Uganda Deports 5 More Rwandans After Extreme Torture

Clock-wise: Jesicca Muhongerwa, Vanessa Agasaro, Fred Turatsinze, Dinah Kamikazi and Hubert Munyangaju

Uganda has again deported five more Rwandans today.

The deportees who looked very tired and weak narrated to media how relieved they feel after surviving death from torture while held incommunicado for weeks in undisclosed detention centres in Uganda.

At about 19h30 local time, Rwanda National  Police van dropped five deportees at Police headquarters in Kacyiru, City of Kigali, following two weeks of detention in Uganda.

Those deported include; Hubert Munyangaju Mugwaneza – a consultant who owns a firm in Uganda’s capital Kampala, Dinah Kamikazi – a bar and saloon owner in Mbarara, Agasaro Vanessa also from Mbarara; Jesicca Muhongerwa – a bar owner also in Mbarara and Fred Turatsinze who owns a dairy in the same area.

Narrating their ordeal to journalists this evening, the victims, all claiming to have been picked at their businesses in the evening hours between 16th and 18th this month, said they had been tortured at different unknown detentions, but later found themselves at Kireka Police station in Kampala, Uganda before being deported to Rwanda.

“At 9pm, I noticed a Noah vehicle parked in front of my diary business. Five plain-clothed men disembarked and whisked me inside. They blindfolded me, drove off and found myself in Mbarara town. Later alone, I found myself in another unknown place,” said Turatsinze – a resident of Gatsibo district in Rwanda’s Eastern Province.

“For two weeks, I was beaten up, fed maize flour and tortured while being asked whether I work with Rwandan authorities,” Turatsinze said.

For Dinah Kamikazi, who was arrested along her niece, Vanessa Agasaro, “it was a hell of torture. At one point, I was undressed, soaked in water and threatened with electric shocks. I was told to mention a number of Rwandan officials I work with. All this was done while blindfolded.”

“Military men and one woman accused me of being a soldier and an operative of Rwandan authorities which I plainly kept denying. I insisted that I didn’t even know any of the names they were mentioning of people they said I work with,” she added.

Apart from Kamikazi and her niece, all these people were differently arrested but were asked similar questions while blindfolded.

At detention centres, they said, were detained in different cells, withought chance to see outside.

But for Munyangaju Hubert, a different scenario, he told KTPress, is when he was stopped by eight armed soldiers in Kampala city as he drove his relatives outside his home, and taken to different unknown detentions.

“While detained, both my legs and arms were tied. They accused me of kidnapping Rwandans in Uganda. They also accused Rwanda of selling the Genocide.”

From there, he adds, Ugandan soldiers threatened him he would be killed if he didn’t reveal the number of people he worked with.

“I kept telling them i have no connection with Rwanda government. I arrived in Uganda in 2011. All I have been doing is business but this could not satisfy them,” Munyangaju told journalists.

From where he was detained, he said another 57-year-old Rwandan only identified as ‘Nunu’ remains under custody.

Last week on Friday, another Rwandan – Fidele Gatsinzi was deported after he was picked by the Rwanda National Congress (RNC) and Ugandan intelligence operatives, as he claimed.

He too was held incommunicado for 12 days under what he called ‘extreme torture’.

Gatsinzi, with swollen legs, said he survived multiple death attempts until last Friday morning around 2am, when he was ferried to Katuna border connecting Rwanda and Uganda in the northern part of the country.

Rwandans brought today were deported via the same border.

All said they were sent to Rwanda without chance to visit their abandoned businesses.

“I have a home there, properties and my family. I hope both governments will negotiate and see us reconnect with our families and properties,” Munyangaju lamented amidst tears.