Election Rwanda 2010: Who will be allowed to run? Special

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both called on the government of Rwanda to stop attacking opposition parties in the country's 2010 presidential election.

On Feb. 10, 2009, Human Rights Watch issued a news release, "Rwanda: End Attacks on Opposition Parties," but the attacks haven't ended. The FDU-Inkingi Party candidate Victoire Ingabiré Umuhoza was facing another interrogation, by the Criminal Investigation Division of the Rwandan Police, at the time I recorded this KPFA Radio News including some of my most recent conversation with her. She was released, once again, but her aide Joseph Ntawanundi, remains in prison, and she has still been unable to register the FDU-Inkingi Party, or her candidacy. On Feb. 18, 2010, Amnesty International joined Human Rights Watch by issuing a release titled "Intimidation of Rwandan Opposition Parties Must End." Meanwhile, Kigali's Gasabo District has once again refused to give the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda a permit to hold the convention that it must hold to field a presidential candidate, because the police have not given them a "clearance," even though nonviolence is one of the 10 key values of Green Parties worldwide.