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Rwanda Urged to End Clampdown on Dissent as Charles Ntakirutinka Released
The release today of a former government minister following a decade in prison has prompted Amnesty International to call for an end to the ongoing persecution of political opponents and journalists in Rwanda.
"Charles Ntakirutinka spent 10 years of his life in prison because he formed a political party," said Erwin van der Borght, Amnesty International's Africa Director.
"Ten years after Charles Ntakirutinka was jailed, political opponents and journalists still spend years in prison for speaking out.
WASHINGTON
The release today of a former government minister following a decade in prison has prompted Amnesty International to call for an end to the ongoing persecution of political opponents and journalists in Rwanda.
"Charles Ntakirutinka spent 10 years of his life in prison because he formed a political party," said Erwin van der Borght, Amnesty International's Africa Director.
"Ten years after Charles Ntakirutinka was jailed, political opponents and journalists still spend years in prison for speaking out.
"The Rwandan government should put promises to respect freedom of expression and association into practice."
Considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, Charles Ntakirutinka was arrested in April 2002, as part of a crackdown before the 2003 presidential elections, the first elections after the 1994 genocide.
After serving as a minister in the post-genocide government, Charles Ntakirutinka launched a new political party, the Democratic Party for Renewal (PDR-Ubuyanja), in 2001 with former President Pasteur Bizimungu.
After an unfair trial in 2004, Charles Ntakirutinka was convicted of "inciting civil disobedience" and "association with criminal elements".
The prosecution claimed he had organized clandestine meetings, along with his party colleagues, to disturb public order, provoke civil conflict and target certain government authorities for assassination.
The Rwandan authorities continue to prosecute political opponents and journalists for criticizing the government. Repression escalates in the run-up to elections.
The months leading up to the August 2010 presidential elections, which President Kagame won with 93 per cent of the vote, saw a crackdown on freedom of expression and association.
New opposition parties were prevented from contesting the elections. The United Democratic Forces (FDU-Inkingi) and the Democratic Green Party were unable to obtain security clearance to organize meetings needed for their registration.
The only new party to secure registration, PS-Imberakuri, was infiltrated by dissident members and decided not to stand.
Bernard Ntaganda, president of the Ideal Social Party (PS-Imberakuri), was sentenced to four years imprisonment in February 2011. He was found guilty of "divisionism" for holding public speeches criticizing government policies ahead of the 2010 elections, breaching state security and attempting to plan an "unauthorized demonstration".
His prosecution for threatening state security and divisionism was solely based on speeches criticizing government policies. His case is currently on appeal.
The trial of Victoire Ingabire, leader of the United Democratic Forces (FDU-Inkingi), is on-going. She is charged with terrorism, creating an armed group, "genocide ideology", "sectarianism", and willingly disseminating rumours aimed at inciting the public against the existing leadership.
The "genocide ideology" charges were based, in part, on her public call for the prosecution of war crimes committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).
Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights for all. Our supporters are outraged by human rights abuses but inspired by hope for a better world - so we work to improve human rights through campaigning and international solidarity. We have more than 2.2 million members and subscribers in more than 150 countries and regions and we coordinate this support to act for justice on a wide range of issues.
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Critics Hammer Trump Admin's 'Taxpayer Funded Bribe' to Kill Massive Wind Energy Project
"The most corrupt presidency ever—and it's not even close," said one critic.
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Critics slammed the Trump administration on Monday after it announced a deal to pay almost $1 billion to a French energy company to cancel its plans to construct wind farms across the eastern US.
As reported by The New York Times, French firm TotalEnergies has agreed to forfeit its leases in federal waters off the coasts of New York and North Carolina, and will instead invest the money it received from the Trump administration into oil and gas projects in the US, "including a facility in Texas that would export liquefied natural gas to global markets."
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The Times described the agreement as "an extraordinary transfer of taxpayer dollars to a foreign company for the purposes of boosting the production of fossil fuels, a main driver of climate change, while throttling offshore wind power."
Patrick Pouyanné, the chief executive of TotalEnergies, said that the firm decided to abandon its US wind farm plans due to "practical" considerations, while emphasizing that the firm wasn't giving up on wind power all together.
