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RALLY FOR THE RETURN OF | |
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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 |
November 10,1996
PRESS RELEASE N. 103
The USA attitude in the current refugee agony in Eastern Zaïre is disconcerting and extremely dissappointing.
While Europe and Africa are agitating for an emergency operation in Eastern Zaïre where an estimated 1.2 million Hutu refugees are starving, and while the UN Secretary general rightly is talking about "another genocide", the USA is deliberately delaying the deployment of an international force to secure safe corridors for the resumption of aid to refugees.
The USA is persistently linking her endorsement of the international force to the unconditional return of refugees. The mission of the force would therefore be solely to escort refugees back home without even giving them time to heal the trauma caused by the shelling and attacks of their camps by the very RPF to which they are to be handed over.
Whereas the unconditional support of the US administration to the monolithic RPF government in Rwanda is no longer a secret, the refugee community is at a loss to understand how the USA, champion of human rights observance, can be so insensitive to the plight of so many innocent people condemned to a brutal death by starvation, dehydration, exhaustion and cold.
Since the exodus of rwandese refugees in July 1994, the USA has never hidden her agenda of forcing refugees back home by uncivilised means:
1. In August-September 1994, while killings by Rwandese Patriotic Army in the north of Rwanda were at their height, as attested by the GERSONY report of September 1994, the USA proposed to drop food on the rwandan side of the border, so as to lure refugees back home. The proposal was fortunately unanimously rejected by all humanitarian agencies.
2. During the bloody dismantling of the KIBEHO camp by troops of RPA in April 1995, where over 8000 people were massacred, the USA was the only country involved in the rwandese crisis that did not express its indignation. To the contrary, the USA sent to Rwanda a very high powered delegation to help RPF get out of it unskathed.
3. Since late 1995, when it became clear that the refugee crisis was heading towards a deadlock, the USA unveiled publically its proposal of forcing rwandan refugees back home by force.
(.) On April 4, 1996, just after the launching of the infamous "cordon and search" operations by RPA throughout the country, during which an estimated 300 people are killed every month by RPA according to data released by human rights organisations including the UNHRFOR, the director of the USAID, Mr Brian Atwood, declared in
NGARA -Tanzania, that their Euro-American mission of which he was a member would propose to the United Nations to cut food supply to refugees, so as to compel them to go back home.
(.) In June 1996, during the Geneva donors' conference for Rwanda, the head of the US delegation declared that food relief to rwandan refugees be transferred inside Rwanda, in order to close camps, that "were offering unfettered corridors for arms shipment stop Hutu extremists".
(.) On 17th September 1996, during a visit to Kigali by a parliamentary delegation, Hon Peter Peterson hinted once again at the use of force to
break the refugee deadlock. He went on to praise the "Burundi incident" where the army just unceremoniously kicked out refugees at gun point and handed them over to RPF.
(.) During the 47th session of the UNHCR in Geneva, on 9th October 1996, the head of the US delegation and Assistant Secretary of State in charge of refugees and immigrants, madam Phylis Oakley advocated for the use of the "cessation clause"(i.e the suspension of all aid to refugees), with a view of driving refugees back home.
(.) Almost simultaneously, the USA Secretary of State, Mr Warren Christopher, reiterated after his talks with eastern african leaders in Arusha -Tanzania on 11th october 1996, that all rwandan refugees camps should be closes as a matter of urgency. He did not utter any word about the RPF human rights violations as urged to him just a few days before his departure from Washington DC, by African Rights, an US human rights organisation.
Even after war broke out in Eastern Zaïre, in September 1996, and the subsequent heavy shelling and assault by RPA on camps, the US State Department has continuously called for the repatriation of the refugees, as if they were the ones attacking Zaïre. No single word condemning the RPF incursion in Zaïre was heard from USA.
Ever since, despite the growing agony of the refugees, the USA has shown no sympathy at all towards them and has continuously toed the line of RPF government.
In other words, for the USA, any means that can compel refugees to go home however the cost, is welcome.
Rather than assuring refugees, this attitude can not but reinforce the feeling among refugees of fear and desperation.
Indeed, if the USA is so insensitive to their plight while being attacked in their camps outside Rwanda by RPA, how could they be sure that the USA would change its behaviour once they would be back home?
Beside, it is this unconditional support that is giving RPF the boldness of carrying out such terrorism acts and which prevent it from putting in place the necessary political changes that are claimed by refugees.
Consequently, refugees are of the view that if the USA wants to speed up the repatriation of refugees, the best way to do so is by stopping to treat them as pariah and handling the RPF government the way it handles other regimes that violate human rights worldwide. 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.
