Guilt is a rope that wears thin. President Museveni is using his guilt of being in bed with the Rwandan genocidaires of the FDLR, their RUD Urunana and MRCD-FLN breakaway dissidents, the terrorists of the RNC and his associated persecution of innocent Rwandans to manipulate and subdue the gullible.

On February 27, Peter Fabricius, an ISS consultant, likely under Museveni's spell, writes that "Museveni agrees to smoke out Rwandan terrorists on Ugandan soil”, only for the spell to get the better of him when he asks, "But if Uganda’s president can’t find any to expel, will that keep the Uganda-Rwanda border closed?”

Museveni’s spell has switched off the humanity of so many to the point where they have become blinded to the persecution of innocent Rwandans in Uganda amidst an obsession with the border closure.

Fabricius thinks it is ironic for President Kagame to advocate for the free trade area agreement, intended to open trade across Africa’s borders, even as the Rwandan leader advises his citizens against crossing to Uganda where their safety and security are not guaranteed. Fabricius feigns ignorance to the fact that cross-border trade is carried out by people; that there can be no movement of goods and services across borders if the movement of people is constrained.

Indeed, free trade everywhere else in the world is dependent on good neighbourliness. What is ironic is that Uganda, which has signed up on different free trade agreements, is busy hunting down, sequestering in secret detention centres, and torturing Rwandan citizens, some into insanity, physical impairment, disappearance, and even death.

If Fabricius had done some research, as his status alleges, he would have easily discovered that the hunt-down and persecution of innocent Rwandans is not a mere allegation; it is a fact that Uganda does not deny.

Since 2017, innocent Rwandans have been arbitrarily arrested, tortured and illegally detained in Uganda to coercively recruiting them into the Rwanda National Congress (RNC) and into other terror organizations such as the remnants of the forces that spearheaded the 1994 Genocide against Rwanda's Tutsi, now organized into the FDLR, and its breakaway factions, RUD Urunana and MRCD-FLN. Uganda is using as all these terror outfits as proxies to destabilise Rwandan security.

Those who are successfully persuaded, as the December 2018 UN Report Confirmed, are trained and sent off to those outfits' camps in the DRC with the very close support and facilitation of the Ugandan government - all in the hope of toppling the Rwandan leadership. Those who refuse recruitment are kept in Ugandan dungeons, viciously tortured and some are killed, while others are dumped at Rwandan borders in near-death conditions.

We know that Uganda no longer denies this because it has from time to time released to Rwanda some of them. Court testimonies by FDLR officials – Col Jean-Pierre Nsekanabo aka Theophile Abega, the then head of military intelligence and Ignace Nkaka alias La Forge Bazeye, its spokesperson – who were intercepted at the DRC side of the Bunanaga border on their way from a coordination – with the RNC – meeting in Uganda under Museveni’s invitation through Minister Mateke have also confirmed Uganda’s support to them.

The idea that the RNC is "peaceful people” is total blather, considering that these "peaceful people" throw grenades at bus stops and in markets intended to kill as many people there as possible. Between 2010 and 2014 Kayumba Nyamwasa’s "peaceful people” of the RNC threw grenades in various crowded places in Rwanda, killing 14 and injuring 400. How "peaceful” is that? Are the new forced recruits in Uganda being trained and mobilized for peaceful protests to be carried out in Rwanda or DRC?

The author then meanders to speculate that the fourth quadripartite summit (Uganda, Rwanda and the joint Angolan-DRC facilitator team) was to preside over the formal re-opening of the border. However, he ignores that implementation of the Luanda MoU requires Uganda to first disband the RNC and RUD-Urunana networks in Uganda, and to arrest and extradite all their members so that they can face justice in Rwanda.

It also requires that the Museveni government refrain from all actions meant to destabilize Rwanda and to remove all factors that might create such perception. Fabricius seems to not have read any of this. He should be embarrassed and the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) should be concerned for its credibility.

Rather than urge Uganda to address these demands in order to get the border open, he further panders to Museveni’s games mixing denials and outright lies, even where he accepts responsibility for anti-Rwanda aggression that has taken place on Ugandan soil.

The author seems to be unaware that even when he admits such responsibility, Museveni follows it up with false and misleading explanations that seek to distort the very admissions for which he has taken responsibility. These are the kinds of inconsistencies that those who have had to deal with him continue to find disturbing beyond mere dishonesty.

These contradictions are what Fabricius should have brought to the attention of his readers. Instead, he writes of the RNC in Uganda being made up of ‘peaceful people’, all the while unbelievably claiming that there are none. If there is no RNC in Uganda, how about the alleged "peaceful RNC people" the author alludes to; are they there or are they not there? Is Fabricius a consultant for Museveni, RNC or the ISS?

Uganda has been an RNC hub. It has now established a province there whose executive committee members were handpicked by the deputy head of Uganda's chieftaincy of military intelligence (CMI) for counterterrorism, Col CK Asiimwe, according to reliable sources.

Its coordinator, Pastor Deo Nyirigira, has for years –through his Mbarara-based church AGAPE – been the chief mobilizer for the RNC and his church has been used as a recruitment point for those that are sent off to the group’s military training camps.

Moreover, RNC Uganda province coordination committee works in conjunction with Sulah Nuwamanya and Prossy Bonabaana, who have also created Self-Worth Initiative (SWI), a pseudo-NGO that masquerades as pro-poor, but is, in reality, a cover for RNC activities.

Dr Sam Ruvuma, a cousin to President Museveni, was at the Kikagati border when RNC recruits were intercepted on their way to the outfit’s training centre in Minembwe, DRC, through Bujumbura in December 2017. He was arrested and immediately released as a result of "orders from above.”

At the press conference that followed the meeting between President Museveni and President Kagame in Entebbe in March 2018, the former admitted that CMI had facilitated these RNC recruits.

"A group of Banyarwanda was being recruited through Tanzania and Burundi to go to Congo. They said they were going for church work, but when they were interrogated it was found the work wasn’t exactly religious. It was something else,” an embarrassed Museveni told the press.

Fabricius doesn’t concern himself with any of that. He is busy with the border. For his information, the Gatuna-Katuna summit communiqué made it clear that normal relations won’t be restored until Uganda has verified Rwanda’s allegations about actions from its territory by forces hostile to Kigali.

Similarly, bizarre, Fabricius proceeds to claim that the whole quadripartite summit initiative and process seems to be part of Kagame’s wider campaign to get rid of his political enemies, by whatever means necessary.

While he is entitled to whatever ridiculous opinion he chooses to push, at whatever cost to ISS credibility as a think tank. That, nevertheless, will not make the Rwandan government stop from taking all measures necessary to protect its citizens and borders.

The safety of Rwandans and the security and sanctity of the country's territory are sacrosanct. It is not an ISS consultant's absurd opinions disseminating Museveni's usual talking points that will change that determination.