UNHCR DEMANDS RELEASE OF RWANDESE, DIRECTS GOVT NOT DEPORT HIM
COMBINED SECURITY TEAM PICK WELL-KNOWN RWANDESE REFUGEE,WANT TO DEPORT HIM TO KIGALI
Lusaka-1st December,2023
A combined team of Police and Security Officers this evening picked up a well-known Rwandese refugee, Appolinaire Nsengiyumva.
Nsengiyuma has been picked up and after initial intoregations was detained at Ibex Police Station.
Sources and family members confirmed that authorities want to secretely hand him over to Kigali, an avtion which is against international law and the 1951 Convention on Refugees.
In 2021, Appolinaire Nsengiyumva who worked as a junior officer at the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), was in the limelight following allegations levelled against him and President Edgar Lungu in a court of law in Kigali.
Zambia’s State House and the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, immediately dismissed the allegations as false and sensational.
Appolinaire was named by that country’s rebel leader Maj Nsabimana Sankara Callixte in a court testimony that his link in Zambia was Appolinaire Nsengiyumva who allegedly enjoyed friendship with President Edgar Lungu.
Under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.
It is illegal for any country to forcibly return (refoulement) refugees to a territory where they face danger or discriminate between groups of refugees.
