Govt cautions Rwandan refugees over passports
By Mwala Kalaluka
Fri 25 Apr. 2014, 14:00 CAT

THE Zambian government says former Rwandese refugees refusing to be
issued with passports from their country will not be eligible for the
local integration programme to be launched in Lusaka next week.
During a question and answer session with journalists at Lusaka's
Intercontinental Hotel on Thursday, Commissioner for Refugees Jacob
Mpepho said for any former refugee to be considered for local
integration in Zambia, they needed to have a passport issued by their
country of origin.
He said the resistance expressed by a majority of the 4,000 former
Rwandese refugees against getting passports from the Rwandese
government was real and that a demonstration even took place at his
office the last time a delegation from that country was in Zambia to
issue its nationals with passports.
"Local integration is taking place within the existing laws and what
we want the people that are interested in local integration to do is
to follow the rules that we have and get local integration," Mphepo
said.
He said going with the resolve of the ex-Rwandese refugees would
entail changing the existing laws and that would be very complicated.
"In terms of support from the Rwandese government...we have agreed,"
Mphepo said.
He outlined that the Rwandese government had told his office that if
its nationals in Zambia were afraid that they would be killed once
they return to the country, then they would not be interested in
having them back.
"Local integration doesn't take away the nationality of the person. So
for Rwandese, they need those passports because that is what confirms
their nationality," Mphepo said.
He said the Rwandese officials pledged to process the passports for
the former refugees and issue them the documents whilst they remained
in Zambia.
"The resistance, for us we don't understand the basis of it," Mphepo
said. "I begin to speculate, why would somebody not want to be known
by their government? What we want them to do is to stay in the country
with appropriate documents."
On the Rwandese fears that they would be dealt with if they went back
home, Mphepo said Zambia was not interested in keeping people that had
committed heinous crimes related to the 1994 Rwanda genocide and there
was documentation to show that Zambia was the first country to send a
genocide suspect who was domiciled as a refugee in the country to the
then Arusha-based United Nations Tribunal on Rwanda.
He said the only problem for Zambia was that the term 'genocide' was
not in the law books and it was difficult to charge a person for the
offence and that this problem was manifested in the prosecution and
conviction of a Rwandese refugee who stayed in Zambia before
relocating to Finland.
"I can tell you now that the list of people who were requested for by
Rwanda is not more than 10 and we are talking 4,000. I can see that
people are using this thing to claim that they fear something," Mphepo
said. "There has been a request for a few people who have lived in the
country as refugees. The government responded that they were
uncomfortable to extradite these people because in the first place,
the government doesn't have an extradition treaty with Rwanda."
He urged Rwandese in Zambia to put the genocide history behind them,
although he noted that that would take long.
On the former Angolan refugees that would remain after the pledged
10,000 had been locally integrated, Mphepo said the government only
gave out a number of people that it could accommodate based on their
eligibility and that the rest would be expected to return to Angola.
"Angola is for Angolans and Zambia is for Zambians," said Mphepo. "We
want to encourage the going back of Angolans to Angola."
And United Nations High Commission for Refugees country representative
Laura Lo Castro said the situation of ex-Rwandese refugees still
'resident' in Zambia following the cessation of their refugee status
last year was complicated.
http://www.postzambia.com/post-read_article.php?articleId=48133
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