The Directorate General of Immigration and Emigration has asked Carina Tertsakian, the Country Director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), to leave the country with immediate effect after her visa expired. Tertsakian, a British national had her work permit revoked two days after receiving it on January 25th over ‘gross anomalies’ in her documents, but her British visa allowed her to stay around for a period of 3 months which has expired. Tertsakian was requested by the immigration department to apply for a foreigner’s identity card, which is required for all foreigners with a long stay visa but her file was discovered to contain inconsistent signatures of her employees. In an interview with The New Times, Innocent Niyonsenga, the Communications Manager at the Immigration Directorate said the 90 days given to her expired on April 25 and she will be required to leave. “The 90 we gave her to correct the anomalies in her documents have expired. We were not satisfied by the explanations they gave us on the signatures. “They claim that the signatures are genuine, much as we showed them the differences and they acknowledged them, so we asked her to leave,” Niyonsenga said. According to the Immigration department, the signature of the Executive Director Africa Division found on the Visa application form is different from the signature of the same person in her employment contract. Also the signature of the Human Resource Manager on her employment contract also differed from the signature in the employment contract of the outgoing Country Director yet the Human Resource Managers has not changed. It is further said that her employment contract has an anomaly in the date of issue. It indicated that the contract was signed on the 29th of October 2010, six months from now. According to Niyonsenga, Tertsakian was summoned to the immigration department and shown the inconsistencies in her file which she acknowledged before her work permit was revoked. “As procedure requires, we called the applicant to make a few clarifications and she admitted that there were anomalies. This is an administrative measure, we cancelled the work permit.” Niyonsenga told The New Times in an earlier interview. She was however not be deported forcefully but was asked to leave voluntarily. Ends
