Our Statement on the Start of the Trial of Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza

The Global Campaign for Rwandans' Human Rights closely followed the opening of the trial of Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, president of the DALFA-Umurinzi party, before the courts in Kigali. More than a year after her re-arrest at her home on 19 June 2025, and after her last constitutional challenge was rejected by the Supreme Court on 27 March 2026, the state has finally brought her before a court. We say plainly: this trial has no lawful foundation, and its outcome was written long before the first hearing.

A trial built on an unlawful arrest

Victoire Ingabire is charged, with others, under a subversion statute that the authorities have used again and again to convert peaceful dissent into a crime. The charges rest on speech: on statements of political opinion, on alleged "false information or harmful propaganda", and on her association with members of her own party arrested in October and December 2021 for the same peaceful activity. None of this is a crime under international human rights law. In her first prosecution, the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights found that Rwanda had violated her right to freedom of expression and that her speech posed no imminent threat to public order. The state answered that judgment by keeping her parties unregistered and, in 2025, by arresting her again.

The courtrooms close, the doors open only for the prosecution

We note with alarm the conditions surrounding these proceedings. Before the trial opened, the Supreme Court declined to examine the legality of her arrest and detention, foreclosing the one avenue through which an independent judge could have stopped the prosecution before it began. Human Rights Watch has described her arrest as part of a wider pattern of repression against government critics. Amnesty International has demanded her release, together with the imprisoned members of her movement. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has already condemned the imprisonment of her fellow party members as arbitrary. A judiciary that prosecutes critics under speech crimes, while refusing to test the legality of their detention, is not delivering justice. It is administering punishment in the form of process.

What this trial really means

Victoire Ingabire returned from exile in 2010 to participate in elections, and was arrested within months. She served eight years. She was pardoned in 2018. Her parties were still denied registration. In 2025 she was arrested again, in her own home, for the offence of remaining a political alternative. Her trial is not an aberration. It is the clearest possible signal to every Rwandan that no one, however senior, however celebrated, however patient, may challenge the ruling party and remain free.

Our demands

The Global Campaign for Rwandans' Human Rights demands:

• The immediate and unconditional release of Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, and the dropping of all charges that criminalise speech and peaceful political opposition.
• The immediate and unconditional release of every member of DALFA-Umurinzi and other detained opposition figures imprisoned for their peaceful activity, including Theoneste Nsengimana and Sylvain Sibomana.
• Full, unimpeded access for independent observers, diplomats and journalists to every hearing in her trial.
• An end to the harassment and obstruction of her defence team, and the registration of opposition parties without political interference.
• Accountability before international bodies for the pattern of arbitrary detention the United Nations has already documented.

We call on the African Union, the United Nations human rights mechanisms, and every government that claims to support democracy in Rwanda to speak now, while the trial is live, and not to offer condolences after a verdict.

Free Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. Free all prisoners of conscience.