Rwanda backtracks on president's threat to bar refugees

By Hassan Isilow and James Tasamba

JOHANNESBURG (AA) – Rwanda’s government has walked back on President Paul Kagame’s recent comments about closing borders to refugees from neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

“Rwanda has no intention to expel or ban refugees. We always welcome people fleeing insecurity, persecution and violence,” Yolande Makolo, a government spokesperson, said in a series of tweets late on Tuesday.

“We are asking for the international community to take responsibility for finding a durable solution for this forgotten group of refugees from the DRC.”

Kagame told the Senate, the upper house of Rwanda’s Parliament, this week that refugees fleeing from the DRC were not his country’s problem.

“We have had refugees here from DRC for over 20 years. I am refusing that Rwanda should carry this burden and be insulted and abused every day about it,” he said.

Rwanda hosts around 72,000 refugees from the DRC, he added.

Kagame’s comments came amid tensions between Kigali and Kinshasa over the M23 rebel group that is fighting government troops in eastern DRC.

The DRC accuses Rwanda of backing the rebels, a charge Rwanda has consistently denied.

Kigali, in turn, accuses the DRC of allying with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a rebel group blamed for the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi ethnic group.

Makolo said what Kagame addressed was the blatant hypocrisy in criticizing Rwanda and expecting it to accommodate people forced to flee because of the DRC’s failures.

His call for accountability was misrepresented as “a threat to expel or ban refugees,” she said.

“Blaming Rwanda fails citizens on both sides of the border, feeds hate speech/persecution, causing yet more Congolese citizens to flee,” she added.

Makolo urged the international community and DRC government to “stop evading responsibility and begin tackling the true causes of the crisis.”