Uganda’s government has rejected claims by the Israeli regime that it had agreed to take in nearly 40,000 African refugees after Tel Aviv initiated a plan to force them into leaving the occupied territories.
The denial came after Israel launched the program to coerce some 38,000 mostly Eritreans and Sudanese refugees to leave without even specifying where they would go.
Israeli activists claim that the Tel Aviv regime has signed agreements with Rwanda and Uganda under which the two impoverished African nations have agreed to accept the departing asylum seekers.
However, Uganda’s Foreign Minister Henry Okello Oryem insisted that his country never entered into such a deal and regarded the reports as “fake news”.
“That is fake news. We don’t know where that story is coming from. We don’t know why it keeps coming up,” Minister Okello Oryem told SoftPower News.
The Head of Public Diplomacy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told this website; “There is no agreement in existence. We receive refugees on a daily. There is no need for some special agreement with Israel”.
This website has discovered through Rwanda’s Foreign Affairs authorities that there’s equally no such agreement between Rwanda and Israel.
Under the said plan, the Africans have been given until March 31 to leave Israel, each getting a plane ticket as well as USD 3,500. Those who refuse to leave will face arrest.
“From what we know, Uganda is a party to the amended agreement, allowing that people can be coerced into leaving,” Adi Drori-Avraham from the Israel-based Aid Organization for Refugees and Asylum Seekers (ASSAF) had alleged.
He said Uganda has “for years been denying that it has some kind of deal with Israel,” but such arrangements with African asylum seekers are nothing new.