Come back home, minister urges Rwandan refugees

BLANTYRE.
A Rwandan minister has urged some 2 000 refugees in Malawi to come home, saying the country had returned to peace and stability, local media said yesterday.
“Please return home. There is peace in Rwanda, there is security in Rwanda,” the country’s refugees minister, General Marcel Gatsinzi, was quoted as saying by Malawi’s Sunday Times.
He made the appeal at Dzaleka camp in Dowa district in central Malawi, which houses some 14 000 refugees from Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan.
Gatsinzi told the refugees not to fear “wrong information” telling them they would be prosecuted for genocide if they returned home.
He said such information was being spread by “fugitive Rwandans who committed crimes during the genocide and are on the run across the globe.”
Rwanda’s 1994 genocide claimed 800 000 lives and sent an estimated two million refugees over the country’s borders.
Aaron Sangala, Malawi’s internal affairs minister, said authorities from the two countries would draw up a road map for repatriating the refugees on voluntary basis.
“We want to promote a ‘go, see and tell’ policy,” he said, adding that some of the refugees would be flown back to Rwanda to visit their homes and see the current conditions in the country.
Under a 2009 agreement between Rwanda and United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, Rwandans who fled to Malawi will have refugee status until the end of this year.
Those who want to remain will have to apply for temporary residency or citizenship. — AFP.