By Moyiga Nduru
KIGALI, Aug 23 1996 (IPS)

The Zairean government has decided to repatriate more than one million Hutu refugees in several camps in the Eastern Kivu Province before its May 1997 elections.

The announcement of the plan was disclosed Thursday by the Zairean Prime Minister, Kengo wa Dondo, after a two-day visit to Rwanda, widely viewed here as a mission to patch the strained diplomatic relations between the two countries.

More than one million Hutu refugees fled to Zaire two years ago during the advance of the then rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front(RPF) forces.

Another million crossed to neighbouring Burundi and Tanzania. Recent figures show that some 1.08 million are in Zaire, 530,000 in Tanzania, 40,000 in Burundi and 4,000 in Uganda.

The massive exodus also followed the genocide of up to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus by former government officials, the army, and the extremist Hutu Interahamwe militias, who after they were defeated by the RPF, allegedly forced ordinary Hutu citizens to follow them into Zaire.

Only a few Hutu refugees returned to Rwanda from Zaire after the RPF came to power. The majority remained in the camps fearing reprisals once back home, and as hostages of the ex-Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) and Hutu militiamen who are in control of the camps.

About 50,000 ex-FAR and an equal number of Hutu militiamen reportedly crossed the border into Zaire with all their weaponry. They have also reportedly received arms from some countries in Europe, Africa and Asia.

There also have been unconfirmed reports of French troops in refugee camps training the former Rwandan forces. The Zairean Prime Minister however rejected the allegation and challenged reporters to go to the camps to investigate.

This week’s visit of the Zairean top official seems to have cleared some of the obstacles to normalising diplomatic ties.

At the end of the visit, both countries agreed to “make operational the massive repatriation” of Rwandan refugees, to start the “progressive closure of camps” in Zaire, to separate genuine refugees from genocide criminals and to disarm armed elements in camps.

“It is the first time that the head of government commits himself to close camps,” Kengo wa Dondo told reporters.

“In the coming days, Zaire will systematically proceed to close camps, regardless of impediments that might be set up by those who in the past had wanted to prevent this operation from being carried out in the best conditions,” he added.

“The government of Zaire wants this operation to be carried out before it starts the census, the identification, and the registration of nationals who will participate in the May ballots next year,” the Zairean Prime Minister said.

The Rwandan Prime Minister, Pierre Celestin Rwigema, on the other hand gave assurances that the refugees would be safe once they returned to their villages.

“The guarantees one can give are the same we offered to other peoples inside (the country)… I do not see why those people would have fears to return, whereas here there are over six million people living peacefully on their properties.

“We have made a commitment on both sides to close camps and to receive populations,” Rwigema added, underscoring that the whole country is peaceful and the peasants are busy tilling their land.

The massive repatriation of the Hutu refugees however has roused the concern of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR), which claims that it was not consulted.

“It is absolutely necessary for the governments of Rwanda and Zaire to consult with UNHCR,” the UNHCR representative in Rwanda, Roman Urasa, told IPS.

Urasa added that the UN agency has always opposed forced repatriation.

But in the framework of the tripartite commission which groups the UNHCR, Zaire, and Rwanda, mechanisms to smoothly implement the challenging task of repatriating such a huge number of refugees will be discussed, he said.

Opposition Hutu Rwandan exiles, who formed the Rally for the Return of Democracy and Refugees in Rwanda(RDR), have argued that the massive return of refugees could provoke chaos and panic, and that the returnees would not recover their occupied properties.

Seth Sendashonga, a former minister of interior in the RPF government, said in Nairobi, Kenya that he fears for the safety of the refugees once they return home and has called for an international peacekeeping force to safeguard the refugees’ security.

Insecurity remains a major concern in Rwanda, said Sendashonga who resigned over alleged RPF atrocities against civilians. He added that both the RPF and the former army should be encamped for the refugees to feel safe to return home.

“Up to this day, a tremendously big number of Rwandese are still running away from their country and this number would increase if troops (international) were not deployed everywhere to counter this exodus,” he said.

But a Rwandan official, who works for the government’s repatriation commission said: “This has always been the gist of the argument used by those who planned and organised genocide in Rwanda to scare refugees from returning.

“Two years after the tragedy, the Rwandan government successively repatriated about to 1.2 million refugees, and settled them in their former properties without any slight quarrel.”

Ben Parker, coordinator of the Nairobi-based Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) of the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs, also has urged critics to give the plan a chance.

“If both parties are sincere to implement the repatriation exercise, then it is good news for the region,” he told IPS Friday.

Parker, whose organisation monitors the political situation in Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Zaire, said the two neighbours had been dragging their feet over the repatriation issue since the refugees fled to Zaire two years ago.

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