Rwanda has expelled more than 1,300 Burundians from its borders in the past week after they declined to move to refugee camps, Reuters news agency reports senior Burundi officials to say amid signs of straining political relations between the two East African nations.
Rwandan officials were not immediately available for comment on the reported removals of Burundians who had been working there, many of them for years – an account confirmed by one of those affected.
Rwanda has been hosting tens of thousands of people who have fled more than a year of political violence in Burundi, as others who have crossed the border for years to work, often without formal permission.
“They were asked to go to refugee camps or return back to Burundi,” the governor of Burundi’s Kirundo province next to the Rwandan border, Melchior Nankwahomba, told Reuters by phone.
“Those who refused to go to refugee camps were chased … and stripped of their possessions,” he said, adding that they were pushed out by local officials.
Burundi has accused Rwanda of interfering in its political crisis that was ignited by President Pierre Nkurunziza’s successful bid for a controversial third term in office.
More than 450 people have been killed in the Burundi violence, with about 250,000 others forced to flee to neighbouring states.
