Nduhungirehe said in a tweet yesterday while responding to Israel based newspaper’s article saying that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the New Israel Fund, a US based human rights organization was behind Rwanda’s decision to pull out of agreement to deport asylum seekers from there to Rwanda.
Nduhungirehe said that he was surprised with the statement and added that Rwanda doesn’t even know what the fund is about.
“I am extremely surprised by this statement. My surprise comes less from the fact that Rwanda doesn’t even know what this New Israel Fund is all about, but more from the assumption that a foreign NGO can successfully impose any pressure on a sovereign government named Rwanda Government,” the tweet reads.
He noted that there was no deal between the two countries in the first place.
“We didn’t cancel any deal with Israel for the simple reason that there was no deal. The open door policy of Rwanda towards African migrants has a basic requirement that Israeli’s proposal didn’t meet: the migrants must be willing to come to Rwanda without any form of constraint,” he added.
About Netanyahu’s statement
Earlier this week, Netanyahu officially named Rwanda as a “third-party country”. In a Facebook post, he said that New Israel Fund and the European Union pressured Rwanda and backed out the agreement.
It was the first time for Israeli government official to claim so.
“For the past two years I have been working with Rwanda so that it will serve as a third-party country to absorb the infiltrators expelled there, even without their consent,” he said.
Netanyahu explained that he had been forced to seek out a deal with the UN.
“Rwanda agreed to this and we began deporting people there,” Netanyahu continued.
“In recent weeks, due to the tremendous pressure on Rwanda from the New Israel Fund and the officials in the European Union, Rwanda backed out of the agreement and refused to accept any more infiltrators from Israel,” he said.
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