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Many critics expressed disbelief that the Trump administration would go to such extraordinary lengths to kill a clean energy project, especially after the president sent oil and gasoline prices soaring earlier this month when he launched an unprovoked and unconstitutional war with Iran.
"Let’s call this what it is: a taxpayer-funded bribe to kill homegrown clean energy and hand the money straight to oil and gas executives," wrote climate advocacy organization Evergreen Action in a social media post. "Trump is once again making Americans pay more for energy so his Big Oil donors can rake in even more profits."
Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, expressed a similar sentiment.
"$1 billion of our tax dollars to kill a clean energy program that creates jobs, just so Trump's Big Oil donors can make more profit," D'Arrigo wrote. "The most corrupt presidency ever—and it's not even close."
Matt Gertz, senior fellow at press watchdog Media Matters for America, argued that the agreement was a corrupt bargain aimed at hurting the president's political foes, including the Democratic leaders of New York and North Carolina.
"Climate/renewables arguments aside, this is the president's administration paying a foreign company to invest in states where Republicans are in charge rather than ones where Democrats are in charge," Gertz wrote, "using tax dollars to punish people who didn't vote for his party."
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The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in a case in which Republicans are trying to ban states from accepting mail-in ballots after Election Day—a development that opponents warned could disenfranchise many of the roughly 50 million Americans who voted by mail in 2024.
Watson v. Republican National Committee challenges Mississippi's grace period for accepting mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day. While most states require mailed ballots to arrive by that date, 14 states provide extra time ranging from days to weeks. Such grace periods allow the votes of people including US troops stationed overseas, Americans living abroad, disabled people, and others to be counted.
The case is partly driven by President Donald Trump's unfounded assertion that mail-in voting is riddled with fraud. Following Trump's 2020 election loss, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency—created by the president in 2018—called the contest “the most secure in American history.” Trump promptly fired the head of the agency before leaving office.
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider a GOP effort to dramatically restrict mail-in voting Monday, when it hears oral arguments in Watson v. Republican National Committee. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
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— Marc Elias (@marcelias.bsky.social) March 22, 2026 at 8:31 AM
Legal experts observing Monday's oral arguments said that some of the six Republican-appointed justices appeared sympathetic to arguments for restricting mail-in voting.
University of Michigan Law School professor Leah Litman said on Bluesky that Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas "sound like complete MAGA-pilled 'absentee voting/mail in voting is fraudulent' brains" who are "open to invalidating state laws allowing vote counting after Election Day—and perhaps more voting forms."
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Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern said on Bluesky that Justice Samuel Alito "strongly implied that vote-by-mail, as practiced in most of the country today, is highly susceptible to fraud," adding that Gorsuch and Thomas "leaned in that direction as well," while Justices Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts "are harder to read."
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Others warned of the high likelihood of voter disenfranchisement should the justices limit mailed ballots.
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Last November, the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans struck down a Mississippi law that allowed mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted as long as they arrive within five business days, setting up the Supreme Court showdown.
“Vote-by-mail is a secure and widely used way to participate in our elections," Stand Up America executive director Christina Harvey said Monday. "It’s a lifeline for military and overseas voters, voters with disabilities, elderly voters, and rural voters living far from their polling places. Nearly one-third of the votes cast in the 2024 election were cast by mail, proving just how essential this option has become."
“Watson v. RNC is part of a broader effort to dismantle voting options ahead of this year’s midterms," Harvey continued. "After pushing congressional Republicans to eliminate vote-by-mail and adopting [United States Postal Service] policy changes that could disqualify ballots sent on time, Donald Trump and his allies are asking the Supreme Court to finish the job."
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Writing in The Argument on Monday, polling analyst Lakshya Jain made the case that Trump has created an "apocalyptic wasteland" for the GOP by combining "a cost-of-living crisis with an unpopular war and tariff policies from the 1930s."
Jain noted that Trump's approval rating in The Argument's latest monthly survey had fallen to 40%, while his disapproval rating has soared to 58%, resulting in the lowest net approval for the president so far in his second term.
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