RWANDA-POPULATION: Refugees Prevented From Returning Home

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Dec 13 1996 (IPS) - Hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees in Tanzania are being prevented from returning to their country by Hutu extremists, aid agencies report.

The refugees, numbering over 750,000 abandoned their camps in northwestern Tanzania on Thursday and are said to be fleeing in every direction except Rwanda.

“We have been hearing that the Interhamwe have been visiting the refugees in their huts and telling them not to go home,” said a western European aid official in Nairobi on Friday.

“The militia have been telling the refugees the usual stories…that they will be killed once they return to Rwanda,” said the official who declined to be named.

Sadako Ogata, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told journalists in Geneva, Switzerland on Thursday that the flight of the refugees had been provoked by the Interahamwe.

Members of the Interahamwe, which means those who attack together in the Kinyarwanda language, fear returning home because of the role they played in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Up to one million people were slaughtered.

The current refugee crisis heightened in Tanzania following the government’s announcement last week that refugees had until the end of December to return home to Rwanda.

“We don’t see any reason for the refugees to stay in Tanzania when their country is peaceful,” said Lt. Evans Balama, a local administrator at Ngara, where the refugees have been resettled, on the border with Rwanda and Burundi.

He told journalists on Thursday that Tanzanian authorities were planning to repatriate the refugees at an average of 25,000 people every day.

On Friday, Abbas Gullet of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Ngara told the international press that “the flight caught everyone by surprise. The refugees were all heading in one direction…it indicates that they were organised.”

Tanzania warned the refugees on Thursday that those who strayed four kilometres out of the camp would not be regarded as refugees and that they would be treated as illegal immigrants.

But Ogata urged Tanzania to take a non-confrontational approach to let the refugees return to their camps. “Whatever happens, they will be treated as refugees until they return home to Rwanda,” she said.

More than two million refugees fled to Zaire, Tanzania, Burundi and Kenya after a new Tutsi dominated Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) government took over in Kigali in July 1994, following a three-year civil war.

Until last month, the refugees had shunned voluntary repatriation mainly because of fears of retribution and intimidation in the camps by the Interahamwe.

But following the fighting in eastern Zaire between Banyamulenge rebels and government troops, Lt-Gen Maurice Baril, commander of the Multinational Military Force, said last week that some 640,000 Rwandans had already returned home leaving about 165,000 still in the region.

Chris Nzabandora, spokesperson for the Nairobi-based hardline Rally for the Return of Refugees and Democracy in Rwanda, accused the international community of forcing the refugees to return home against their will.

But Seth Sendashonga, a former minister in the current Rwandan government, said the former members of the defeated Rwandan army and the Interahamwe were using the refugees as human shields.

“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,” he said.

“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,” said Sendashonga.

Sendashonga, a former interior minister in the RPF-led government, resigned in August 1995 over allegations that the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Army 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, many of whom were involved in the genocide.

The UNHCR recently announced that it was excluding from refugee status some 20 Rwandans indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in connection with the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

“The 20 Rwandans are believed to be among those behind the execution and planning of the genocide in which more than 500,000 Rwandans were killed,” UNHCR said in a press statement.

“Some of these Rwandans are in the custody of the tribunal, including three who were arraigned in the Tanzanian town of Arusha in June. The others are known to be in Europe and Africa,” the statement added.

The UN agency urged governments to refuse refugee status to the 20 if they sought asylum.

A UN Security Council resolution which established the Tribunal requires the cooperation of inter-governmental and non- governmental organisations and states to take measures to bring to justice persons responsible for the genocide and flagrant violations of international humanitarian law in Rwanda.

The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees provides for the exclusion of “any person with respect to whom there are serious reasons for considering that they have committed a crime against peace, a war crime or a crime against humanity”.

A similar exclusion provision is found in the 1969 refugee convention of the Organisation of African Unity.