Returnees stuck in Nyagatare after failing to trace home districts

EASTERN PROVINCE Nyagatare—Following the deportation of 3000 Rwandan citizens from Isingiro district in western Uganda, some 31 people in 11 families are currently stuck in Nyagatare after failing to trace their origins before the 1994 Genocide. District authorities say that the families are doubtful about their claims that Nyagatare is their home district because almost all the stuck returnees were originally born in or raised in exile in Uganda and Tanzania. The district received over 102 returnees and many were resettled in their respective home sectors where they rejoined families.District officials are threatening to take the group back to Gicumbi district camp to be relocated to other part of the country so that the commission liable for resettling returnees can resettle them. “The authorities have failed to understand our explanations,” says one returnee named Kabera. “For my case I was born in Tanzania but sometime back Tanzania evicted all Rwandans and then together with my family we got ourselves relocated to Uganda. But before my father passed away he used to tell me that he used to hail from Nyagatare district which they have refused to grasp, my claims are described as deceit.”Kabera said that all stuck deportees are caught up in puzzlement as the food handouts have run out as their waiting the district authorities to decide their fate. When contacted, the vice-mayor for economic and development affairs Anselme Majoro Rurangwa described the returnees as “inveterate liars who faked the commission” that Nyagatare district was their home area. “The information we have tells us that some of the returnees lied about their home district and for that reason we have resolved to take them back to Gicumbi so that they can still trace their home districts,” Rurangwa says. “Again we established that they are just looking for land but Nyagatare is not their home.”This has not been independently confirmed.He also noted that the district resettled all those who formerly lived in Nyagatare before 1994 Genocide who come as deportees from western Uganda urging them to go back to their home districts and be resettled. Ends