UN agency deplores forced returns of Rwandan refugees from Uganda

Rwandan refugees return to shore after fishing in Uganda

UN agency deplores forced returns of Rwandan refugees from Uganda

16 July 2010 – The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) today deplored the forced returns of Rwandans from Uganda, with reports of police brutality being used to deport the asylum-seekers. On Wednesday, Ugandan police carried out an operation to round up and force out some 1,700 Rwandan refugees from the Nakivale and Kyaka camps in southwestern Ugandan.
In the Nakivale settlement, Rwandan asylum-seekers were assembled under the pretext that they would be told of the results of their asylum claims, with panic breaking out among the group when police fired shots.
“Force was used to push people onto trucks,” with the refugees then being driven across the border to Rwanda, UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming told reporters in Geneva today.
Meanwhile in the Kyaka camp, police and armed men surrounded a UN World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse filled with refugees who believed they would receive food supplies.
“Those who did not manage to escape were forced onto waiting trucks,” Ms. Fleming said, adding that many were not allowed to take their personal belongings with them.
Two men who jumped out of trucks en route back to Rwanda died, and some children were separated from their parents.
More than two dozen people who were not deported sustained injuries, some from police beatings. Among the injured were 6 pregnant women who were treated at a local hospital and then released.
UNHCR is interviewing those injured in the round-ups and tracing those separated from their families in the deportation.
“Although UNHCR was broadly aware of an agreement between the two countries to return failed asylum-seekers, we were not informed of the timing and the nature of this operation,” Ms. Fleming said.
She added that the agency staff at the settlements at the time of the incidents were asked to leave the scene.
The operations were targeted at failed asylum-seekers, but UNHCR has received confirmation that recognized refugees were among those returned to Rwanda.
In Kyaka, a woman told the agency that her two children were among the group sent back despite the fact that she and her family were recognized as refugees.
“UNCHR remains concerned about further deportations amid reports from refugees that police had threatened to return to Navikale and Kyaka to deport all those who escaped,” Ms. Fleming noted.
She stressed that the return of refugees and asylum-seekers whose asylum applications have not properly and finally been ruled on should only be taken voluntarily and in conditions of safety and dignity.
“We called upon the Ugandan authorities to halt the operation as soon as we became aware that it was under way,” the UNHCR spokesperson said.
“We have reiterated that there should be no further such returns contrary to the principles of national and international refugee law,” she added. “We have underlined that anyone deserving international protection should be allowed to remain in Uganda.”
Since the start of this year, more than 3,300 Rwandans have filed for asylum in Uganda, with 98 per cent of claims having been rejected in the past six months.
“UNHCR is concerned that asylum applications are not being determined properly and fairly,” Ms. Fleming stated. “We have been and will continue to address this issue with the Ugandan authorities.
Once in Rwanda, those deported this week were taken to Byumba province’s Rukomo transit center, which can only hold 500 people, has not been used for a year, and lacks water and adequate sleeping space. UNHCR is seeking access to the returnees are reportedly sleeping out in the open and do not have food or clean water.
As of this January, the agency estimates that there are nearly 128,000 refugees and more than 11,500 asylum-seekers in Uganda.

Over 1,000,000 Rwandan refugees face forced repatriation from Uganda

Mbarara: Over one million Rwandan refugees face forced repatriation as the government of Uganda said Saturday that it will not grant asylum to Rwandans living in the country, following discussions between Rwanda, UNHCR and Ugandan officials.

The development was communicated at a meeting between Ugandan officials led by Relief and Disaster Preparedness Minister, Professor Tarsis Kabwegyere and his Rwandan counterpart General Marcel Gatsinzi, in Mbarara, Western Uganda.

In a joint communiqué, the Rwandans in Uganda, who had fled Rwanda due to population pressure and political reasons in recent years, are over 1 million in number. Most of them have mainly settled in Kiboga and Masindi regions of central and western Ugandan respectively.

Kabwegyere’s team complained to the Rwandan delegation that the Rwandans were involved in grabbing land from Ugandans and also trying to dominate the indigenous people politically and socially.

The Rwandan refugee crisis in Uganda has over the last decade taken on political and military dimensions. The Rwandan government has accused some of them of being insurgents while the Ugandan government considers some of them as spies.

Uganda’s High Commissioner to Rwanda Richard Kabonero said that conditions in Rwanda are good for everyone to return.

He cited a group of refugees, commonly referred to as the Kibati group, saying they returned to Rwanda in October 2007 and settled happily. Those still in Uganda, Kabonero said, should voluntarily go back or risk losing their refugee status.

