By Ben Simon
AFP/Relief Web
June 21, 2009
NAKIVALE REFUGEE CAMP, Uganda, June 21, 2009 (AFP) - Hours before he returned to Rwanda, a country he fled in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, John Nwamugabo said he was feeling uneasy about his imminent journey home.
"For me, I know there is no peace there," he told AFP. "But I have decided from the bottom of my heart to go."
Nwamugabo and the 17,000 Rwandan refugees in Uganda were recently presented with a deadline for returning to their country, now considered stable by the international community.
Representatives from both countries and from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) recently visited several refugee camps to encourage people to repatriate before July 31.
"We feel that the situation back home is conducive for them to return," said Stefano Severe, UNHCR chief in Uganda.
Nwamugabo, 38, is not so sure.
Like most Rwandan refugees in Uganda, the country's northern neighbor, Nwamugabo is a Hutu, the majority group that carried out the 1994 massacres aimed at wiping out the Tutsi minority.
According to the United Nations, at least 800,000 people -- mainly Tutsis -- were slaughtered within a few weeks by extremist Hutus.
Nwamugabo's journey since 1994 resembles that of many other Hutus.
When the Rwandan Patriotic Front, led by then rebel leader Paul Kagame, ended the genocide and toppled the Hutu-dominated regime that year, Nwamugabo fled to Tanzania and was forcibly repatriated two years later.
Many refugees interviewed said this return was tense, as the new Tutsi-led government which remains in power today with Kagame at its helm, sought to punish those it considered responsible for the massacre.
"So I said why should I stay here and suffer for nothing? I left again to Uganda in 2002," Nwamugabo said, adding that he took his daughter and left his wife and son behind.
With the nine-year-old girl looking on curiously, Nwamugabo said he wasn't sure his second repatriation would be more successful: "If I reach there and get no peace again, I will continue to run away."
People will be starting from zero
Government and UN officials refute the notion that there remains a combustible ethnic divide in Rwanda.
"One thing I said to the refugee community was that if you think Hutus are being killed in Rwanda, then Rwanda right now would be empty," Ugandan Refugee Minister Tarsis Kabwegyere told AFP.
Rwanda's ambassador to Uganda, Ignatius Kamali, told AFP he saw "no reason why we should have people living outside our borders as refugees."
Janet Sifa shared this view.
"If I wasn't comfortable going home then I wouldn't have registered myself. I am happy," she said, standing beside the bus slated to take her home.
Sifa, 30, who said she fled Rwanda in 1994 and reached Nakivale in 1997, is the poster-case for the ongoing repatriation effort: she has family in Rwanda and no discernable reason to remain in exile.
To go home, she simply needed some encouragement and a free bus ride.
"My parents are there and alive so maybe I'll get peace," she said, as her four-year-old daughter clung to her knee.
UNHCR and government officials argued that the paramount reason why some are hesitant to go home has little to do with tribal tensions and a lot to do with land.
Uganda has a generous refugee policy, providing all displaced people with land to cultivate.
Due to serious land pressures in tiny Rwanda some refugees said they feared their livelihood would suffer if repatriated.
"One hindrance in terms of returning is that people will be starting from zero," Willam Chemalg, the top UNHCR official at Nakivale told AFP. "The attitude is, why should I return when everything here is working?'"
Uganda's refugee capacity is also thinly stretched following the arrival of 40,000 Congolese since October 2008, escaping conflicts in Uganda's eastern neighbor.
Kabwegyere said that because of Uganda's current refugee demands, Rwandans who wish to stay might have to give up their refugee status.
"When conditions no longer justify you being a refugee, then you can become a worker," he said. "One can be the most humane person in the world but there are limits."
With neutral justice, everyone can go home
Officials also voiced concern that leaders from the refugee committee with long-standing grievances against the Kigali regime are discouraging others from repatriating.
One leader, Siles Mahayo, 53, chairman of a community in Nakivale, did not conceal his scorn for Kagame's regime, but denied attempting to influence others.
"I don't give any advice. He who wishes to go may go and he who wishes to remain should remain, but I am not willing to go back," he said.
After being forcefully repatriated in 1996, Mahayo said he was put on trial for genocide-related crimes. He spent a year in prison, was acquitted of all charges, but faced re-arrest, so fled to Nakivale in 1999.
"They would just come and arrest anybody to say that they were involved in the genocide and the problem was worse for church leaders like me," he told AFP.
According to Mahayo, Kagame has backed this repatriation drive because he wants all his political opponents under his jurisdiction. Rwandans in Uganda are relatively prosperous and could help fund Hutu rebels based in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who have vowed to topple the Kagame regime, Mahayo explained.
Another man who plans to refuse repatriation argued that the real frustration among exiled Hutus relates to the Tutsi-led government's response the events of 1994.
"When we talk about 1994, it is better to say the truth. Where the RPF was in control, the Hutu were being killed. Where the government was in control, the Tutsi were being killed," explained Jean, a civil engineer, who requested his last name be withheld.
"But it is only the Hutu that have faced justice. It is better to create neutral justice, for both parties. If they do that, I'm telling you, everyone in Nakivale can go home."
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