RWANDA-ZAIRE: Exiled Rwandan Leaders at Odds Over Refugee Crisis

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Nov 11 1996 (IPS) - Exiled Rwandan leaders based here appear to be at variance on how to resolve the refugee crisis in eastern Zaire with the moderates calling on the refugees to return home and the hardliners accusing the United States of dragging its feet on international intervention.

The Resistance Forces for Democracy in Rwanda (FRD) feels that the hundreds of thousands of Rwandans who face death by starvation in eastern Zaire after being forced out of their camps by the conflict between the Zairean army and ethnic Tutsi rebels should return to Rwanda, as some have started to do.

“The sooner the refugees go home, the better,” Seth Sendashonga of the FRD told IPS on Monday. “It is better for them to go home and learn to reconcile with their compatriots in Rwanda.”

On the other hand, the hardline Rally for the Return of Refugees and Democracy in Rwanda (RDR) wants the refugees to be protected so that they can remain in Zaire.

It wants speedy action on a French proposal for the deployment of a 5,000-member international force licensed to use force to secure airports now held by rebels in eastern Zaire so that humanitarian agencies can use them as bases.

While the UN Security Council Friday paved the way for UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali to ask countries to support the creation of a multinational force for eastern Zaire, it stopped short of authorising any troops to use force.

A U.S. diplomat told IPS at the United Nations that council members were worried about France’s motives, given its history in the area. The U.S. was reported — by State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns — to be considering financial and logistical support for the proposed force, but not troops.

The RDR accused the international community, especially the United States, of dragging its feet on the establishment of the force.

“The USA is persistently linking her endorsement of the international force to the unconditional return of refugees,” Chris Nzabandora of the RDR said in a statement faxed to IPS on Monday. “The mission of the force would therefore be solely to escort refugees back home without even giving them time to heal from the trauma caused by the shelling and attacks of their camps by the very RPF to which they are to be handed.”

The Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), then a Tutsi-dominated rebel group, seized power in Rwanda after defeating the former army of Rwanda (FAR) and the Interahamwe, the Hutu militia that led the slaughter of up to one million people in April-July 1994.

Nearly two million Rwandans, including the FAR and the Interahamwe, fled to eastern Zaire and Tanzania when the RPF toppled the previous Hutu extremist government.

“Since the exodus of the Rwandese refugees in July 1994, the USA has never hidden her agenda of forcing the refugees back home by uncivilised means,” claimed Nzabandora, whose RDR is widely believed to be close to the FAR/Interahamwe.

Nzabandora cited a statement by Warren Christopher in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha on 11 October, in which the then U.S. Secretary of State called for all Rwandan refugees camps in eastern Zaire to be closed as a matter of urgency, as evidence of his claim.

“Even after war broke out in eastern Zaire in September 1996 and the subsequent heavy shelling and assault by RPA (Rwandan Patriotic Army) on camps, the U.S. State Department has continuously called for the repatriation of the refugees, as if they were the ones attacking Zaire,” he alleged. “No single word condemning the RPF incursion in Zaire was heard from USA.”

“The refugees feel that if the USA wants to speed up the repatriation of refugees, the best way to do so is by stopping to (sic) treat them as pariahs and handling the RPF government the way it handles other regimes that violate human rights worldwide,” he added. “Refugees have legitimate concerns for their security once in the hands of RPF and unless those concerns are tackled, there would be no hope for a quick and durable solution.”

Under the French proposal, backed by Spain, the international force would gradually be replaced by African troops but, so far, Ethiopia is the only African nation which has said it would send troops to eastern Zaire.

The European Union (EU) is said to have set Nov. 20 as the date for a decision on the proposed deployment.

While Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko — said over the weekend to be preparing to return to Zaire from France — has backed the French proposal, the government of Prime Minister Kengo wa Dondo said Friday that its aims should include ensuring that the refugees return to Rwanda and Burundi.

Briefing journalists in Kinshasa on a cabinet meeting held Friday in the Zairean capital, Minister of Communication Bogo Makeli said that if the force is sent, no new refugee camps must be set up in Zaire.

The humanitarian corridors should lead from eastern Zaire to Rwanda and Burundi to allow the refugees’ repatriation, explained Makeli, who is the spokesman of the Zairean government.

According to Makeli, the cabinet decided at Friday’s meeting that any supplies destined for the refugees should be sent to Kinshasa — not to eastern Zaire — and then to camps to be set up in Rwanda and Burundi.

While the RDR is against any move to force the repatriation of the Rwandan refugees trapped in eastern Zaire, the FRD thinks that they should be helped to return home to Rwanda.

It charges that they are being held hostage by the FAR/Interahamwe. “They compelled the majority of the present refugees to follow them in their exile so as to use them as political shields and stepping stones,” said Sendashonga.

“We call upon the refugees to free themselves from the influence of backward forces who kept on promising them the military reconquest of power as the only path for salvation and entertaining the flame of ethnic fundamentalism among the refugees, instead of preparing them for meeting the challenges of reconciliation, tolerance and the peacemaking process which is essential for the reconstruction of Rwandan society,” he said.

Sendashonga, a Hutu, called on Rwandans to free themselves from the yoke of what he saw as the Tutsi extremists in power in Kigali and the Hutu ethnic extremists in exile in the Great Lakes Region.

Sendashonga, a former interior minister in the RPF-led government, resigned in August 1995 over allegations that the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) was killing Hutu refugees. He and former prime minister Faustin Twagiramungu, another moderate Hutu, have teamed up to challenge both the Kigali government and Hutu extremists.

A Rwandan refugee based here told IPS he had little hope that the moderates would get very far. “In the final analysis, it is the gun which will win the hearts and minds of the refugees,” said the refugee, who refused to be named for fears of reprisal.

He said the FAR/Interahamwe were fighting alongside the Zairean army in eastern Zaire because “they know very well that when they return to Rwanda they will be charged for the 1994 genocide.

“As a result, they will force the refugees living under the territory they control to stay put in Zaire.”