Rwanda wants citizens abducted by DRC intel agency released
Tuesday, November 08, 2022
Minister of Foreign Affairs and International cooperation Dr Vincent Biruta. Rwanda has written to the DR Congo government seeking the release of two citizens, who have been detained incommunicado.File

Rwanda has written to the DR Congo government seeking the release of two citizens, who have been detained incommunicado for over two months by the Congolese National Intelligence Agency (ANR), reports say.

In a letter dated November 4, Vincent Biruta, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, wrote to his Congolese counterpart Christophe Lutundula in protest of "the growing harassment of Rwandans living in the DRC,” according to Jeune Afrique.

In the letter, delivered through the Rwandan embassy in Kinshasa, Biruta said he "learned with deep concern the arrest of two other Rwandans who resided on a regular basis in the DRC”.

The two Rwandan men, identified as Dr. Juvenal Nshimiyimana and Moses Mushabe were abducted on August 30.

They were both apprehended from Nshimiyimana’s home and have since been held in the premises of the ANR.

According to Jeune Afrique, Nshimiyimana is the country director of the African Health Development Organization (AHDO), a Geneva-based NGO. He previously served as the acting country director of UNAIDS.

Mushabe is the provincial head of the AHDO in Tshikapa, Kasai.

Biruta asked the Congolese government "to urgently release these two Rwandan nationals and repatriate them quickly, without any conditions.”

"The ministry once again strongly condemns the growing cases of harassment of Rwandan nationals on the territory of the DRC and calls on the government to put an end to it.”

The New Times couldn’t get a comment from the government of Rwanda by press time.