Testimonies of Rwandan refugees on the Cessation Clause
Many Rwandan refugees and asylum seekers do not feel safe going back to Rwanda — they are seriously concerned and frightened about the impact of the enacting of the Cessation Clause. The following summaries of testimonies, extracted from unsolicited emails and documents sent to the Fahamu Refugee Programme, explain why they left and their experiences in exile.
Rwandan Hutu father of four
Following arbitrary detention for 19 months — first in a police station then in prison — without knowing what charges had been raised, in late 2008 X was finally informed that he had been detained for failure to contribute to the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). He was forced to donate 5,000,000 Rwandan Francs (approx. GBP5,400). This extortion continued until in July 2009 he was informed that the RPF wanted a share of his business. He and his partner refused. At this point, intimidation included blocking his bank accounts and confiscating goods. On trying to lodge his case with the ombudsman he reports that ‘one of the officials told me that Hutus should not flourish under the RPF Regime’. After hearing of a ploy to charge him with possessing explosives, he decided the situation was now so dangerous he had to flee, crossing illegally to Uganda in January 2010.
In Uganda, his asylum application was rejected in March 2010, as was his appeal. His visits to UNHCR’s Protection Officer have gone unheeded. In the bus park he was arrested by a plainclothes army major, accused of criminal activities and taken to a police station where he was asked: ‘How many people did you kill in Rwanda?’, to which he replied that he never killed. He was then asked, ‘If we took you back to Rwanda, could you confirm that you never killed?’, and answered: ‘I am a Christian and I cannot kill’. A photograph was taken to send back to Rwanda to ascertain whether he was guilty. The officers then took X to his home, which was searched; finding no gun, they confiscated various documents including his asylum seeker certificate and his expired Rwandan passport. He was asked how much he could pay in order not to be deported. Forced to hand over 1,000,000 Ugandan Shillings (approx. GBP260), he was then registered ‘detained’, required to report weekly to the police, and threatened with further confiscation (this time of his release bond) unless another payment was made. Having no money, he left without it. He managed to obtain another release bond the following day from another police officer.
X was advised to send an SMS to his main tormentor, a senior officer, to provide proof of the extortion and threats. Following this action the particular officer has stopped calling with threats. X says of his situation: ‘Until now, I am languishing in limbo without knowing what will follow’. In mid-December 2011, having refused to be coerced into paying money to the police, X narrowly survived deportation back to Rwanda, following intervention by international agency persons.
Single Hutu woman
X fled with her family to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1994 but returned to Rwanda alone in August of that same year, with the others following four months later. She found that the family house had been seized by a Tutsi RPF officer. The family tried to reclaim the house through the courts but failed: ‘Unfortunately, the courts ignored our claims only because we are Hutus who were complaining against a Tutsi’.
Two of her brothers were arrested arbitrarily and their current whereabouts are unknown; two others escaped back into exile. Her father was imprisoned in 1997 and only released and acquitted 12 years later. During this time his wife was subjected to harassment and interrogation. X was required to report weekly to the police – having been accused in 2003 of links with a rebel group, she had her ID confiscated.
In March 2009, two months after his release, her father was detained again. When X went to the barracks to find him, she too was detained. They were held for two months.
X was required to appear before a Gacaca Court in August 2009 and accused of planning and monitoring genocide. She was acquitted, but was later visited in her internet café by agents who took away computer equipment allegedly as evidence of her rebel affiliations.
On receiving a summons for her father and her to appear at the barracks, she fled early one morning to cross the border into Uganda and seek asylum.
X applied for asylum in March 2010 but was refused. She appealed and obtained refugee status in September 2010.
In November 2011 some police officers and plainclothes Rwandan speakers stormed into her home in Kampala, waving a document, which she was unable to read, and asking whether she would rather answer questions at home or outside. Choosing outside, she was interrogated in a car, where she was told that she was wanted by the Rwandan not the Ugandan government and for this reason she would be taken back to Rwanda. X told the officers she was known in Uganda including to the Local Council One (LCI) chairman and asked for the authorities to deal with her case.
The officers then left her in a restaurant saying they were going to look for a car to take her to Rwanda. After waiting two hours she was told that the restaurant owner did not know who they were. She then got a motorcycle taxi home and reported the incident both to the LCI chairman and the police.
