Rwanda’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Regional Cooperation and EAC affairs, Olivier Nduhungirehe on Thursday asked people to desist from travelling to Uganda because of safety concerns, just a day after Uganda and Rwanda have mended fences at regional summit in Luanda.
“There are still some issued to be resolved between the two countries before people start travelling to Uganda,” the Rwandan senior government official said while referring to several dozen of Rwandan citizens who are currently detained in Ugandan prisons.
According to him, the issue of security of Rwandans in Uganda has been longstanding and it is not something that could be resolved after the summit [in Angola]
“We are strongly advising those who do not have necessary business in Uganda not to do so until this problem is sorted out”, Nduhungirehe said.
The reaction by Rwandan official comes after Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Wednesday met his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni Wednesday in the Angolan capital city Luanda where the two leaders signed the Memorandum of Understanding aimed at smoothing over relations between the two countries.
reacting to the signature, Rwandan President Paul Kagame stressed that if there are difficulties going on by trade not going on across the border and there are also problems when people can’t cross the border, when you have people who get arrested when they cross the border, that affects the movement of people, of goods and trade.
“hen you have an open border, you have goods and people. When you create a problem for people to move across the border from one side to another, then you have closed the border to people and goods,” the Rwandan leader said shortly after shaking hands with his Ugandan counterpart, Yoweli Kaguta Museveni.
In a related development, Uganda’s communications regulator on Thursday wrote an official correspondence to Internet Service Providers ordering them to block access to multiple Rwandan-based news websites.
When contacted for comment, Patrick Nyirishema, the Director-General of Rwanda Utilities and Regulatory Authority said that he had reached out to his Ugandan counterpart seeking clarification of the blockage.
In December last year, a report by UN Group of Experts named Uganda as one of the sources of recruits for a Rwanda rebel group based in eastern DR Congo that calls itself P5 (created by five groups opposed to Kigali, including RNC of wanted Rwandan dissident Kayumba Nyamwasa, and FDLR, an outfit that includes key architects of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi).
The two countries were on the same side in the DRC war that led to the fall of longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and in the subsequent rebel effort to topple his late successor, Laurent Kabila.
They fell out in June 2000 after a series of clashes in the north-eastern DR Congo city of Kisangani, which both sides accused each other of starting.
CU/abj/APA