THE FDU-INKINGI THANKS THE UN FOR SETTING DATE OF THE 20TH OF JUNE AS WORLD REFUGEE DAY.

PRESS RELEASE

The FDU-Inkingi thanks the UN for setting date of the 20th of June as World Refugee Day, to “celebrate the strength and courage of people who have been forced to flee their home country to escape conflict or persecution”. We take this opportunity to express our deepest gratitude to countries and organisations that have welcomed or supported Rwandan refugees.

We call on the international community particularly key players, members of the security council and donors, to go beyond organising a day to celebrate the resilience of refuges and act decisively to end the push factors creating refugees or refraining refugees from returning home. The key factors are well known, gross violation of human rights, impunity, absence of the rule of law; the culprits are known and many of them like the Rwandan regime are featherweight politically and financially to ignore a concerted political will of the international community.

The case of Rwanda seems to be unique in getting special treatment when it comes to going away with human rights violations. It has the lowest score in terms of respect human rights, 21% score in terms of civil and political rights according to Freedom House report 2021, has the highest number of refugees in her entire history, hailing from all professions, ethnic and regional groups, carries out repression across borders to assassinate critics and even kidnap political opponents and boasts about it and yet remains the darling of financial donors.

It is one of the few, if not only regime, in the world that goes out of its way to make its refugees stateless by negotiating with the UN body to force a return of its refugees or even takes all measures to destabilise them where they are, for fear that they could reorganise and come back to fight repression. General Kabarebe, security adviser to President Kagame, the key player in the two invasions of the Democratic Republic of Congo is on record saying that young refugees must be destabilised otherwise if they settled down, they would follow the example of his generation of refugees who once they stabilised in Uganda and they planned to come back to Rwanda by force.

While we celebrate the resilience of Rwandan refugees, we call on the international community to use its political, financial, and diplomatic leverage to rein on President Kagame and tell him to create conditions that make easy for refugees to return home and stop people fleeing the country.page1image18380480

We kindly appeal to countries that have generously accepted to welcome Rwandan refugees to resist pressure from the Rwandan regime to destabilise Rwandan refugees.

Done in Rouen June 20, 2021

Théophile MPOZEMBIZI
Commissioner FDU-INKINGI in charge of Information and Communication 

[email protected] ; [email protected]