"We were accused of being envoys of Burundi government and sent there to spy on Rwanda," he said.
Paul
Kagame, President of Rwanda attends the session "The Transformation of
Tomorrow" during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in
Davos, Switzerland January 20, 2016.
Rwanda has expelled about 400 Burundians
back to their country accusing some of them of espionage and fuelling
tensions between the two small neighbours whose relations have been
strained by Burundi's political crisis, an official said on Sunday.
It's
the second such expulsion in about a month and brings the total number
of Burundians deported over the period to at least 1,700.
One
of those expelled, a young man who did not wish to be named for fear he
might be targeted, told Reuters Rwandan officials accused some of them
of spying for Burundi.
"We were accused of being envoys of Burundi government and sent there to spy on Rwanda," he said.
Renée
Mukandori, a Burundi local government official, confirmed the expulsion
to Reuters and said it occurred on Thursday and Friday. Those deported
mostly came from the Bugabira district of northern Burundi.
Burundi
has accused Rwanda of interfering in its political crisis - which has
seen Burundian government forces clash with protesters and rebels who
say the president violated the constitution by standing for a third term
last year.
Rwanda has denied Burundi's accusations.
But
the violence in Burundi has rattled Rwanda and other countries across
the central African region were there are still fresh memories of the
1994 genocide in Rwanda, which like Burundi has a Hutu majority and
Tutsi minority.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame, a
Tutsi, has said in the past he would not allow a repeat of the genocide
in the region and has been critical of the handling of the crisis by
President Pierre Nkurunziza, who led a Hutu rebel group in Burundi's civil war.
About
a quarter of million people have fled the violence in Burundi and most
of them are now in refugee camps in Rwanda and Tanzania.
Gille,
another man who was sent back to Burundi, said those expelled were not
newly arrived refugees and that they had come to Rwanda years ago
seeking economic opportunities.
"We went to
seek for better life. Once we got there, some of us rented fields and
cultivated...we were not given time to go to harvest what is on our
land," he said.
Rwandan officials could not
be immediately reached but foreign minister, Louise Mushikiwabo, told
reporters last week the Burundians being expelled were in the country
illegally.
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