On Tuesday, four Rwandan women and their three children were received at the Cyanika One-Stop Border Post (OSBP) between Rwanda and Uganda. Two of them had managed to hide and evade capture during the joint police and military operations in Uganda’s south western district of Kisoro that rounded up close to 200 Rwandans in the wee hours of Monday. Two others, however, arrived at the border crossing after a long journey from Mubende District in central Uganda, where, one said, “Rwandans are being told that they have refused to leave in peace but they will eventually return home as dead bodies.” One of the women from Mubende returned home with her child but not her Ugandan husband. The women from Mubende told a story that reveals more about the sinister developments in the neighbouring country. They said that Rwandans there are being harassed, and their possessions confiscated, with the intention to expel them. On the day they left Mubende, one woman recounted, there were two buses full of Rwandans freeing from the area. They all headed to Kampala and other parts of the country where they think they could be safer. But, considering the prevailing circumstances, they are wrong. In his November 13 open letter to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Ugandan blogger Maxon Lukyamuzi, a resident of Kekuubo Village in Kabale, south-western Uganda, noted that many innocent Rwandans in Uganda continue to be harassed and tortured at the hands of the country’s security agencies, notably Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) and International Security Organisation (ISO). Among other issues, the concerned Ugandan citizen noted that despite an ongoing effort to resolve the Kigali-Kampala standoff under the Luanda Memorandum of Understanding, he wanted to especially bring to Museveni’s attention “the increased activities of RNC” in Uganda. Dissident Kayumba Nyamwasa’s RNC, is a terrorist group formed by Rwandan dissidents in 2010 and is blamed for grenade attacks that killed at least 17 people and wounded some 400 others in Rwanda between 2010 and 2014. “This organisation is well established here in Uganda, with an executive committee headed by one Madam Prossy Boonabana, with Dr Gideon Rukundo Rugari, as deputy coordinator and Sulah Nuwamanya, its Secretary-General,” Lukyamuzi informed his President. “This committee has commissioners and regional coordinators in areas with majority Ugandan-Banyarwanda population. “RNC, through this committee, recently established a non-governmental organization called “Self Worth Initiative” (SWI), through which they recruit members and mobilize funds to conduct their activities. I hope this issue will not be swept under the carpet in the planned talks between our two countries.” Observers of RNC activities in Uganda say the group is integrated into Kampala security organs, most notably, the notorious military intelligence, CMI. Rwandans who suffered torture in the dungeons of CMI Headquarters at Mbuya Military Barracks have over and over again testified how Kinyarwanda-speaking men are the main interrogators, and torturers of Rwandan abductees. Those Kinyarwanda-speaking men within CMI are RNC operatives. But back to what is now happening in Mubende and other parts of Uganda. What the Self-Worth Initiative, under the guise of a humanitarian cause, is doing to further RNC hostile plans against Rwanda, is aggressively mobilising and recruiting Rwandans living in Uganda to join it. Those who refuse – just like the women who recently arrived at the Cyanika border and many of their compatriots back in Uganda – are harassed, have their properties confiscated and forced to move from their homes.
