/ 24 May 2013

Refugees ‘sending wrong signal’

Refugees 'sending Wrong Signal'

The Rwandan high commissioner to South Africa this week sought to assure returnees that they will be fully integrated into society – and disputed some of their concerns about their safety and allegations of a clampdown on civil liberties in that country.

Responding to questions from the Mail & Guardian, Rwandan high commissioner Vincent Karega said Rwanda was classified as a "post-conflict, safe country, not a country in transition or crisis" and that, in accordance with the "thorough assessment" of the country by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the country was intent on securing the return of its refugees.

He said: "Staying in foreign countries as proper immigrants is fine but living on refugee status while the country is safe, that is a problem. It sends a wrong signal [to the world] and it is not a status to be proud of."

Karega denied claims that President Paul Kagame's regime was clamping down on opposition.

Defending the country's judiciary as "transparent", Karega said that United Democratic Front chairperson Victoire Ingabire – who is appealing an eight-year sentence for charges that include inciting revolt and genocide ideology – was in jail "after a court process, and her proved collaboration with the genocide militia still in the Democratic Republic of Congo forests threatening to attack Rwanda".

Responding to questions about the creation of a pro-Tutsi historiography that excluded the deaths of displaced Rwandans after the initial 1994 genocide, Karega was adamant that there was "one and only one genocide in Rwanda: against Tutsis. We cannot invent another one to create a comfort zone for [those] guilty [of genocide] to accept reconciliation," he said.

He disputed the allegations of war crimes against Rwandans in refugee camps, made by the UN mapping report on the DRC released in 2010, and said it was "propaganda" by some groups with "hidden agendas" releasing "politicised reports".

Revenge
"To dismantle camps in the DRC where more than one million civilians mixed with 60 000 former soldiers and militia who used civilians as shields could not happen without some bloodshed on either side," Karega said. "However, there has never been a policy or purpose by [Kagame's] Rwandan Patriotic Front army, the national army later, to kill one ethnic group, or to revenge for the survivors of genocide."

He accused the Rwandan Refugee Community in Cape Town, some of whose members were interviewed by the M&G, of being "a nongovernmental organisation dominated by ex-Rwandan soldiers from the [former Hutu president Juvenal] Habyarimana regime that planned and committed the genocide against Tutsis in 1994. Their fear is psychological due to their past association with guilt."

But Salim Bavugamenshi, who chairs the organisation, said Karega's allegations were "lies, pure lies. He doesn't know who we are … he cannot discredit our organisation and our concerns."

Habyarimana was president of Rwanda for 20 years before his death in 1994 – the plane he was travelling in with Burundi president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down in April that year. Political analysts have suggested that this was one of the triggers of Rwanda's genocide.

Karega said there was "good dialogue" between his government and South Africa on the implementation of the cessation clause.

Responding to questions from the M&G, Home Affairs Minister Naledi Pandor said: "We are currently dealing with the process of Angolan cessation … we hope to use lessons learnt during this process to deal with the Rwandan cessation. The South African government has not taken a decision on the UNHCR declaration of cessation of refugee status for Rwandan refugees."

Pandor had not responded to follow-up questions at the time of going to press but, with the Cabinet recently deciding to extend the deadline for all Angolan refugees to return home to the end of August, it appears unlikely that the department of home affairs, in the light of the minister's comments, will be able to make the June 30 deadline for Rwandans.

In April at a UNHCR meeting of African governments with Rwandan refugees to discuss their return, she said that the South African government believed that the process "should at the very least ensure the protection of the rights of returning persons".