{UAH} OF HABYARIMANA AND MUSEVENI'S 'INCAPACITY' TO RECEIVE RETURNING CITIZENS

OF HABYARIMANA AND MUSEVENI'S 'INCAPACITY' TO RECEIVE RETURNING CITIZENS

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CHANGE OF GUARDS - Following the political upheavals of 1959 - 1965 in Rwanda, many Banyarwanda, and more especially, the ethnic Tutsi fled Rwanda and sought refuge in neighboring countries. During their early years in exile, they attempted to return to their countries through the force of arms but were repeatedly defeated before they settled for life in exile. Over the years, different entities are reported to have urged the then Rwanda President, Gabyarimana to find or initiate the return of these exilees but it is said he always claimed that his country was too densely populated to accommodate those returnees. During the early 1980s, Uganda, in particular, took the path of forcefully expelling to Rwanda those Banyarwanda who had settled outside the settlement camps, but halfway into the exercise, Rwanda complained that it couldn't handle the high rate of influx.

Museveni always claims that when he took power in 1986, he tried to urge Rwanda's President Habyarimana to make arrangements for Banyarwanda refugees in Uganda to return to Rwanda but that the former was out-rightly adamant on grounds that his country was too small to accommodate the returnees. On October 1, 1990, the Banyarwanda who were in Museveni's army invaded Rwanda and four years later took power giving way for the exiled Tutsi to return home as millions of ethnic Hutus were heading into exile.  Some 26 years later, tens of thousands of exiled Hutu have been returning to Rwanda and though the size of the country remains the same, it has space for all the Banyarwanda.

With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, in April 2020, Museveni declared his arbitrary total lockdown that saw all borders (air, land and water) closed. All passenger flights to and from Uganda were suspended and the status quo remains to date. Various calls for the regime to repatriate home its citizens, and more especially the students stuck abroad even before the lockdown, were out-rightly rejected. The regime argued that bringing them back would further escalate the spread of the virus.  In fact, at one time the regime was pressurised by Parliament to send money for upkeep to Ugandan students stuck in China.

However, a few days ago, a secret scheme to fly into the country some two top members of the Museveni family (Joel and Angela who had just completed their studies) from the USA leaked to the public domain. The development caused a lot of public uproar forcing the regime to create a diversion. It claimed to have instructed its embassies abroad to register those Ugandans who wished to return home. Indeed, those Museveni family members were flown in and the media was gagged and the matter has been kept out of the public domain. In his address to the nation on May 18, Museveni just indirectly hinted on the issue;

    "Ugandans caught in the pandemic abroad. If all our people came back in panic, how would we manage them? I cannot accept cargo planes being used to transport passengers. Are you sure of the health status of of 2m Ugandans in the diaspora that live in highly infected countries? We need to study these issues carefully. I was told of only 2,500 people who want to come back. That should be checked and confirmed. I don't want favouritism to come into the equation. No one is more important than the other. We should have a transparent policy on how to rescue these people who are stranded."

In furtherance of the diversion of public health opinion, his cabinet has now approved a repatriation scheme where returning citizens are required to meet their own cost of air ticket and the 14 days quarantine upon return.

Unfortunately, like had been the case with Rwanda's Habyarimana over the then exiled Tutsi, Museveni is denying return of citizens from abroad on flimsy grounds of lacking the capacity "to manage them."

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Rehema
Patriot in Kampala,East Africa:Assalamu Alaikum

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