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Friday 21 June 2013

Uganda Gives Protection to Students Fleeing Rwanda

Uganda Gives Protection to Students Fleeing Rwanda


Sixteen Rwandan students who fled to Uganda over alleged recruitment into a Congolese rebel group are now under police protection at a secret location, a Ugandan government official said Thursday.
David Kazungu, Uganda's commissioner for refugees, said the students will be considered for refugee status despite Rwanda's protestation.
"Rwanda's government does not manage refugee affairs in Uganda," he said. "We want to give (the students) a hearing."
The students' account is strongly disputed by Rwanda's government, which wants the 14 men and two women deported.
Frank Mugambage, Rwanda's ambassador to Uganda, told reporters this week that the students' case was academic and had nothing to do with politics or security. Rwanda's education ministry has listed the fleeing students among more than 500 whose results were officially confiscated for alleged malpractices.
"The background is that these people defrauded the system established by the Rwanda examinations board to sit (high school) exams," he said Tuesday.
The students say they fled Rwanda on June 3, ending weeks of what they say was harassment by security officials who targeted them for dodging a "political awareness program" in Butare, a town 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the capital.
Two of the fleeing students said in interviews this week that they resisted going to Butare because most of their friends who went there never came back. They said their classmates were forced to cross the border and fight alongside M23, one of many rebel groups operating in troubled eastern Congo.
The students' allegations suggested M23 was recruiting inside Rwanda, which has long denied any involvement with rebels. A U.N. panel of experts has said that Rwanda has lent direct support to M23, a charge the Rwandan government denies.
M23 is made up of hundreds of Congolese soldiers who deserted the national army last year after accusing the government of failing to honor the terms of a deal signed in March 2009.

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-“The root cause of the Rwandan tragedy of 1994 is the long and past historical ethnic dominance of one minority ethnic group to the other majority ethnic group. Ignoring this reality is giving a black cheque for the Rwandan people’s future and deepening resentment, hostility and hatred between the two groups.”

-« Ce dont j’ai le plus peur, c’est des gens qui croient que, du jour au lendemain, on peut prendre une société, lui tordre le cou et en faire une autre ».

-“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”

-“I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.

-“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

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