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Rwandese influx worries Mubende top officials
Al-Mahdi Ssenkabirwa & Stephen Kibuuka
Kampala
Rwandans are illegally migrating into Uganda at an alarming rate, a government official in Mubende District has said.
Ms Nakazana Kiyingi, the deputy RDC in Mubende, told Daily Monitor on Monday that intelligence reports indicated that some or all of the immigrants could be remnants of the notorious Interahamwe, who participated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide and who have recently been terrorising villages in eastern DRC.
“These are Interahamwe from DRC and Rwanda,” Ms Kiyingi claimed, adding that their infiltration into Uganda could stoke land wrangles.
“Our worry is that they don’t have any identification documents and they seem to have manoeuvred the security at the border posts.”
According to Ms Kiyingi, the immigrants were ferried in trucks at night and settled in the sub-counties of Kitenga, Nabingola, Madudu, Kiyuni, Bageza and Kasambya.
They have been coming in since late last year, she claimed. “We suspect that they [immigrants] entered through Kasambya from the other side of Sembabule District.”
“This matter was also brought up in the district security meeting and we wrote a brief to the President informing him about it and even the security minister [Amama Mbabazi] is aware,” the RDC said. Her claims were partly corroborated by the Kabale RDC, Mr Cox Nyakairu, who said yesterday that he had attended meetings where the issue of illegal immigrants from Rwanda has been discussed. “It’s a concern. We have a porous border...And they are free when they come here,” Mr Nyakairu said by telephone from Kabale.
Efforts to reach Mr Mbabazi for comment were futile, as he was said to be in a meeting by press time. According to Ms Kiyingi, the authorities in Mubende are yet to establish the exact number of the infiltrators, whom she said could be in hundreds.
Asked to comment on the claims, Mr Kamali Karegesa, Rwanda’s ambassador, said he could only do so after obtaining details of the alleged infiltration. “I cannot comment,” he said. Ms Kiyingi described the situation in Mubende as “a time bomb”, urging the Ministry of Internal Affairs to intervene.
She said district authorities had recently convened an urgent meeting to discuss the situation. “Some LCI chairpersons have turned this into a business by promising them [immigrants] land,” Ms Kiyingi said. “But many get disappointed when they reach here and find no land.”
Mubende, like many other districts in the central and western regions, has had acrimonious land wrangles in recent times. There have also been tribal clashes in other districts such as Buliisa, where the indigenous Bagungu accuse the nomadic herdsmen commonly known as Balaalo of grazing their cattle on land they do not own. “We have also been told that some [of these Rwandans] possess guns but we have not verified that yet,” Ms Kiyingi claimed.
However, Internal Affairs minister Ruhakana Rugunda said he was not sure of the allegations. “I have not got any information about that, “ he said on Monday.
The Kigali government has over the years been battling the Interahamwe, who are said to operate in eastern DRC. On March 1, 1999, about 100 Interahamwe fighters reportedly attacked tourists at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in southwestern Uganda, killing eight of them and their Ugandan guide.
Two Americans were killed along with two Britons and four New Zealanders by people who left a note saying they were punishing America for supporting a minority Tutsi regime in Rwanda.
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