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RIGHTS-AFRICA: Revived Spectre of Genocide in Great Lakes Region

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Aug 17 2004 (IPS) - United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour may suggest the urgent creation of an international commission to investigate the recent massacre of around 160 Tutsi refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in Burundi, a U.N. spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Leading human rights watchdogs and international organisations have demanded an independent international investigation into the Aug. 13 killings in the Gatumba refugee camp in Burundi, located just four kilometres from the DRC border.

The London-based Amnesty International called Tuesday for an impartial inquiry, “the findings of which should be made public and acted upon so that the perpetrators can be brought to justice.”

The head of the human rights unit in the U.N. mission in the DRC (MONUC), Roberto Ricci, travelled to Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi, to help start a fact-finding mission commissioned by the U.N. Security Council.

The mission is led by the head of the human rights unit in the U.N. operation in Burundi (UNOB), Dimiter Chalev, said Annick Stevenson, spokeswoman for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

The initial results are to be obtained this week, Stevenson said in a news briefing in Geneva.

MONUC and UNOB have a Security Council mandate to investigate and prevent mass killings in the Great Lakes region in east-central Africa, which comprises Burundi, the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda.

In 1994, as many as one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in that region within the space of just a few months by Hutu militias.

In its press release Tuesday, Amnesty International said the attack on the transit camp holding mainly Tutsi (Banyamulenge) refugees was reportedly committed by forces from across the border in the DRC.

Besides the 160 refugees – mainly women and children – who were hacked, shot and burnt to death, around 100 were wounded.

The World Food Programme’s (WFP) Christiane Berthiaume said the injured were being treated in five hospitals in the Bujumbura region.

The WFP will provide assistance for the wounded as well as food aid for the 500 survivors of the attack in the Gatumba camp.

The director of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Africa Bureau, Zobida Hassim-Ashagri, arrived in Bujumbura Tuesday to discuss with local authorities the specifics of a plan to immediately transfer the refugees to a site located far from the DRC border.

The new camp will be set up in Giharo, in the southeastern province of Rutana, some 120 kilometres from Bujumbura, said UNHCR spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis.

Prior to the brutal killings, Gatumba housed about 860 refugees from the DRC, part of a group of 20,000 that crossed the border last June, fleeing the troubled eastern DRC province of South Kivu.

Pagonis said the attack was carried out by armed elements in Burundi and the DRC, although she did not identify the perpetrators.

But she urged that the culprits be brought to justice.

Amnesty International noted that an armed Hutu faction in Burundi, the National Liberation Forces (FNL), had claimed responsibility for the massacre.

But other sources, including the governments of Burundi and Rwanda, have accused armed groups of Congolese and Rwandans based in the DRC of participating in the slaughter, which was carried out when most of the refugees were sleeping.

The human rights organisation said the armed forces of Burundi and the government of Rwanda have publicly mentioned the possibility of a military intervention in the DRC.

Speculation on the identity of the killers will likely fuel the political and ethnic tensions in Burundi and the DRC, leading to further human rights violations, warned Amnesty.

Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said the U.N. mission in Burundi has decided to increase the number of peacekeepers in Gatumba and the other refugee camps.

Two platoons of South African soldiers, of between 30 and 35 troops each, were deployed Tuesday around refugee camps in Rugombo and Karurama, in the province of Chibitoke.

Twenty Pakistani troops were posted around the camp in Gasorwe, in the province of Muyinga, and a company of between 90 and 110 Ethiopian troops will be stationed at the camp on Friday.