It's not easy to find Rwandans in the Netherlands talking openly about their home country’s opposition leader, Victoire Ingabire. The UDF leader spent 16 years exiled in the Netherlands, where her husband and three children still remain. Ingabire now sits in a Rwandan jail accused of complicity in terrorism and genocide denial. On 29 June, the High Court in Kigali delivers her verdict – life in prison being one possible sentence. Two Rwandans living in the Netherlands agreed to discuss her politics with RNW.

Twenty-three year-old David, a student who prefers to be referred to by this pseudonym, points to Ingabire’s recent letter to Rwandan President Paul Kagame. It is entitled ‘Clarifications, apologies and a plea for a release from prison’.

He admires her writing, noting: “She says she wants Hutus and Tutsis to reconcile. I agree with her, because war leads nowhere. If we want to develop our country, we people of Rwanda have to unite.”

David was four, or perhaps five, years old during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. People tell him: “You were too young. You’ll never understand what happened.”

He disagrees. “In my head there is a movie that plays again and again,” he says. “You realize you’ve seen people dying. Then you start to read books. You’ve lived something without knowing you’ve lived it.”

Polka?
Felix doesn’t see anything new in Ingabire’s message. The 35-year-old assistant professor asks: “What does she add to the many calls for peace-building in Rwanda? Where are her practical proposals to make her pledge to achieve Hutu-Tutsi reconciliation come true?”

In any case, the reality in Rwanda is not black and white, he adds. “When people talk about reconciliation between Hutus and Tutsis, it’s like after 18 years all Hutus and Tutsis are hugging each other, like if they are dancing the polka together because of this magic reconciliation!”

“I think Rwanda is making progress in many ways – economically, socially, culturally and with human rights. But I don’t know if Rwanda is halfway [there], less than that or more than that! It’s a process. I’m not so sure we’ll ever reach this famous ‘reconciliation’, even in the 18 years to come. Will we ever get there? ”

Felix continues: “I wonder if Europe ever really reconciled after the Second World War. Sixty-five years after this war, I hear many things about Germans in the Netherlands... I don’t think we can expect Rwanda to be much different.”

“Ingabire has been accused of crimes within Rwandan law, but also of crimes within international law, like terrorism. Furthermore, there are similar laws in European countries about negation, in the context of the holocaust.”

Proof?
While Felix wants to give Rwanda’s justice system the benefit of the doubt, David almost sounds like he could be a student of Ingabire.

“We have to admit that Tutsis died during the genocide, but also Hutus,” urges David. “It’s only when we accept that people suffered on both sides that we will start to unite.”

Felix expresses cautious. “I’m not pro-Ingabire or against Ingabire. I’m waiting to see the proof against her. Once it is made public, I will make up my mind.”