Rwandan refugees in Mozambique expressed their concern yesterday after the Mozambican government on Tuesday approved an extradition agreement signed in June with Rwanda, fearing that this would facilitate the persecution of exiled Rwandan dissidents.

Mozambique has already been the scene of disappearances and murders of expatriate Rwandan opponents. For Adriano Nuvunga, leader of the Center for Democracy and Development, Mozambican MPs cannot ratify this agreement.

"The Rwandans are worried and so are we. This validation runs counter to the global call for this extradition agreement not to be validated. There are two trends in relation to the Rwandan community: there have been murders of Rwandan refugees in Mozambique, but there have also been kidnappings and extra-judicial repatriations," begins the activist whose organization published a statement this Thursday in which it considers that "Nyusi opens door for 'boss' Kagame to collect his political opponents who are refugees in Mozambique".

It is estimated that 3,000 Rwandans have found refuge in Mozambique in the last three decades, following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which 800,000 to 1 million people died. Among the many Rwandans who have gone into exile in Mozambique, some have died or disappeared in circumstances that remain unclear.

In May 2021, the Rwandan community reported the forced disappearance of journalist Ntamuhanga Cassien, 37, who was in exile in Maputo. Months later, on September 13, 2021, Revocant Karemangingo, vice-president of the Association of Rwandan Refugees in Mozambique (ARRM), was shot dead near his home in the capital. A few days before the incident, the Rwandan community living in Mozambique denounced the alleged existence of a list of 20 Rwandan refugees scattered around African countries, including Mozambique, who had been identified as targets to be eliminated by Rwandan government death squads.

In this sense, in the view of Adriano Nuvunga, quoted by RFI, "with this extradition agreement, the extradition of Rwandans who have taken refuge in Mozambique in search of shelter, fleeing from the conditions in which justice has apparently been operating against those who are critical of Paul Kagame's power, will now become more widespread".

Asked whether the agreement was intended to facilitate the extradition of criminals who fled Rwanda after the genocide, the CDD official was dubious. "We don't think so. There is a total lack of transparency about the people who are being persecuted. What we've seen on the one hand in relation to the victims who were cruelly and barbarously murdered and those who were kidnapped, are people who, in the face of Kagame's power, took a critical stance and who, because of this, were forced to leave Rwanda and are now being persecuted," says the activist, for whom the extradition agreement "is intended to serve this authoritarian expedient and not necessarily the service of justice" in Rwanda.

From the point of view of the Center for Democracy and Development, this understanding is one of the quid pro quos that the Mozambican government is paying for Rwanda's military support in the fight against terrorism in Cabo Delgado, in the north of the country. Since July 2021, alongside the SADC regional force, Rwanda has sent more than 2,500 soldiers and police to fight the armed groups active in that province since October 2017.

"The Rwandan mission has no transparency, we don't know the terms of reference for the involvement of Rwandan troops in Mozambique, how long they will stay, how much it will cost, how it will be operationalized. It seems to us that yes, it is part of that kind of agreement that is totally under the table, without any kind of transparency," says Adriano Nuvunga.

In another aspect, the NGO for the defense of human rights and the fight against corruption is also concerned about the growing presence of Rwandans not only in the military field, guaranteeing the protection of gas projects, but also in the field of opportunities that could arise with the possible return to Cabo Delgado of the French hydrocarbon giant Total. In its communication, the CDD states that "Rwanda has prepared a private security company, ISCO, which should replace the Rwandan troops in protecting the LNG projects (...)

In addition to the security business, Rwanda is profiling companies to carry out construction work and supply goods and services in the LNG projects. One example is RADAR SCAPE, a Rwandan construction company that won an 800,000 dollar contract to rehabilitate 76 houses in the resettlement village of Quitupo, where families removed from the site of the Rovuma Basin gas projects live; NPD, one of Rwanda's largest construction companies, was added at the last minute to the list of companies bidding to carry out preparatory work on the Mozambique LNG project in 2022, led by France's TotalEnergies".

Alluding precisely to Rwanda's growing interest in Cabo Delgado in economic terms, the CDD official believes that this could be a factor of instability in the long term. "We are very concerned about the lack of transparency and the terms of reference of the engagement, which seem to us to be contrary to what is expected, which is that the first and few opportunities that arise, both in this phase of reconstruction and in the phase of resuming the projects, benefit Mozambicans, benefit small and medium-sized Mozambican companies, also as a form of inclusive growth and, as a result, remove the factors of the feeling of exclusion, what we see is that Rwanda is snatching up these opportunities that are for Mozambicans in the first place (...) this is very worrying because it's not just the Mozambicans.) This is very worrying because it could help stabilize the situation today, but it could be a factor of instability in the medium and long term," concludes Adriano Nuvunga.