Rwanda’s president said Friday his country has faced several provocations from neighboring Burundi, indicating ties between the two small countries have hit bottom.
“We have had all kinds of provocation from Burundi and we have not fallen for that. We have not been sucked into these provocations because that would be giving them what they want, to prove their point that they have no other problem except Rwanda,” Paul Kagame said in a statement posted on the presidency’s official Twitter handle.
Kagame’s comments come barely two weeks after Pierre Nkurunziza, Burundi’s president, wrote a letter to the East African Community head Yoweri Museveni, president of the larger nation of Uganda, accusing Rwanda of harboring Burundian dissidents.
In the letter, Burundi claimed that Rwanda supported a 2015 failed coup attempt against his government.
But Rwanda denied the claims, instead accusing Burundi of harboring rebels who want to destabilize peace in the tiny nation, which experienced a genocide in 1994 that claimed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
This week, Kagame warned that he will deal resolutely with his country’s enemies.
At press time, Burundi's government had yet to respond to Kagame's statement.
