December 27,1996

The wanton and massive arrests among Hutu returnees recently expelled from Zaïre and Tanzania is a foretaste of what RPF has in stock for all refugees. It look like the beginning of what Major General Paul Kagame sarcastically called one day "emptying a drum full of water using a mere tea spoon".

For over two years now, rwandese refugees (new caseload) have laboured to prove that RPF government could not be trusted, given its past and present human rights records. But their efforts were always greeted with suspicion and taken as mere pieces of propaganda and intimidation acts, despite hard evidence on the ground.

As a result, the international community could not find any better answer to their pleas, than throwing them by force in the hands of the very RPF that they had fled.

In April 1995, rwandese refugees from KIBEHO camps refused to leave their camps, citing mistreatment meted out against their fellow refugees kicked out of KIBUYE camps by RPF four months earlier. Some foreign envoys accredited to KIGALI had to offer their personal guaranty before starving refugees reluctantly flocked back home.

Six months later, reliable sources including a United Nations monitoring service, indicated that over 6000 of them were still unaccounted for.

Early this year, the BURUNDI government, in league with the RPF government, violently expelled nearly 100,000 rwandese refugees. At first, UNHCR lukewarmly protested, before making a U -Turn and endorsing the remaining operation, saying that RPF government had given firm assurance that nobody would be victimised.

For nearly 8 months, the international community has been told that the operation had been so smooth that only 80 returnees had been arrested, making even no mention of the four refugees shot dead during the siege of the camps by a combined force of RPA and the Burundi army.

Early this month, Amnesty International(release of December 6,1996) acknowledged what refugees had all along been saying, that over 1000 returnees had actually been arrested. Why was UNHCR deceiving the world? Just to prepare the ground for the more expulsions of rwandese refugees.

When RPF backed rebels invaded Eastern Zaïre in October 1996, the UNHCR called on refugees to return back home as if the whole invasion was meant to corner them into doing so. Refugees reluctantly heeded to this call, citing again security concerns. So did their fellow refugees from Tanzania, when the latter's government unexpectedly decided to expel them. Some even had to commit suicide instead of going back to Rwanda, but this did not move neither the Tanzanian government, nor UNHCR and RPF lobbies abroad, who were busy clamouring that there was no cause for worry. Today, over 3000( 2000 only according to UNHCR) have been arbitrary arrested and are languishing in the deadly jails of RPF. Others are still trekking on foot the over four hundred kilometres from NGARA to their homes, RPF having prevented all humanitarian organisations from giving them transport. Many others from Zaïre are under house arrests and cannot even cross from one village to another one without a special clearance from RPF security services.

So far, most of the arrested returnees are from Tanzania, a fact that has puzzled many observers. RPF on its side has added to the intoxication by declaring that all the arrested returnees had been apprehended after being denounced by their neighbours as "genociders".

As every body may know, most of the returnees from Tanzania hail from the "prefectures" of BYUMBA, MUTARA, and KIBUNGO. Most of this area, especially a stretch of land along the rwandan border with Uganda and Tanzania, has been turned into a de facto TUTSILAND since RPF took over power. A visit to the newly demarcated prefecture of MUTARA, would not prove us wrong.

The arrival of those returnees( new caseload)scares squatters in that TUTSILAND. Hence, the need to get rid of them using all available tactics. The issue of being a "genocider" is just an alibi because:

Returnees are simply being arrested for trespassing of the self declared TUTSILAND. This was a long term design of RPF since the very beginning of the war in 1990.

It is amidst this campaign of wide spread arrests and intimidation that RPF is opening the second trials of "genocide suspects", a trial that is going to be nothing but a political trial, a mockery of justice, judging by all the legal aspects that have been flouted during the preparations.