Prof. Tarsis Kabwegyere

The Minister of Relief, Disaster Preparedness and Refugees, Prof. Tarsis Kabwegyere has responded to the earlier claims of various refugee organizations that pinned the government for failure to respect immigration laws by allegedly deporting Rwandan refugee about a week ago.

Last week the International Refugee Rights Initiative and the Refugee Law Project came out and strongly criticized the government for removing refugees from Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Isingiro district and Kyaka II refugee settlement in Kyenjojo in manner that was said to be contrary to Uganda’s own Citizenship and Immigration Act and various other various legal instruments concerning refugees.

While speaking to journalists at the Media Center Tarsis Kabwegyere has said that it is not true that the government deported Rwandan refugees because the people that the government deported had not qualified to become refugees given that their requests seeking asylum had been rejected by the government of Uganda.

Kabwegyere says the these organizations should know that there is difference between asylum seekers, refugees and illegal immigrants and that since these people’s requests for asylum had been rejected they were therefore not qualified to be refugees and the government was in no way wrong to deport these failed asylum seekers back to Rwanda.

The Minister says no refugee or asylum seeker in process was forcefully returned to Rwanda and that these failed asylum seekers that were deported had also become a source of insecurity in the settlement and the government decided to deport them back to Rwanda.

He says for instance of the failed asylum seekers was arrested in Bushenyi last weekend with a gun he had stolen from Nakivale Refugee settlement.

Uganda has about 11.308 refugees living in Uganda spread out on six refugee settlements in Nakivale, Oruchinga, Kyaka II, Kampala, Kiryandongo and Kyangwali refugee settlements.

By Tiberindwa Zakaria