Rwandan President Paul Kagame announced Monday before the country’s Chamber of Deputies that Rwanda will not take in any more refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in response to Kinshasa’s accusations of alleged Rwandan support for the armed group M23.
«There is a type of refugee that I think we will no longer accept. We cannot continue to take in refugees, for whom we are then held responsible in some way, or even insulted,» Kagame has asserted, saying Rwanda cannot «bear the burden of refugees from DRC,» as reported by broadcaster RFI.
In this way, the Rwandan president urged «whoever thinks that it is a Rwandan problem and not a Congolese problem» to remove the Congolese who are in his territory.
«Those who arrive every day, because of the actions of their government and institutions, who say that the government is not functioning as it should, that is still not my problem. And if it is my problem, it is yours too, as an international community, I am talking to them, it is as much your problem as it is mine,» he reiterated.
The Rwandan government has repeatedly denied its alleged support for the rebels, although UN experts said in a recent report that Rwandan authorities maintain a «direct intervention» in neighboring DRC.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Rwanda was hosting more than 76,000 Congolese on its territory at the end of November, some of them for more than twenty years, while the local media consulted by the aforementioned radio station speak of more than 2,000 new arrivals in the last two months.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
