RWANDA-KENYA: Relations Hit all-time Low

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Jun 21 1996 (IPS) - Relations between Kenya and Rwanda have hit an all-time low with the decision by the government of Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi to close Rwanda’s embassy here and order its diplomats to leave the country.

The five diplomats, including Francis Mugabo, who was recently released after spending months in detention here, left for Rwanda on Friday, one day after the embassy was forced to close.

Ties between the two countries had been frosty ever since the former rebel Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) seized power in Kigali in 1994. The RPF-led government has repeatedly accused Kenya of harbouring top officials of the hardline Hutu government it succeeded, during whose reign over half a million people, mainly minority Tutsis were murdered.

Since early 1995, two Rwandese charge d’affaires had been expelled by Kenya. Mugabo, who sparked the latest spat between the two countries, had been in police custody here for an alleged attempt on the life of a Rwandese opposition leader.

“The closure of the Rwandese embassy in Nairobi is to underscore the seriousness of the matter but does not amount to severance of diplomatic relations between Kenya and Rwanda,” said a statement put out by the Kenyan government this week.

It said Kenya had given the Kigali government a choice between waiving Mugabo’s diplomatic immunity or closing its embassy in Nairobi. “The government of Rwanda has adamantly refused to waive the diplomatic immunity without which Mr Mugabo could not be brought to trial,” it added.

Rwanda insists that its diplomat was framed.

Mugabo had been arrested after Seth Sendashonga, a Hutu politician linked to a move by exiled leaders to form an opposition front to the Kigali government, was wounded in a shooting incident in a Nairobi residential suburb on Feb. 26. His nephew, who was with him at the time, was also injured.

Four days later, Kenya’s attorney general, Amos Wako, issued a statement naming Mugabo as one of the suspects. Wako said two of the assailants escaped, “but … Mugabo was arrested at the scene, and was found to be in possession of one pistol… together with its silencer and 13 rounds of 9mm ammunition.”

Mugabo was released this week.

When news of the closure of the embassy broke, the Rwandan diplomats refused to talk to journalists who had gathered in the lobby of the International House, a posh complex in central Nairobi which rents offices to foreign missions.

One diplomat, waving his hands in exasperation, told reporters: “No comment. You know everything.”

Later, departing Charge d’Affaires Pierre Hakizimana issued a statement detailing the events which led to the closure of the embassy.

The four-paged document, made available to ips Friday, accused the Kenyan police of torturing Mugabo while he was in detention.

“Mr Mugabo was tortured seriously and he could hardly eat. He was surviving on the ration of 2 eggs per day. He was seriously sick, he could hardly urinate,” said the statement.

The mission alleged that Mugabo was, at one instance, beaten by a policeman who also took away all his belongings. After beating him, the policeman, whose serial number was quoted as 54582, took him naked to the officer-in-charge.

“This kind of inhuman treatment and torture should not be meted out to any human being leave alone a diplomat,” said the statement.

In May, a leading opposition party, the Forum for Restoration of Democracy (FORD-Kenya), had urged the Moi government to release Mugabo, who was an administrative attache at the embassy.

“Kenya can only demand that (Mugabo) be recalled as there is no evidence that he committed crimes in Kenya that warrant his continued incarceration,” ran a statement signed by FORD-Kenya’s secretary for international affairs, Ismail Aden Yussuf.

“It is time Kenya’s foreign policy was based on the collective interests of Kenyans and not personal relationships or (to) satisfy the whims of leaders,” Yussuf had said.

Like Rwanda’s government, FORD-Kenya has accused Nairobi of harbouring the masterminds of the 1994 genocide and harassing Kigali’s diplomats on trumped-up charges.

Prominent Rwandese exiles who have found sanctuary here include Agatha Uwiringiyimana, wife of late president Juvenal Habyarimana. Uwiringiyimana is on Kigali’s most wanted list of genocide suspects.

She is also rumoured to be behind the rearming of the defeated former Rwandese army in the refugee camps of eastern Zaire, who have reportedly been planning to invade the tiny Central African country and seize power there.

Last year, Moi had threatened to arrest investigators assigned to track down genocide suspects and bring them before an international tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania. Rwanda reacted angrily to Moi’s statement, and after concerted international pressure, he backed down.

It was not immediately clear whether the diplomatic rift between the two countries would have an effect on economic ties. Landlocked Rwanda relies on the Kenyan port of Mombasa for the bulk of its foreign trade.