Rwanda accuses Italy over orphans

Many Rwandans felt betrayed and abandoned by the West

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has accused Italian officials of showing contempt after refusing to hand back nearly 50 children of the 1994 genocide.

Mr Kagame's says the Rwandan children have been adopted in Italy against the wishes of their surviving relatives and he went to Italy last week in an unsuccessful attempt to get the children returned.

Forty-one of the children were traced by their Rwandan relatives to the town of Castenedolo near Milan.

Rwanda could hardly go to war with Italy

President Kagame

But an Italian court ruled that they could not be returned to Rwanda.

During the genocide many children were rescued by aid workers and taken to Europe, and in the past four years, dozens of Rwandan children have been returned home.

Italian officials said the children were legally adopted only after searches for parents or blood relatives proved fruitless.

The mayor of the town says that the children, now aged between six and 10, are now happily settled and a move would be disruptive and unhelpful.

"You can't transfer children who have become accustomed to life in a western country to a country that has nothing," the mayor was quoted as saying.

Family rights

Mr Kagame though is threatening legal action to bring their children home.

Rwanda has had to cope with many orphans

He told journalists that Rwanda could hardly go to war with Italy but said he could not understand the attitude of Italian officials.

"I don't see how somebody can be denied rights to have back his or her child.

"I don't see under what law or international law. I don't know why they put adoption before the rights of a family to have back their child."

'Contempt' for Africa

The children have become something of a cause célèbre, and their fate is becoming a top priority for the Rwandan Government - which has long been critical of what it sees as the patronising and often unhelpful attitudes of Western governments towards Rwanda.

Mr Kagame suggested the "stay in Italy" camp based its position more on a snobbish contempt for African poverty than a real concern for the children's welfare.

He said that if the whole issue boiled down to Italy being an easier, more prosperous place to live than Rwanda, all Rwandans should go there.

"Nobody needs to tell us how poor we are," he said, but added that Rwanda was pround of how successfully it had coped since the genocide and had provided homes across the country for orphans.

President Kagame's Tutsi-led rebels came to power after Hutu extemists carried out a three month genocidal campaign that led to the deaths of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.