ZAIRE-POPULATION: Banyarwanda Refugees Pour into Uganda

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, May 23 1996 (IPS) - Hundreds of ethnic Rwandans fleeing pogroms in Eastern Zaire’s North Kivu region have been forced to seek refuge in neighbouring Uganda.

About 400 Banyarwanda, as the ethnic Rwandans are called, crossed into Uganda over the past week, according to the Ugandan authorities, who said the refugees, mostly women and children, arrived with livestock and whatever of their belongings they could carry.

They, and thousands more who have run to Rwanda, have been fleeing attacks by gangs of ‘Bangilima’, militiamen drawn from the local Bahunde, Batembo, Banande, Banyanya and Bakobo ethnic groups, says the Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) of the Nairobi-based U.N. Department of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Bangilima claim to be “freedom fighters” defending the interests of indigenous Zaireans in North Kivu, home to many Banyarwanda, and they have vowed to halt what they describe as the territorial expansion of the Banyarwanda.

“The situation is very serious in that region,” says IRIN’s Ben Parker. “The Zaireans are fighting back. They are fighting both the Hutu and the Tutsi.”

Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) said Wednesday that unidentified attackers had massacred 100 Tutsis in North Kivu 10 days before, and that at least 3,000 more were still surrounded in two villages. It said they were likely to be murdered unless U.N. or other agencies organised their evacuation.

Banyarwanda have lived in North Kivu since before European powers divided up Africa among themselves in the 1890s.

When the Belgians arrived in Central Africa in the late 19th century, North Kivu used to be part of a Rwandese kingdom. Even after the region was incorporated into the then Belgian Congo (now Zaire) parts of it remained under the influence of the Banyarwanda, who became the pillars of rural economy there.

After ethnic troubles erupted in Rwanda in 1959, the Zairean Banyarwanda in North Kivu were joined by many Rwandan Tutsis.

The Banyarwanda even made up the overwhelming majority in some areas as in the district of Masisi, where they numbered 400,000 out of a total population of 600,000 in 1993.

Ethnic tensions erupted in Masisi in 1993, when hundreds were killed in clashes between Banyarwanda and Bangilima.

The situation worsened when the Interahamwe, Hutu militias who massacred thousands of people in Rwanda in April-July 1994, fled to North Kivu following the defeat of the then Rwandan army by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandese Patriotic Front, a former rebel group that now leads the Rwandan government.

Ethnic Tutsis in North Kivu soon found themselves under attack from the Interahamwe as well as the Bangilima militia. “Many Tutsis have since left,” said Parker. “And many would like to ‘return’ to Rwanda.”

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has put the number of Rwandan and Zairean Tutsis who fled to Rwanda in 1985 at 38,000, but that number only includes people registered with the UNHCR.

The exodus has continued this year and, according to the UNHCR, local officials in North Kivu have been forcing Zairean Banyarwanda to leave their country.

The UNHCR reported that, on 10 April, 870 people were “pushed to the border by the local authorities” and their Zairean identity cards confiscated by the Zairean Security Police. One week later another 1,200 Tutsis were “expelled from Zaire”, the U.N. agency said.

According to Desire Joe Bizimana, a Nairobi-based analyst on the Great Lakes region, the situation in Eastern Zaire appears to be deteriorating by the day. “If it continues, it will affect the whole region,” he said.

“What’s sad is that Zaire doesn’t seem to be in control of the situation,” he added.