Over 30 Rwandans detained by Uganda, dumped at border

At least 33 Rwandans were on Wednesday night dumped at Cyanika Border Post in Burera district and among them were vulnerable individuals like toddlers and women. They were all transported to the border in a lorry and they were all forced to abandon all their belongings in Uganda. According to accounts, while some had been in detention for months where they were being kept incommunicado, others were part of the group that was arrested on Monday in the Uganda border town of Kisoro. Between 150 and 200 Rwandans from various parts of Uganda mainly Kisoro, Kabale and Masaka were particularly imprisoned through this operation, according to sources. Many of the victims had lived in Uganda for years. According to the deportees, the Monday swoop had initially seen hundreds arrested including Kinyarwanda speaking Ugandans of the Bafumbira tribe, Burundian and Congolese nationals, but all these were freed after a screening and only Rwandans were kept in custody. They were then accused of illegally staying in Uganda; a crime most of them categorically denied by showing papers that would support their stay in the country legally. Separate from families “I have been living in Uganda for the last three years and these are the papers legalizing my stay,” said one of the victims, brandishing papers issued to him by the Ugandan government. The victim, who refused to identify himself for fear it could endanger his family that he was separated from, said he is married to a Ugandan. I was simply told to leave Uganda because I am Rwandan and left my family and everything I had built there,” he added. Most of the deportees had similar claims of being forced to leave their families back in Uganda, which to them is torturing them psychologically. While for some, family members stayed home back in Uganda, others say they left theirs in prisons. At least 70 Rwandans, including 23 women are said to have been kept in prison in Kisoro. “We do not know the fate of our loved ones whom we left in prison; we have not been told the reason they were kept,” stressing that Uganda should be ashamed of what they are doing. Speaking to The New Times, the Governor for Northern Province Jean Marie Vianney Gatabazi said that officials at the Rwanda side had not got any communication from their Ugandan counterparts about the deportation. “People were just bundled onto a lorry and dumped at the border,” Gatabazi said. He revealed that the deportees hail from the districts of Burera, Musanze, Rubavu, Huye, Kicukiro and Rwamagana. Gatabazi added that local officials in partnership with the Ministry of Emergency Management (MINEMA) were forging ways to relocate the deportees to their respective residential areas. Earlier, on Tuesday, four Rwandan women and their three children were received at the same border crossing, under similar circumstances. On the same day, Felecien Ruzigamanzi, 23, was bundled into a car and dumped at the Kagitumba border crossing. Like many others before them, no one is allowed by Ugandan authorities to carry home their property, or even allowed to sell of their land before being roughed up and expelled from the country. Ugandan police officers confiscate portables including huge sums of money which are never returned. Harassment of Rwandans in Uganda is partly the reason for the frosty relations between the two neighbouring nations. The Ugandan government is linked to anti-Kigali armed groups, including FDLR, the offshoot of forces and militia blamed for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, RNC, a terrorist group formed by Rwandan dissidents in 2010, and FLN, which last year made incursions on Rwandan territory through Burundi, killing at least nine civilians and wounding several others. In December last year, a UN Group of Experts’ report named Uganda as one of the main sources of recruits for a Rwandan rebel group based in eastern DR Congo that calls itself P5 which comprises five groups including RNC, FDLR, FLN and others, opposed to Kigali. An agreement was signed in Angola’s capital, Luanda, between President Paul Kagame and his Ugandan counterpart, Yoweri Museveni, with the two leaders committing to work to relations has yielded no hope for peace. The situation has not changed with Uganda continuing to round up and imprisoning Rwandans.

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Over 30 Rwandans detained by Uganda, dumped at border