A young Rwandan man who had gone to study in Uganda is in critical condition in a hospital in Rwanda after being tortured and deported to Rwanda. Ernest Abijuru recounted the ordeal to the media on Saturday from his hospital bed in Kamonyi district where he hails from. Lying in bed in the hospital with a lot of wounds on the head, legs, and other parts of the body, he explained to the media that he had gone to study in Uganda and that last week he was tortured unconscious by unknown assailants in Kampala. “Three years ago I went to study in Uganda. Last Saturday, in the evening, I gave a lift to a person on my motorcycle that I use to go to school but in the morning I later found myself in hospital unconscious. I can not retrieve how the situation happened at that moment since I was surprisingly assaulted, harmed and left to die,” he said. He added that Rwandans are being harassed in Uganda under different circumstances. “When Ugandans hear Kinyarwanda name, they start saying we are Kagame’s children intruding Uganda. The neighbors used to call me ‘Kagame’, he said. He said that some people took him to the hospital and paid the medical bill for him and later told him to go back to Rwanda for treatment telling him that he could not afford the cost. The same people facilitated him to come to Rwanda. “When I reached Nyabugogo Bus Park, I hired taxi moto driver to take me to my grandfathers home. Then the ambulance took me to the hospital,” he said. Abijuru is one of the hundreds of Rwandans tortured in Uganda who have so far been deported while many others remain facing tortures after illegally being arrested. This month alone, Uganda deported 32 Rwandan nationals, most of whom are pastors of the Pentecostal ADEPR Church. They are arrested by Uganda’s military intelligence service, CMI according to testimonies from the victims. In August this year, an MoU was signed by President Kagame and President Museveni as well as Presidents João Lourenço of Angola, Félix Tshisekedi of DR Congo and witnessed by President Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville in order to restore relations between Rwanda and Uganda. On Monday this week, Rwanda and Ugandan officials held a one-day meeting in Kigali to come up with a solution to end the ongoing impasse in relations between the two countries. editor@newtimesrwanda.com
