How local hostility drove Rwandan refugees into rebellion

When Idi Amin took power in 1971, there was drastic change in relationship between the refugees and authorities. The new regime saw the refugees as a source for recruitment in the armed forces.
They were recruited in the infamous State Research Bureau, Public Safety Unit, Marines, Military Police, and Anti-Corruption and Anti-Smuggling units.
To win their trust, Amin invited Kigeri IV, the former king of Rwanda who was expelled by former president Milton Obote, back to Uganda. Kigeri’s presence combined with close ties with Amin encouraged many Tutsis to join the armed forces.
To please their boss, refugees in the security agencies got involved in terrorising and murdering perceived government opponents while accumulating wealth that they had been denied by the previous regime.

Things go wrong
Whereas government employed refugees in the security agencies, the regime later promoted anti-refugee sentiments by blaming them for the prevailing economic and political crises.
In 1978, Amin openly blamed refugees for sabotaging government efforts to address economic and political problems. He later resorted to the 1971 order by the Obote regime asking all refugees to register with government and remain confined in their designated camps.
Soon after Amin’s fall, there was an escalation of the anti-Rwandan sentiments. Among the causes included the presence of the Rwandans in the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA).

In the book The Path of a Genocide: From Uganda to Zaire, the authors say: “The Tutsi refugees joined the army primarily to acquire adequate military training for a future war against the Hutu dominated regime in Rwanda.”
“Many Tutsi refugees in UNLA would later become leading members of the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA). They include Chris Bunyenyezi, Sam Kaka, Fred Rwigyema, Dr Peter Bayingana and Paul Kagame.”
The refugees who had joined Fronasa waged a war of supremacy against the Kikosi Maalum faction of UNLA that was believed to be affiliated to Obote in Ankole region.
The authors of The Path of a Genocide say: “For example, the massacre of many people in Ankole, including over 100 Muslims in Busenyi in June 1979, was attributed in part to the power struggle between Museveni’s Fronasa and Obote’s Kikosi Maalum factions of the UNLA.”

“There were further anti-Rwandan sentiments during and after the 1980 election. Museveni’s political opponents in Ankole and elsewhere in the country constantly referred to him as a Rwandan refugee, and the Uganda Patriotic Movement and the Fronasa as Rwandan organisations.”
“Hostility toward the refugees also grew following the involvement of some Tutsi refugees in the armed struggle against the Obote regime. For example, the refugees were involved in the raid on the Kabamba Army Training School in 1981; the ambush of the military convoy that killed 70 UNLA soldiers at Kawanda on March 16, 1981 and the ambush of a civilian bus, 26 miles from Kampala on Bombo Road, in which 40 unarmed civilians were killed.”
The Rwandan refugees in Uganda came under attack from both the government and the UPC functionaries. This, however, played in favour of the rebels. The more the refugees felt persecuted by the government the more they ran to join the rebel ranks thus bolstering the rebel numbers.

According to the African Confidential magazine of March 1983, “The more they joined the NRA, the more their increased presence in the NRA tended to confirm the claim that the NRA was a Tutsi organisation.”
The flight of the Rwandan labourers from their Baganda masters in the Luweero triangle to go and join the rebels meant the loss of cheap labour to the Baganda. The departure turned into enmity from the former masters. The departed labourers made the situation worse when they violently returned to forcefully demand for the unpaid wages and get food from their former masters.
As the hostility against Rwandan refugees built up in the rest of the country, in Ankole it was primarily an outcome of decades of conflict over land, jobs, and social services between the host communities and the refugees.

The situation got worse when UPM, including its leader, lost the elections and subsequently launched a guerrilla war against the Obote regime in 1981.
The authors of The Path of a Genocide say the pressure on Banyankole to denounce the Museveni rebellion increased hostility against Tutsi refugees in the region.
“This pressure came mainly from two prominent Banyankole ministers and very close associates of Obote: Chris Rwakasisi and Maj Edward Rurangaranga. The pressure was intended to reduce the limited support the NRA enjoyed in Ankole. It was also aimed at suggesting to the country and the rest of the world that the NRA enjoyed only the support of Rwandan refugees, not the support of Ugandans.”

