Uganda says no to Rwandan refugees from Tanzania

A Ugandan minister has said her country will not accept Rwandan refugees who have left Tanzania seeking asylum, according to the privately owned Kampala newspaper, the Monitor. "Under our guidelines, we should not accept these people, because they have asylum protection from Tanzania," it quoted Christine Amongin Aporu Akol, the minister of state for disaster preparedness and refugees, as saying. She told reporters at a Kampala news conference on Monday that at least 3,000 Rwandan refugees, already granted asylum in Tanzania, had crossed into Uganda. A Ugandan humanitarian official, who asked not to be named, told IRIN on Thursday that these Rwandans were seeking refuge because they knew that Uganda gave refugees land to farm, and because they wanted to avoid property disputes on returning to their own country. He also said the refugees were trying to avoid the possibility of forcible repatriation from Tanzania, given that Dar es Salaam wanted the refugees out of the country by 31 December. The refugees are in a temporary camp at Nakivale, southwestern Uganda, some 20 km from the border with Tanzania. A public information officer at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Kampala, Bushra Malik, told IRIN that as at the end of October there were 18,821 Rwandan refugees in Uganda, and that only some of these had come from Tanzania.