Rwandan student in China
X went to China in 2007 on scholarships from both China and Rwanda. His support (now only from China) will come to an end in July 2012.
His Rwandan passport expired in June 2010 but the Rwandan government has been unable to renew it. He says this is in response to his refusal to cooperate in a conspiracy and as a result:
[O]ne of the stealthy strategies adopted by the Rwandan government is to refuse Rwandans living abroad new passports when their old ones expires, especially when they refused to obey blindly to the Rwandan governments’s operatives, and that’s my case.
He is very afraid of the consequences:
[S]o, considering the regulations and laws governing the country in which I live, at the end of my study, I (and family) … have only one choice which is to register as refugees because our government doesn’t want us any more. So, if the cessation clause is declared then we will be dead as we no longer have the protection of our government.
X wrote to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in June 2011, saying: ‘[G]enerally, Rwandans flee the current regime because of numerous human rights violations notably extrajudicial killings and new repressive measures since coming to power in 1994 up to date’. He provides many examples, referencing Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Reporters without Borders reports, including the murder of Jean-Leonard Rugambage (deputy editor of Umuvugizi) in Kigali, asking how this could comply with the conditions required for the cessation clause to be invoked.He ends his plea to António Guterres by saying:
I believe that the cessation clause for refugee status shouldn’t be based on the frustration with protracted refugee emergencies or dilemma posed by return to situation of conflicts. The Rwandan refugees as well as Rwandan opposition members are all tired of conflicts and are now resolved to finding only peaceful solutions to their claims. Good examples are new births of Rwandan political formations though the current regime couldn’t tolerate any critical voice to register and operate on its territory. That was also evidenced by the fact that the key critics heading the newly formed political formations are either inside the maximum security prisons or exiled if not killed. Also the journalists perceived critical to the President Paul Kagame’s government are good examples. Excellency Mr.António Guterres, never let your organisation be transformed into a repressive tool that any government can use to make premature decisions.
Rwandan Hutu man
Deputy mayor of a commune, X fled to Tanzania in 1994 but was forced to return in 1996 and was arrested by an intelligence officer under suspicion of genocide: ‘He put me in detention there in [commune] where I faced all kind of torture. But I was hoping that the justice would do his job and release me’.
After being moved from one prison to another X was finally tried and acquitted, being released in January 2001. He returned to his home area and lived there peaceably until October 2001, when he was arrested again and detained for two months.
He, and others, managed to contact the National Commission for Human Rights with their stories but he was then moved to other places of detention, finally to a prison where he was able to speak to an International Committee of the Red Cross officer.
Having spent 11 months without charge, he was finally released in October 2002 but when he got home he could not find his wife and family. In the meantime his wife was assumed to be complicit in his clandestine communications with human rights agencies and had been listed as a supporter of a forbidden political party, causing her to flee to Uganda. X followed her there.
His reasons for not wishing to return to Rwanda are as follows:
1. He reported torture to human rights agencies;
2. He refuses to respect the orders of the prosecutor because he is not respected as a Rwandan citizen who has been acquitted;
3. He fears a repeat of arrest and torture — in his capacity of having been a deputy mayor ‘in other regime’;
4. Having testified (twice) as a witness at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, he risks being attacked or even killed by unidentified persons.
He is looking for a durable solution to his exile, having been granted refugee status in Uganda in 2009.
In July 2011, a claim of insecurity was prepared on X’s behalf by Kampala police and addressed to the senior protection officer documenting incidents since 2008.
In an email sent in September 2011, he stated:
So, I am feeling an enemy of my country when I remember everything they did for me and my family. Every time the UNHCR support such operations and force so many refugees from Rwanda to return back to Rwanda under pretext that there is no problem, but when they reach there, some face imprisonment for long time and for nothing like me, others face death without even being tried… Even the Tutsi, today, they are fleeing because of problems which exist in Rwanda.
He reports in November 2011 that in the view of the Refugee Law Project his is a case of security resettlement but that this may take more than nine months to advance and he should go to UNHCR. As he points out this would be after the date of the cessation clause if it is to be enacted at the end of June 2012.