Plans were hatched and were implemented to evict Tutsi refugees from the Ankole region. According to the Uganda Times newspaper of January 11, 1982, Obote was quoted supporting the eviction of Tutsi refugees saying, “Most atrocities during Amin’s era were committed by refugees. Many refugees voted in the December 1980 general election. Refugees have been found to flirt with terrorists in the Luweero District and are responsible for the unrest there.”
In October of the same year, the Mbarara District administration issued a memorandum to government to evict the Rwandan refugees whom they accused of a number of things including: committing atrocities during the Amin regime, failing the 1972 liberation efforts, grabbing land from the nationals, perpetrating cattle thefts, campaigning and voting during the 1980 general election, joining the rebel activities after the 1980 elections, among others.

Soon after there was mass eviction of Rwandan refugees, which happened when Obote was in Italy for medical treatment and the minister in charge of refugees, Dr James Rwanyarare, was in Geneva, Switzerland.
According to the book The Path of a Genocide, “By November 1982, an estimated 40,000 Rwandan refugees had been evicted from the southern part of Mbarara District.”
An estimated 4,000 refugees were trapped at Mirema Hill, on the Uganda side of the Uganda-Rwanda border. During the evictions, some 37 refugees were reported to have been killed by some Banyankole UPC functionaries and National Security Agency officers.”

Evicted
According to a refugee report from the High Commissioner for Refugees titled Uganda: Report on UNHCR Assistance Activities in 1982-1983, “In December 1983, an estimated 19,000 Rwandan refugees were evicted from Rakai District. During this campaign against the refugees a few Ugandans who were declared ‘Rwandan refugees’ by their local opponents in Ankole were also evicted from their homes.”
The international community condemned Uganda government over the evictions. But the government defended its actions, saying they were aimed at improving the administration of the refugee affairs in the country.

However, the influx of expelled Rwandans made the Hutu Rwandan government of Juvenal Habyarimana politically nervous. This nervousness was caused by the fact that some of the leading members of Rwanda Alliance of National Unity like Chris Bunyenyezi, Sam Kaka, Fred Rwigyema, Dr Peter Bayingana and Paul Kagame, were also senior commanders in the National Resistance Army rebel group.
This fear the Rwandan regime had towards the repatriated refugees made the authorities in Kigali confine the refugees to highly guarded places, and closed its borders with Uganda.
The continued international pressure combined with the persecution of Tutsi refugees both in Uganda and those repatriated led to a joint ministerial committee five-day meeting in Gabiro, Rwanda, from October 22 to 27, 1987.

The authors of The Path of a Genocide say: “The committee examined the root causes of the refugee crisis, measures taken by the two governments to resolve the crisis, the question of nationality of the refugee and durable solutions to the refugee crisis. At the end of the five days the two governments undertook to implement a number of resolutions. The meeting was a window shopping with no action.”
According to the African Research Bulletin of January 1983, “The delay in the implementation prompted the UNHCR to organise another meeting in Kabale District, during which the two governments committed themselves to abide by the international conventions and instruments governing the treatment of refugees in their territories, and to formulate guidelines to determine the status of the affected persons.”

The government also consulted with Western governments and international Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) on how to handle the situation. The refugee camps in Uganda were constantly watched by the international NGOs and the government of Uganda. Despite the international intervention to make their stay in the refugee camps better, many of the Tutsi refugees felt that it was less traumatic to join the NRA than to be persecuted in the camps.
In The Path of a Genocide, authors say: “A pattern was set in which the refugees, in order to protect themselves, either attempted to return to their home country by force of arms, or joined military forces in their host country, only to see their insecurity increased as this act alone aroused the hostility of the host population.”
“This pattern would reach its culmination when they fused the two processes and joined the Ugandan military as a means to launch a military invasion to return to Rwanda.”

Un intervention in refugee crisis

The continued international pressure combined with the persecution of Tutsi refugees both in Uganda and those repatriated led to a joint ministerial committee five-day meeting in Gabiro, Rwanda, from October 22 to 27, 1987.
The committee examined the root causes of the refugee crisis, measures taken by the two governments to resolve the crisis, the question of nationality of the refugee and durable solutions to the refugee crisis. At the end of five days the two governments undertook to implement a number of resolutions.
But the delay in the implementation prompted the UNHCR to organise another meeting in Kabale District, during which the two governments committed themselves to abide by the international conventions and instruments governing the treatment of refugees.