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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 19,1996
PRESS RELEASE Nº105
THE CURRENT CHAOTIC REPATRIATION OF RWANDESE REFUGEES IS LIKELY TO TURN INTO ANOTHER KIBEHO.
Despite the ever optimistic mood of UNHCR and RPF government that they would cope with any repatriation of refugees however massive, the ongoing forced repatriation of refugees from Zaïre is proving yet another nightmare for returnees.
Indeed, some have walked for three days without any break, with no or very little food and under the hardship of the current climatic conditions in northern Rwanda.
Others found their properties still in the hands of RPF political mobilisers and/or soldiers and are compelled to be squatters on their own properties, while others were arrested immediately on their arrival at home under the usual blank charge of "genocide "that hang on every Hutu's head.
Those who escaped the hell of bullets and crossed into Uganda have now been deprived of all their properties and any vehicle suspected of belonging to a rwandese refugees whatever the registration is now being hunted in Uganda.
Now that the international community has decided to enforce the usual conspiracy of silence, and let go unchallenged the RPF brutal and unprecedented strategy of forcing refugees back home at gun point, and is even pressurising Tanzania to follow suit, RDR would like to recommend the following measures, in order to avert another human tragedy.
1. Part of the human disaster that the international force was supposed to handle has now shifted to Rwanda. It is therefore logical that part of the intended force be deployed inside Rwanda if the aim was really to help refugees. Should RPF oppose such idea, it would be a clear sign of a hidden agenda.
2. The duty of this force inside Rwanda should be to support logistically humanitarian agencies in coping with the emergency situation, and provide the much needed psychological security to returnees while at the same time
dissuading RPF from carrying out wanton arrests as it is already doing.
3. The force should stay around until all returnees, including those of Mutara-Bugesera and Mayaga that have been turned into Tutsilands, have recovered their properties.
4. The office of the United Nations Human Rights Observers in Kigali should as a matter of priority be boosted, in order to be able to effectively respond to the new challenge of monitoring the resettlement of returnees.
5. The resettlement committees set up by RPF at the commune level to screen refugees should be open to foreign human rights observers, local human rights associations, religious organisations and humanitarian agencies, and even representatives of returnees, to ensure fair play.
6. The office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Kigali should be the sole body to order the arrest of returnees whom RPF suspect of involvement in the 1994 massacres.
Short of these watchdog measures, returnees can meet the same fate as their colleagues of Kibeho who simply disappeared after their bloody eviction from their camps in Kibeho in April 1996.
