Why is Ugandan press constantly lying about Gatuna border?

Since the closure of the Rwanda-Uganda common border at Gatuna, Ugandan media outlets continuously misled the public

Since the closure of the Rwanda-Uganda common border at Gatuna crossing point, in early 2019, Ugandan media outlets continuously misled people about the reasons behind this sad development and often gave false hope about its re-opening.

This is in the same line as the article by The Daily Monitor, “Katuna border remains closed two years since talks started” published on April 4, 2021. It defies understanding why this newspaper should carry the water for the Ugandan government which seems to give hope that this border will open soon yet they know too well that this is as far as the moon.

To back their falsehood, they quote Ambassador Adonia Ayebale, Uganda’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations as saying that he was optimistic "that within three weeks or one month we should have something”. But the Ambassador quickly distanced himself from Monitor’s misleading assertion saying that “the quote attributed to me by @DailyMonitor is not correct.”

Another big lie in the article is the contradiction between unnamed sources in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which indicated that little progress has been made to solve the crisis, and Minister Henry Okello-Oryem himself who insists that there is a lot going on behind the scenes.

But those who follow the situation of relations between the two countries closely affirm that nothing has changed because of Uganda’s unwillingness to implement the recommendations of the Luanda Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)   of August 22, 2019, aimed at normalizing the frosty relations between the two countries.

It was expected that the implementation of this MOU would lead to the resumption of free movement of people and goods between the two countries. Relations between Rwanda and Uganda became strained after it became clear, in 2017, that Uganda was supporting terrorist groups such as the Rwandan National Congress (RNC) operating from the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This support is in the form of recruitment of fighters by arresting Rwandans travelling to Uganda and coercing them to join the armed militia intent on waging war on Rwanda.

Led by South Africa-based renegade Kayumba Nyamwasa, the RNC is a terror organisation behind the spate of grenade attacks that killed people in Rwanda's capital, Kigali, between 2010 and 2013.

The harassment of Rwandans by agents of Uganda's Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) - working in cahoots with RNC operatives - continued despite Uganda pledging to stop the horrific abuses.

In March 2019, Rwanda therefore issued a travel warning to its citizens because hundreds had been arrested, detained, tortured, or disappeared. To this date, this has not stopped. Uganda arrests Rwandan nationals on the false pretext that they are spies for the Rwandan government.

At the same time, Rwanda also closed its side of the Gatuna border because truck drivers were being harassed on the Ugandan side. This affected the long haulage on the Northern Corridor which impacted the movements of goods heading to eastern DRC, Burundi, and Rwanda, as well the reverse movement on the Nairobi-Mombasa route.

Ever since this border's closure, there has been a series of fruitless tripartite meetings between Rwanda, Uganda, and the mediator Angola. And they were fruitless simply because Uganda never showed signs of addressing Rwanda’s concerns. To  date, Uganda’s support of the RNC and other anti-Rwanda groups goes on unabated. Rwandan nationals living or working in Uganda continue to be targeted.

It has become routine for Uganda to dump Rwandans - many of them in critical conditions due to torture - on the border in the thick of the night without following deportation protocols. Some of these people, it often turned out, had been languishing in Mbuya military barracks, or other secret locations, before being dumped at the border.

The most recent group of Rwandans unceremoniously deported from Uganda were dumped at the Kagitumba border in Nyagatare region just a few days ago. They all disclosed that they had been detained at Mbuya military camp by the CMI where they underwent endless physical and psychhilogical torture. They said that their torturers accused them of being agents or spies of the Rwandan government.

One of the returnees, Antoine Twagirimana, from Rubavu District, Western Province, told reporters that: “I was detained because I was, allegedly, sent by Rwanda to spy on Uganda. We were detained at Mbuya in awful conditions, with regular beatings. We left behind two of our pastors.”

The Rwandan nationals also disclosed that in their detention, all the people brought from different parts of the country were being recruited into Nyamwasa's RNC. One of them - known as Nyirimpeta - claimed to have met Gen. Abel Kandiho, the head of CMI, accompanied by Charlotte Mukankusi, the head of RNC, who insulted him calling him an idiot who works with President Kagame.

During the Luanda meeting between Presidents Kagame and Museveni on August 21, 2019, a peace agreement was signed to end the tension between the two countries. But almost two years on, little or no progress has been made. The hostile posture by Uganda, and especially the continued harassment of Rwandan nationals, continues.

As The Great Lakes Eye has reported before, following his recent re-election, Museveni's actions signal that he is not inclined to permit peace to prevail.So, media organisations in Uganda should stop misleading the public by distorting facts.