RASSEMBLEMENT POUR LE RETOUR DES

REFUGIES ET LA DEMOCRATIE AU

RWANDA

R.D.R

4, RUE A. CLUYSENAAR

1060 BRUXELLES

BELGIQUE

Tél: 32-2-5348035 Fax: 32-2-5348053

7, RESIDENCE MONTESQUIEU

49000 ANGERS

FRANCE

Tél/Fax: 33-41489987

 

15th,August 1995

 

PRESS RELEASE Nº 15

 

 

On August 12, the Burundi ministry of internal affairs released false infirmations, linking rwandese refugees with the bloody incidents of Kaburantwe, which may have resulted in the death of more than fifty displaced burundi citizens.

Until yesterday this intoxication was still widely relayed by a section of the international media, in particular Radio Rwanda, which found thereby a golden opportunity to justify the nowadays close cooperation between the two monolithic armies of Rwanda and Burundi.

Hardly two weeks had passed, since the same press had wrongly implicated rwandese refugees in the murder of italians tourists in the VIRUNGA park in Eastern Zaïre.

RDR strongly protests against this new campaign, making rwandese refugees, scapegoats for any security incident in the subregion.

In particular, RDR reminds that ethnic tensions in Burundi go back well before the 1994 exodus of rwandese refugees. Therefore, it would be misplaced to claim that the latter are the source of the trouble.

The same information wrongly once again linked the rwandese refugees of Mabayi in Burundi with the rising insecurity in the surrounding areas.

RDR is therefore very much concerned about possible reprisal attacks against rwandese refugees in Burundi, and calls upon the UNHCR, the Burundi government as well as the international community at large, to make everything possible in order to avoid a reoccurrence of bloody raids on rwandese refugees in Burundi.

 

For RDR

NZABANDORA Chris

Director of Information