Over 1,312 Rwandan refugees fled to Uganda between April and March this year, claiming political persecution. The refugees, most of whom hail from the Eastern Province, were however denied refugee status. posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 12:34 AM

Is the Nairobi UN Agency For Refugees A Kagame's Proxy To Harass Rwandan Hutu Refugees?

Since the attacks of a Tutsi led rebel movement that invaded Rwanda from Uganda in 1990s, some Rwandans have been on the move for over 20 years now. These are the population of the North Eastern Rwanda in the region used to be known as Byumba Prefecture. The rebels' attacks forced the people who had known nothing else but peace of working on their ancestors' farms over centuries. When the Tutsi led rebellion movement called Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) started shooting in the hills of Gatuna and Kagitumba. the people from the neighboring communes took up their mats and started an endless journey which would later take them to various countries around the world this including Kenya.

When the millions of Rwandans fled their homeland majority of them being Hutus who had been branded genocidaires by western media and the USA and UK who simply did it not because this people deserved the name as a Law Professor Peter Erlinder explains on this American National TV interview, but simply because of the fight of rare minerals only found in that region and these two countries wanted to remove the Hutu regime which was friendly to France and enthrone their own guy armed and trained in Arkansas in United States.

After the RPF soldiers invaded DRC the former Zaire in October 1996 in the bid to destroy the Hutu refugee camps in Eastern DRC such as Kibumba,Mugunga, Lac Vert, Kaihindo, Gatare, NRA, Nyangezi and other small camps in the region of Kivu. Other many refugees were forced back to Rwanda under the gun's nozzle. Others entered the Ituli forest or walked their way into Uganda and later ended in Kenya. There is another group that crossed the Lake Tanganyika into Tanzania joining other Rwanda refugees who had been there since 1994. Later the Tanzania government which supported the RPF to overthrow the regime of Habyalimana since 1990s responded to RPF plea to repatriate Hutu refugees who were living in Tanzania. Thousands of refugees were also forced back to Rwanda under the gun's nozzle. Many of them sustained injuries from the brutality of Tanzanian forces who also have some Tutsi people inscribed into the army as Tanzanians. It was their own good time to revenge against their enemy Hutus who are alleged to have massacred hundred of thousands of Tutsis in 1994.

Like it happened in 1996 in Eastern DRC, when the Tanzanian government forced Rwandan Hutu refugees to go back to Rwanda in 1997, there is a group that managed to escape and went to Kenya hoping to have protection. Though there are many incidents where many refugees have been harassed by the police in Kenya, most of the cases are not customized to Rwandan refugees in Kenya alone. Kenyan police all refugees without selecting one community of refugees because they do as they ask for bribe. This also happens to Kenyan citizens when they do not give bribe to the police.

Rwandan refugees living in Kenya have a peculiar problem that they face which is not common to other refugees from other countries living in Kenya. The Rwandan hutu refugees unlike other refugees from DRC,Southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Burundi, and Somalia.

The Nairobi United Nations High Commission for Refugees Office has been associated with corruption of all sorts from the staff asking sex from women, money, and other services the UNHCR officer might want to so that they give them resettlement or even a mere paper locally known as Protection Mandate which has a serial number. This paper does not help a lot though in some instances it might help the holder. Most of Rwandan refugees living in Kenya do not have any document others were even denied to register with UNHCR on unknown or unjustified reasons. Refugees from Rwanda have been the victims of the western manufactured genocide term to explain the Rwandan massacre of 1994. The RPF has spent a lot of money bribing some of the Nairobi UNHCR staff in order to deny Rwandan Hutu refugees documents so that they d not benefit from the protection that the Kenya government provides to refugees. The reason underlying this psychological torture is that when Rwanda under RPF leadership does not want any Hutu refugee to be outside of Rwanda because of the following reasons:

