan who has vanished, and press Kigali for answers at every session. For more than nine years her family has waited for news. The Global Campaign for Rwandans' Human Rights will not allow the world to forget her name or stop asking where she is.