Rwandan refugee in Ivory Coast
Equally worried about the cessation clause, X emailed about the concerns of Rwandan refugees currently in Ivory Coast, including a copy of a document, of which he says:
… I hope [this] will shed more light on our predicament. This is the ‘communiqué final’ of a seminar that was organised for refugees and held in Abidjan in August 2011 under the theme: ‘Is refugee integration in Ivory Coast a myth or a reality?’ The seminar was co-hosted by the UNHCR and its two main partners, [Service d’Aide aux Refugiés et Apatrides] (SAARA) and [Association de Soutien a l’Autopromotion Sanitaire Urbaine] (ASAPSU). These two bodies deal with refugee issues. I was personally comforted by the fact that they arrived at the same conclusion that I came up with in 2004–2005 that refugee integration in Ivory Coast is indeed a myth.
The report states that the urban refugees, mainly those in Abidjan, are not gathered in camps as in other countries which in principle should favour the beginnings of integration; however, in practice there are many problems besetting this integration:
Education: access to education and training at all levels is difficult for refugees;
Economy: the low level of microfinance does not allow refugees to assume responsibility for themselves. Despite the willingness of the refugees, the politico-economic environment of the host country does not favour the development of activities;
Accommodation: refugee accommodation is poor due to the lack of an adequate housing policy. Recent events have made the situation even more precarious for more or less all refugees;
Naturalisation: it is for those aspiring to naturalisation to analyse and evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of such a decision;
Work: work is a veritable headache as much for nationals as for refugees. This has become worse since the post-electoral crisis which has added to the restrictions encountered by foreigners in the job market due to the ‘Ivoirisation’ of jobs.
The report closes with the conclusion: ‘The delegates …have arrived at the conclusion that integration, as a durable solution, is a myth’.
In November 2011, X writes of suffering anonymous harassment similar to that experienced by exiles in other countries:
Of late while Ivory Coast is expecting the visit of the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, rumors abound about infiltrated elements from Rwanda who are here to identify where Rwandan refugees live. For instance, at home we’ve been receiving anonymous calls from individuals speaking Kinyarwanda, and when we answered in French, they just hang up. I personally received anonymous text messages on my cell phone which I didn’t answer. The caller’s numbers look unfamiliar to me and the messages appear suspicious. This is almost an everyday occurrence among the Rwandan refugees in Ivory Coast.
Despite these difficulties there is also no desire to return to Rwanda at present. As X says:
My take in this is that among the three major pillars of refugeehood, i.e. local integration, repatriation and resettlement, the only remaining and viable option is resettlement as far as Ivory Coast is concerned. It is never pleasurable to remain a refugee forever!
Rwandan asylum seeker in France
X writes:
I am Rwandan and I recently fled the country and this is the second time that I fled my country. Although the country seems peaceful and secured according to the government and UNHCR, the so-called peace is a negative peace and profitable for some Rwandans and not for everyone. The country is like a prison, many people poor as rich, Hutu and Tutsi would be ready to flee at any slightest opportunity. That dictatorship and discrimination power is becoming more unbearable especially for people like me who do not agree with how the country is managed.
His father was Hutu and his mother Tutsi, leaving him with the feeling of belonging to neither one of the two groups. His mother was killed in the genocide and he fled to the DRC, later being forced to return.
His father was jailed when X refused to incriminate him in his mother’s murder, and so X fled, first living on the street, then spending years in an orphanage. Following his political activities and his work with a humanitarian organisation he was arrested and tortured in 2010.
As a person of mixed ethnicity, he writes:
In fact this kind of shame, guilt and prejudice against Hutu population is felt everywhere, even in the street, at school, at work, especially during the time of commemoration of the genocide against Tutsi. I feel deeply offended by speeches of some Rwandan leaders and Tutsi genocide survivors associations.
He is currently applying for asylum:
Meanwhile, I am homeless, because here there are too many refugees from Somalia, Libya, Ethiopia, Congo. But the authorities here are trying to help me as they can. In this moment I feel depressed due to the uncertain situation that I live today, sleeping in the street, all difficult moments that I passed through and also the fear of being forced to return in case my application is rejected.
Despite his difficult situation, he does not wish to return to Rwanda: ‘You can imagine what can happen to unknown people like me once forced to go back home….to me it would be easier to live treated as foreign in a foreign country that to be a foreign and enemy in my own country.’ ●