1. Most of the RPF regimes authorities have lived in exile since 1959 when the Hutu majority ended the Tutsi monarchy rule of 400 years. This people went into exile in different countries where they benefited from the UN assistance to refugees and attended different prestige schools. Other did business in different countries and later they used this privilege of being refugees to fund-raise in order to come back to Rwanda to remove a democratically elected government of Habyaliman who was from the Hutu tribe. The RPF members do not want people to live in exile because they will not have access to them in order to control whatever they say about the RPF regime. Therefore it is good for the RPF to pay a lot of money bribing the UNHCR staff to not give Rwandan Hutu refugees the Mandate documents so that they do not have any access to any kind of assistance.
2. RPF knows very well that if they manage to influence the UNHCR Nairobi office to not provide any kind of help by denying them protection letter, then it will be easy for the RPF government to convince this refugees to go back in the so-called "Voluntary Repatriation" like the ones that took place in Zambia, Congo Brazaville, and Gabon in July 9,1997.
3. If the Rwandan refugees are not going to have legal documents in Kenya, then they are going to be harassed by the police, their children will not be able to go to school, the parents will not be able to do some business or secure any kind of job in order to take care of their families. This means that the family will become dysfunctional then it will have no option except to risk and go back to Rwanda for the sake of the children so that the children can have access to education whereas the father is jailed by the RPF being accused of being in exile for so long.
4. RPF and UNHCR entered into agreement of denying legal documents to mostly the men and young men even those who have schooled in Kenya do not have document because Kagame asked that they be denied UNHCR document in order for them to go back to Rwanda where around 200,000 of Hutus are in different jails around the country.

Many Rwandan refugees living in Kenya have written many letters of complaints to the UNHCR Head-Quarter in Geneva but there is very little if any that the UNHCR high command has done to address the situation of Rwandan refugees in Kenya. When I was doing my research on the situation of African Refugee in the Great Lakes Region I also came across another surprising dubious chain of trickery operated by the UNHCR in conjunction with RPF regime. This was based on the complaints that while interviewing refugees living in slums around Nairobi. There is another organization that has its headquarter in New York,USA called Mapendo International. This organization was formed by some USA Philanthropists who had witnessed the unfair treatment of refugees in Africa. The organization used the story of a Munyamurenge woman by the name of Rose Mapendo who survived what they call a Congo genocide. First when you read this story is a touching story like all refugees' stories from the Great Lakes Region. The only difference is that Mapendo's Story talks about surviving the Congolese Genocide. When I read about Mapendo Surviving a Congolese Genocide she is not talking about the human atrocities which has characterized the Eastern DRC. The story of Mapendo International does not end there because the Rose Mapendo who is an organization's ambassador spends her time going around North America fundraising for the organization telling her story of surviving the Congo Genocide which talks about how Banyamulenge have been brutally killed but she never talks about the story of General Nkunda who is also a Munyamulenge of how he has been killing children and raping women in Masisi.

Another sad story behind Mapendo International it is its famous segregation in assisting refugees at its office in Nairobi. I had an opportunity to talk with various refugee communities living in Nairobi. I came to learn that Mapendo clients who mostly happen to be people from Tutsi community across Lake Kivu or the Banyamulenge Community as they are known in Eastern Congo, have a "password" for the interviews when they go to present their cases to Mapendo for initial refugee assistance and resettlement.

Only Banyamulenge refugees who pass the interviews after being asked whether they are Hutus or Tutsis. When you go for an interview with Mapendo International in Nairobi and you are a refugee from other community especially when you are a Hutu refugee even if you are from DRC, your case is rejected. I met a couple of Rwandan and Congolese refugees who preferred to call themselves Tutsis or Banyamulenge so that they could qualify for the Mapendo International assistance. Most of the refugees I talked on my trip to Nairobi, they all share one thing that Mapendo International should change its name to Mapendo 4 Banyamurenge and remove itds name international or the clause talking about the refugees in Africa because it has been proven that it only serves Banyamulenge and Tutsis from Rwanda who change and get the "password" that qualify them to get resettled to North America.

To verify the story I went with them to Umoja Estate and Kariokor in Nairobi where most of Mapendo clients stay as they wait before being relocated to North America. There were over a 100 refugees from Rwanda and some few of them from Congo DR who are also Banyamulenge the community that Mapendo Rose comes from. Most of the people here in this estate are Rwandans that we all know that they served in RPF liberation war in 1993. A few weeks later, they went for orientation sponsored by International Organization for Migration IOM at Safari Park Hotel where the refugees in transit to North America spend few weeks learning the new culture. Then after three weeks of September, 2008, this refugees mixed with some former RPF military of Kagame who had just arrived in Nairobi in February, 2008 took the plane at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi heading to New York.

After my three months investigation about the refugee business in Africa I discovered that some organizations such as UNHCR,Mapendo Intl and other relief agencies are not only playing the Kagame politics of sidelining innocent Hutu refugees in the region but also working hard to widen the gap of genuine reconciliation among Rwandans. I later took my flight back to Australia and decided to publish this story so that maybe the International community in charge of UNHCR and other refugee agencies should act to ensure that there egalitarianism in serving this deprived community of East Africa. I myself having lived in Kenya I know very well the injustice and unfair treatment of refugees from the Great Lakes especially Rwandans refugees undergo in the hands off UNHCR Nairobi Office.