Rwanda has made important economic and development gains, but the government has continued to impose tight restrictions on freedom of expression and association. Opposition parties are unable to operate. Two opposition party leaders remain in prison and other members of their parties have been threatened. Two journalists arrested in 2010 also remain in prison, and several others have been arrested. Laws on “genocide ideology” and the media were revised, but had not been adopted at this writing.

Community-based gacaca courts set up to try cases related to the 1994 genocide closed in June 2012. The trial of Jean Bosco Uwinkindi, the first case transferred to Rwanda by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), opened in Kigali.

Several governments have suspended part of their assistance to Rwanda in response to Rwandan military support for the M23 rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Political Opponents

Bernard Ntaganda, founding president of the PS-Imberakuri opposition party, remained in prison after the Supreme Court in April upheld charges of endangering state security and divisionism, and confirmed his four-year sentence handed down in 2011. The charges related solely to his public criticisms of the government.

Several other PS-Imberakuri members were threatened, intimidated, and questioned by the police about their political activities. On September 5, Alexis Bakunzibake, the party's vice president, was abducted by armed men in the capital Kigali, blindfolded, and detained overnight in a location he could not identify. His abductors questioned him about the PS-Imberakuri's activities, its membership and funding, and its alleged links to other opposition groups. They tried to persuade him to abandon his party activities, then drove him to an undisclosed location before dumping him across the border in Uganda.

The trial of Victoire Ingabire, president of the FDU-Inkingi party, which began in September 2011, concluded in April. She was charged with six offenses, three of which were linked to “terrorist acts” and creating an armed group. The three others—“genocide ideology,” divisionism, and spreading rumors intended to incite the public to rise up against the state—were linked to her public criticism of the government. On October 30, after a flawed trial, she was found guilty of conspiracy to undermine the government and genocide denial, and sentenced to eight years in prison.