By Moyiga Nduru
GATUMBA, BURUNDI, Oct 21 1996 (IPS)

Thousands of Hutu refugees from Burundi and Rwanda are fleeing the area around Uvira in eastern Zaire due to fighting between the country’s army and the Banyamulenge ethnic group.

The latest round of fighting in Uvira, a town in South Kivu province, erupted Friday night and within 24 hours, more than 110,000 of the 210,000 refugees in 11 camps near Uvira fled into the interior of Zaire, according to aid workers in the area.

Mary Theresa Nkurunziza, an administrative official at Gatumba, a border district 25km from Bujumbura, told IPS at the weekend that the events in Kivu had also forced about 30 Burundian Hutus to return to Gatumba in the past three weeks. “But the men never presented themselves to us,” she said. “We only received children and women.”

Earlier in the month, 500 Banyamulenge (ethnic Tutsi) refugees crossed into Rwanda, while another 586 fled to Burundi.

North and South Kivu have been the scene of conflicts which have underscored the ethnic tensions in the region.

Over the past months, Hutu refugees from Burundi and Rwanda have joined locals there in a hate campaign against the Banyarwanda, ethnic Tutsi who settled in Kivu in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the Banyamulenge, who are related to the Tutsis.

Unconfirmed reports say the Banyamulenge in the Zairean army deserted en masse to join rebels from their ethnic group who took up arms apparently to avoid suffering a fate similar to that of the Banyarwanda, most of whom were forced out of their region a few months ago.

Earlier this month, South Kivu Deputy Governor Lwasi Ngabo Lwabangi gave the Banyamulenge, who have been denied Zairean citizenship, seven days to leave the area or face full-scale war.

The situation of the Banyamulenge, who migrated to the highlands near Uvira between the 16th and 19th centuries, has been precarious ever since a 1981 nationality law questioned their right to Zairean citizenship.

When in 1995, Zaire’s parliament voted to apply the 1981 law, that led to increased harassment and expulsions of Banyamulenge from Kivu.

An investigator from International Alert, an international human rights watchdog, who travelled to eastern Zaire in early October, was told by Banyamulenge that they were fighting for their right to be Zairean citizens.

The investigator, Karen Twinning, said she learnt from Banyamulenge during her Oct. 8-12 visit that they took up arms as a last resort after the arrival of Hutu refugees in the area and increasing threats from the Zairean authorities and politicians.

In a report distributed by International Alert, she also noted that “none of South Kivu civil society accept that the Banyamulenge have the right to citizenship due to economic jealousy and hypocrisy”.

Some said the Banyamulenge were “rebels, saboteurs and disloyal serpents who have abused Zairean hospitality and are making false claims to nationality and land,” she added.

They also charged that the rebels were attacking innocent civilians, but made no mention of the harassment and massacres of Banyamulenge, at least 300 of whom were reportedly murdered in a spate of incidents in recent weeks.

The flow of refugees from the area is expected to increase since the Zairean military Sunday ordered the tiny expatriate community in Uvira — mainly aid workers — to leave the town, which is just across the border from Gatumba.

“The army also set up road blocks robbing vehicles and property at gunpoint,” one European aid worker in Uvira told IPS in a telephone interview on Sunday.

Sources here say that the army itself has been cut off from reinforcements and supplies as Banyamulenge rebels have blocked the road between Uvira and Kivu’s main town, Bukavu.

The fighting has triggered international concern.

U.S. Secretary of State George Moose on Sunday urged the Zairean government to take measures to end the conflict quickly and on the same day, the U.N. sent a special envoy to the Zairean capital to discuss the situation with local authorities.

The fighting in Uvira was first publicised when Zaire claimed that infiltrators from Burundi had entered Zaire to reinforce the Banyamulenge, who had taken up positions in their stronghold, the Mitumba mountains, which overlook Uvira.

Denying the charges, Burundi’s foreign minister Luc Rukingama countered: “Burundi has nothing to do with the fighting in Zaire. That’s entirely the internal affairs of Zaire.”

Speculation that Burundi and also Rwanda — which the Zaireans accuse of arming and training the rebels — might intervene to help the Tutsis in Zaire has been dismissed here. “We hope that the conflict in eastern Zaire will be resolved soon,” Burundi’s Prime Minister Firmin Ndimira told journalists here last week.

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