{UAH} Rwandan immigrants ‘voted for NRM in 2011’

Rwandan immigrants 'voted for NRM in 2011'

News

THURSDAY, 15 AUGUST 2013 21:41

WRITTEN BY SADAB KITATTA KAAYA

24 COMMENTS

Obnubilate: A female voter casting her presidential ballot in 2011

In what could be an embarrassment to the government, it has emerged that many of the Rwandan immigrants recently expelled from Tanzania carry Ugandan voter cards and could have voted in the last elections.

The immigrants, who started arriving in Rakai district on August 1, had been living in Tanzania since they fled the 1994 Rwanda genocide, according to security sources at Mutukula, Tanzania's border with Uganda.

On Wednesday, the police's Operations Director Grace Turyagumanawe was in Mutukula to oversee the relocation of the immigrants to a makeshift camp at Lukoma, near Sango Bay airstrip. However, local leaders say that many immigrants are reluctant to be accorded refugee status in Uganda, having voted in the previous elections.

"Some of these people are the reason we won the previous elections. They were with us, and voted for us; we should look at them as our brothers," Max Kayondo, the Kakuuto sub-county speaker, told Turyagumanawe.

Indeed some of the refugees hold Ugandan voter cards that show them to be voters from Mubende, Nebbi, Hoima, Nakaseke and Masindi districts. One of them, who declined to be named, told us that he and his colleagues had voted at a polling station located in a football field in Mutukula in 2011, before crossing back to Tanzania.

On hearing this, Rakai RDC David Kaboyo, speaking through an interpreter, told the refugees about Museveni's offer of part of the expansive Sango Bay estates land for their resettlement.

Others without voter cards were quick to acquire Ugandan identification cards, paying about Shs 70,000 to local leaders for the documents. In the 2001 presidential elections, the opposition alleged that some Rwandans had been ferried to vote for President Museveni.

Resistance

However, Rakai district leaders are reluctant to host the immigrants, saying it would interfere with planned developments in the Sango Bay area, where an international air cargo handling facility is planned.

"Sango Bay land is not available (for their settlement); we have already planned it for some other development activities. If we take these people there, they may refuse to get off. We should instead devise some temporary measures of accommodating them," said Paul Wasswa, the Rakai district speaker.

By Wednesday, the number of registered immigrants had risen to 474 with 7,959 heads of cattle. Many more were believed to be in the Marabigambo forest, where they risk being attacked by wild animals, according to Dr Kiwanuka Kimbugwe, the district veterinary officer.

Turyagumanawe said police had contacted the Office of the Prime Minister, the Immigration directorate, Internal Security Organisation and Red Cross for help.

"These are going to be allocated pieces of land in Sango Bay to construct Mama ingiya pole (small huts) and latrines. Red Cross has promised to get us some materials for construction of tents plus some jerry cans and basins," Turyagumanawe said. "This is a stopgap measure as we seek to register and identify them; we are not giving them land."

Guns

But security officials are more concerned about reports that some of the immigrants arrived armed with guns. Masaka Regional Police Commander Maxwell Ogwal was quick to assure The Observer that the pastoralists did not come with Rwandan registered guns.

However, security officials confirmed that the mainly pastoralist immigrants carried guns to protect their herds of cattle. These guns were reportedly acquired from soldiers of the former government army that fled Rwanda in the wake of the genocide.

"When they settled in Tanzania, they never handed over the guns to the Tanzanian government and instead used the guns for their personal interests, staging roadblocks, raiding the pastoralists whom they later agreed with and exchanged some cows for guns," one security source told us.

In the interim, Ugandan security officials are working closely with their Tanzanian counterparts to track down the guns.

"We have been exchanging information at inter-personal and inter-departmental levels. We are sharing information on who had a gun while in Tanzania, and once we get them, they will have to tell us where they put the guns," the source said.

In a separate interview, Turyagumanawe said they had asked the immigrants to voluntarily hand over any weapons before the end of the month, or risk arrest.

"Being in possession of an illegal firearm is an offence, and we shall arrest and prosecute anyone we find holding a firearm. We shall not compromise on that one," he said.

Restrictions

The relocation exercise was scheduled to begin yesterday, with the police and district issuing stern measures restricting their movements beyond their new settlement area at Sango Bay. None of the immigrants is allowed to sell any of their animals or milk to locals without a vaccination certificate.

Dr Kiwanuka added that the district had secured vaccines to vaccinate the animals against foot and mouth disease, which would cost the pastoralists Shs 1,000 per animal.

Meanwhile, two unidentified men reportedly drowned in River Kagera, early this week, as they attempted to cross into Uganda with their cattle. Their friend, Pastor Francis Kakumba, said they had drowned on the Tanzanian side.

sadabkk@observer.ug