Rwanda breaks law by seizing protected refugee in Uganda
By Judi Rever
The Digital Journal
November 2, 2013
Rwanda
has breached international law by forcibly returning a refugee that had fled to
Uganda and was under protection of the United Nations, critics charged this week.
Joel
Mutabazi, a former escort for Rwandan President Paul Kagame, had been living in
a UN safe house in Kampala under police surveillance, after numerous attempts
on his life.
He
fled Rwanda in 2011 after being tortured at Camp Kami, a notorious military
facility outside the capital where detainees are subjected to electric shocks,
severe beatings and sensory deprivation, according to Amnesty International.
Amnesty
said Mutabazi was abducted more than a week ago and returned to Rwanda
‘illegally.’
“Joel
Mutabazi, a Rwandan refugee, was abducted from a safe house on 25 October, 2013
where he was under the protection of the Ugandan authorities and illegally
returned to Rwanda,” Amnesty said.
The
organization urged Rwandan authorities to reveal Mutabazi’s whereabouts and
“ensure that he has access to a lawyer of his choice, to medical care, and is
able to communicate with his family.”
Rwandan
officials accuse Mutabazi of terrorism and denied Friday that its agents had
abducted him. Rwandan police said the refugee had been arrested and handed over
by Ugandan police in a bid to fight organized crime through “Interpol and the
Eastern Africa Police Chiefs Cooperation Organization.”
Despite
the claim, Interpol never issued an alert for Mutabazi.
“There
was no Interpol notice,” said the director of Interpol International Kampala,
Asan Kasingye.
“Mutabazi
was not legally returned.” Kasingye said, adding that Rwanda had issued an
international arrest warrant that Ugandan officials had not yet approved.
“The
international arrest warrant was issued by Rwanda, only. We were in the process
of submitting it to the state attorney general for legal advice,” Kasingye
said.
“The
attorney general had not even received it. Our legal office of the police was
still studying it. We had not submitted it to the attorney general."
The
circumstances of Mutabazi’s return to Rwanda remain unclear. Initial reports
indicated the refugee feared for his safety at the UN safe house, where other
high-risk refugees were residing.
The
UN refugee agency representative in Uganda, Mohammed Adar, said security was
reinforced at the safe house after Ugandan officials had received intelligence
of possible renewed threats against refugees there.
Adar
said Mutabazi might have misinterpreted these security moves and left the
premises in a panic, on his own.
Meanwhile,
Ugandan authorities admitted that a senior police officer -- deputy director of
crime intelligence Joel Aguma – actually arrested Mutabazi after the refugee
fled.
The
rogue police officer has since been suspended for this act and is being
investigated, officials said.
Newspaper
reports pointed to Aguma’s close ties with Kigali, having returned to Uganda
last month from a one-year stint at Rwanda’s National Police College.
Kampala’s
Interpol chief insisted the handover “was not sanctioned. It is not under the
law.”
“There
was no legal basis for this transfer,” he added.
Uganda’s
state minister for relief and disaster preparedness in charge of refugees,
echoed the sentiment.
“It
is an act of criminality, an act of indiscipline,” Musa Francis Ecweru said.
“It
looks like this policeman may have conspired with one or two individuals from
Rwanda and abducted Mutabazi and handed him over,” Ecweru said.
It
was the second time in three months that Mutabazi had been targeted at a UN
protected facility in Kampala.
On
August 20, Rwandan agents and rogue Ugandan police stormed another safe house
where Mutabazi, his wife and children were staying. The individuals threw him
into a car and drove him toward Entebbe airport where he was due to be
airlifted to Rwanda to face torture or death, according to friends and family.
However
during that incident, senior police officers in Kampala got wind of the
operation and informed the Ugandan prime minister’s office. The car carrying
Mutabazi was forced to turn around and drop him off at a police station.
At
the time, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Uganda
was apoplectic.
“This
is unbelievable, it’s very distressful,” a UNHCR official said. “What we know
is that Uganda is extremely angry. You wouldn’t like it if your country was
being used for those kinds of acts.”
The
UN staffer was alluding to a recent spate of abductions, disappearances and
murders of Rwandan refugees on Ugandan territory that are growing in disturbing
intensity.
“It’s
the third disappearance in a week,” the official said in August, referring to
another former Kagame escort, Innocent Kalisa, who went missing on August 12,
along with a Rwandan asylum seeker named Pascal Manirakiza who disappeared
after leaving a police compound in southwestern Uganda. Manirakiza was
tortured, dumped in a cemetery, and eventually found unconscious.
The
three men had one thing in common: they have all criticized human rights abuses
under Kagame’s leadership.
Manirakiza,
23, had publicly spoken of being forcefully recruited into the M23, a militia
in the Democratic Republic of Congo sponsored by Rwanda. The M23 stands accused
by the UN of committing rape, murder and mayhem in the DRC’s mineral rich
eastern Kivu provinces.
Kalisa
and Mutabazi had meanwhile denounced what they describe as systematic torture,
slaughter, and political persecution of innocent Rwandans, both Hutu and Tutsi.
A
leading authority on refugees worldwide expressed moral outrage Saturday,
saying Uganda should immediately stop Rwanda from terrorizing and kidnapping
asylum seekers on its soil.
“The
situation in Uganda has hit a real low when the UNCHR is unable to protect a
Rwandan in one of their safe houses,” said Barbara Harrell-Bond, a refugee
advocate and founder of the Refugees Studies Centre at Oxford University.
“When
will Uganda stop Rwandan government agents from using its country to threaten,
terrorize, and now abduct or cause to disappear refugees under its protection?”
she asked.
posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 11:53 AM
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