FDU’s Ingabire desecrates memory with Double Genocide theory

Opposition politician, Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, could not have started her homecoming on a more vicious note. There are some who had thought that her arrival to compete for the highest office, in a country where women have assumed a leading role in governance, would be a welcome addition to national politics. Instead, she revealed a very disturbing side of her. As soon as she left the airport, she made it straight to the Gisozi Genocide memorial site to pay homage to victims of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, or so it seemed. It must have been a shock to her to come to Kigali, after an absence of close to two decades, to see the huge changes. Any well-intentioned person would easily notice that this country has not been sleeping in the last 15 years. The post-Genocide Rwanda amazes everyone; the reconstruction efforts, and especially the reconciliatory approach by the government has been acclaimed the world over. But this is not what Ingabire sees. She sees desolation where there is none and slams Gacaca as unjust as if the thousands who took part in the Genocide are angels. To add insult to injury, she stuns the Rwandan people by echoing every revisionist and Genocide deniers’ favourite line: espousing the Double Genocide Theory. This is the first time, since 1994, that a Genocide denier has chosen to articulate this level of revisionism on the Rwandan soil. She utters all this right where hundreds of thousands of innocent souls are laid to rest, victims of similar inflammatory statements. She could not have chosen a better moment and place to desecrate the memory of the victims. Ends