Govt petitions Rwanda over missing Ugandan ICT expert

Missing. Mr Ivan Peter Egessa

What you need to know:

  • The frosty bilateral relations culminated in Kigali closing its border with Uganda at Gatuna in February last year and stopping Ugandan merchandise trucks and business people from entering Rwanda.

Uganda has petitioned the Rwandan government over the missing Ugandan ICT expert who disappeared in Rwanda in December and is believed to be in detention in the capital Kigali.
The formal communication to Kigali was filed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through Uganda’s embassy in Kigali.

Mr Okello Oryem, the State Minister for Foreign Affairs, told Daily Monitor on Tuesday that the ministry made a formal inquiry over Mr Ivan Peter Egessa who has been missing since December 8, 2019.
Mr Egessa, a resident of Buwuluhiro Village, Masaba Sub-county in Busia District, last communicated to his family on December 8, 2019.

“My ministry has written to the Rwanda’s foreign affairs ministry through our envoy to Rwanda, requesting them to help in identifying where our citizen, who is believed to have disappeared in their country, could be,” Mr Oryem said.
Mr Egessa, 32, a software engineer, disappeared mysteriously in the Rwandan capital Kigali in December. Sources said he was arrested by Rwandan security agencies and taken to unknown location.
Mr Oryem, who spoke to Daily Monitor on the sidelines of a public function in Tororo Town, said whereas they lodged a request over the missing Ugandan, authorities in Rwanda had not responded.

“...but we continue to remind them to help find the Ugandan so that he is reunited with his family,” he said.
Mr Egessa’s father, Mr Leuben Buluma Onyango, said he last heard from his son last December and his phones have since remained switched off.
“We used friends in Kigali to trace him in most police stations and prisons but all in vain. We now fear he might be held in a private detention facility,” Mr Buluma told Daily Monitor at his home in Busia on Wednesday.
He added it was ‘highly possible’ that his son was in the hands of Rwandan security forces “because his last phone contact went off near Rwanda Investigations Bureau on Kimihulula Avenue in Kigali.”

Mr Egessa has worked in Rwanda since2015 with organisations which include churches, private companies and government agencies.
His job involved fixing websites and other software installations.
According to Mr Buluma, some immigration official in Kigali, whom he didn’t name, had made an anonymous call to Egessa’s former boss, asking him whether he knew Egessa but when the official was asked by the former employer for the whereabouts of the victim, he expressed ignorance.

Mr Emmanuel Musengeri, Mr Egessa’s younger brother, and his mother Beatrice Namagembe, appealed to the Ugandan government to help them trace Mr Egessa.
“I last had a chat with him on December 5; he was complaining of a sore throat and wanted to return home for treatment but to-date, we don’t know what is happening,” Mr Musengeri said.
The mother said: “My son has no criminal record and is being incarcerated for no cause. We are a poor family and can’t do much. Our only prayer is that our government intervenes in this matter.”

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Uganda-Rwanda relations
Frosty relations. The disappearance of Egessa in Rwanda comes at a time when the two East African countries are trading accusations of illegal detention of either country’s citizens by the respective security.
The frosty bilateral relations culminated in Kigali closing its border with Uganda at Gatuna in February last year and stopping Ugandan merchandise trucks and business people from entering Rwanda.

Several efforts to resolve the fallout have not yielded anything of bilateral value as the border remains closed and several Ugandans who have crossed the border to Rwanda have been shot dead by Rwandan security forces on accusations of unauthorised entry.