Zambia will not be a permanent home for Rwandan refugees, President Edgar Lungu declared on Thursday.
President
Lungu said that in line with the expiry of the deadline of the
cessation clause that ended Rwandan refugee status in December, they
have to return home.
“We will not allow a situation
where we have permanent refugees in Zambia, whether they are fugitives
or those who fled as victims. The bottom line is, we have to put a
closure to this chapter,” President Lungu told journalists in Kigali on
Thursday.
The Zambian leader completed his two-day
state visit in Rwanda where alongside his host President Paul Kagame
addressed the media.
Zambia hosts about 4,000 Rwandan
refugees who fled in the aftermath of the 1994 Genocide against the
Tutsi including some suspected of being perpetrators of the massacre.
Many
of these are reluctant to repatriate as do many other Rwandans in
different African countries for economic reasons and/or for fear of
possible arrest.
President Kagame said there were only two options for refugees
yet to repatriate – voluntarily return or seek permanent residency in
the host country.
“We can’t just keep producing
refugees or having refugees as an end in itself,” he said, adding that
refugees have to realising that the reasons that made them flee had been
addressed.
“Either way it is dependent on choice. You
don’t force somebody to become your citizen or force them to go back
where they ran from without understanding that certain conditions have
been fulfilled or problems have been resolved,” he said.
“It is in this spirit that Rwanda has been discussing the problem with different countries,” he added.
Some
African countries have vowed not to invoke the cessation clause while
others say they would not expel the refugees immediately.
The
UNHCR estimates that there are approximately 20,000 Rwandan refugees in
different African countries affected by the cessation clause, but who
are reluctant to repatriate.
President Lungu said his
country would continue co-operating with Rwanda, pointing out that
Lusaka has in past handed over at least eight genocide fugitives to be
tried by the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR).
“We
have an understanding between Rwanda and Zambia to help each other in
identifying these people [fugitives] and bring them to book,” Mr Lungu
said.
The two countries have an extradition treaty.
President
Lungu also pledged to support Mr Kagame's efforts to drive reforms at
the African Union. President Kagame is the current chairman of the
continental bloc and is also leading reforms to turn the donor dependent
AU into a self-financing body.
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