The United Democratic Forces of Rwanda (UDF-Inkingi; Inkingi is the Kinyarwanda word for “pillar. french: Forces Democratiques Unifiées, FDU-INKINGI) is a

coalition A coalition is a group formed when two or more people or groups temporarily work together to achieve a common goal. The term is most frequently used to denote a formation of power in political or economical spaces. Formation According to ''A Gui ...

Rwanda Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...

opposition groups In politics, the opposition comprises one or more political party, political parties or other organized groups that are opposed, primarily ideology, ideologically, to the government (or, in American English, the Administration (government)#Uni ...

. Since its foundation in 2006, the UDF-Inkingi has profiled itself as an opposition party whose main objective is to change the regime of the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), which has been in power since the end of the genocide against the Tutsis in July 1994. To this day, despite multiple attempts to become officially registered in

, the UDF-Inkingi has not yet been authorised to operate in

as a party. According to international human rights bodies, such as

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...

and

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...

, UDF-Inkingi members inside

have been regularly subjected to persecution and even to murder, mostly non-elucidated.

History

The party was established on 29 April 2006 as an alliance of the

Republican Rally for Democracy in Rwanda The Republican Rally for Democracy in Rwanda (french: Rassemblement Républicain pour la Démocratie au Rwanda (RDR)), also known as the (''Rally for the Return f Refugees and Democracy in Rwanda') is an unregistered Rwandan political party. ...

(RDR), Action for Impartial International Justice in Rwanda, the Democratic Forces for Resistance and the Rwandan Democratic Alliance, with RDR leader

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza (born 3 October 1968) is a Rwandan politician and chairperson of a new political party - Development And Liberty For All (DALFA-Umurinzi) with the focus to campaign for more political space and for development. Previous ...

elected President of the UDF. Having been formed in

exile Exile is primarily penal expulsion from one's native country, and secondarily expatriation or prolonged absence from one's homeland under either the compulsion of circumstance or the rigors of some high purpose. Usually persons and peoples suf ...

, the alliance's leadership returned to Rwanda in January 2010 and applied to be registered in order to field candidates in the

presidential elections A presidential election is the election of any head of state whose official title is President. Elections by country Albania The president of Albania is elected by the Assembly of Albania who are elected by the Albanian public. Chile The pr ...

later in the year. However, the alliance was prevented from registering and Ingabire was arrested. The departure of

and her management of party activities from there provoked a split in 2010 amongst UDF-Inkingi members who remained in exile in Europe. The majority faction, which pledged allegiance to

’s leadership, even from behind bars, kept the name UDF-Inkingi, whereas the minority faction, which advocated a new Europe-based leadership, took the name of UDF-National Movement Inkubiri. In 2011, as the RPF witnessed defections amongst its most senior military officers and political figures who used to be very close to President

Paul Kagame Paul Kagame (; born 23 October 1957) is a Rwandan politician and former military officer who is the 4th and current president of Rwanda since 2000. He previously served as a commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Uganda-based rebel ...

, the UDF-Inkingi formed an alliance with RPF dissidents who had started their own party, namely, the

Rwanda National Congress The Rwanda National Congress (RNC) is Rwandan opposition group in exile, established in the United States on 12 December 2010. Prominent founders included Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa, Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa, Gerald Gahima, and Patrick Karegeya. Karege ...

(RNC), spearheaded by former army chief-of-staff Kayumba Nyamwasa and presidential cabinet director, doctor Theogene Rusasingwa. Later the alliance expanded to include five parties in total.

Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza

Mrs

was UDF-Inkingi chairwoman since its foundation in 2006 until 2019 when, just a few months after her release from jail following a presidential pardon, she started a new party, the Development and Liberty for All (DALFA-Umurinzi). For 13 years, she was the face and voice of the UDF-Inkingi, including during the eight years (2010–2018) that she spent in jail. Her trial drew a lot of international media attention and encountered multiple bombshells, including the time when some of the prosecutor’s witnesses contradicted themselves in court or denounced police ill-treatment that was meant to extort false testimony, and when Dutch authorities authorised the search of

’s home in order to obtain evidence for the Rwandan court. After

’s resignation from the UDF-Inkingi in November 2019, the party elected Justin Bahunga, a former diplomat, as chairman for a two-year term. During the official launching of her new party, Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza told her party’s members and the press that the difference between the DALFA-Umurinzi and the UDF-Inkingi was that the former, unlike the latter, had been set up following Rwanda’s laws. However, her detractors, who make use of the pro-government press, maintain that the two organisations have the same ideals and ideology, and that creating the party brought nothing new except for a new name.

Persecutions

According to several human rights organisations and diplomatic missions to Rwanda, UDF-members are regularly the victims of harassment, arbitrary arrests, never-elucidated disappearances and even murder. Amnesty International cited numerous cases, including that of Illuminée Iragema who has been missing since 2016, and the cases of Jean Damascène Habarugira and Syldio Dusabumuremyi who were murdered in 2017 and 2018 respectively, and that of Boniface Twagirimana, UDF-Inkingi vice-chairman, whose alleged escape from the Mpanga maximum-security prison prompts many to think that it was in fact a well-planned abduction by secret services.

References

External links

Official website
{{Rwandan political parties Political party alliances in Rwanda Political parties established in 2006 2006 establishments in Rwanda