October 1996

PRESS RELEASE Nº96

RWANDESE REFUGEES HAVE NO RESPONSIBILITY WHATSOEVER IN THE CURRENT BANYAMURENGE SAGA.

In a surprising twist of events, VOA East-African correspondent declared yesterday on VOA-Africa World Tonight program (14/10/1996) that the BANYAMURENGE savage attacks on a local hospital and a refugee camp had been prompted by an attach on their positions by "hutu extremists".He could not however mention the position that had been attacked by those so called "Hutu extremists".

While dismissing that report as just baseless and malicious, RDR feels that this deliberate distortion of facts in an incident that involves a loss of lives is not only unethical, but also very cynical in the sense that all humanitarian organisations present in the area have all stated that the attack was absolutely unprovoked.

It is a well known fact that the ethnic conflict in that part of Zaire is older that the arrival of refugees in 1994. It is also well known that due to the tutsi internationalism, as shown in today's interview of the RPF ambassador in Brussels to the VOA-Kinyarwanda-Kirundi program, the BANYAMURENGE joined the RPF tutsi dominated rebellion in Rwanda simply to oust a hutu dominated government of the late HABYARIMANA.

After the victory of RPF in Rwanda, the BANYAMURENGE decided to go back home under the gun, like RPF did after the victory of NRM/NRA de MUSEVENI.

The BANYAMURENGE leadership has asserted publically that they are fighting because they have been marginalised. To the best of our knowledge, they have never stated that they are defending themselves against "Hutu extremists".

Moreover, in its report of 9th October 1996, the United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs, stated, with regard to gossips about a possible involvement of rwandese refugees in the crisis, that " in the case of UVIIRA, the alleged involvement of Hutu refugees in targeting BANYAMURENGE remains just that-allegations". Has the VOA East-African correspondent unearthed fresh evidence that the UN did not access to?

It is well known that the present crisis was sparked off by a clash between zairian troops and a group of BANYAMURENGE crossing from Rwanda, after a training in the RPA training camp of BUGESERA, as they were later to confess themselves. Could one believe that they had gone for military training in Rwanda in anticipation of an attack from refugees?

In our press release nº85, RDR had indicated that a combined Uganda-Rwanda and Burundi force was poised to attack Eastern Zaire. The ensuing events, namely the intensification of attacks from Uganda in northern Zaire, BUNAGANA being the main target, and the current crisis in UVIIRA, are part and parcel of that plan.

BANYAMURENGE are used to destabilise camps of rwandese and burundian refugees who are believed to be plotting against the tutsi dominated regimes in Rwanda and Burundi. The Ugandan involvement is justified by the fear of losing those satellite states.

Creating disorder in the area accommodating camps is therefore a way of forcing refugees to go home unconditionally and be subjected to the most humiliating treatment.

In the same strategy, supply routes to refugee camps in Eastern Zaire are all being attacked both in the north and south of Kivu respectively by elements from Uganda and the BANYAMURENGE in coordinated effort to starve refugees. The strategy has already paid because the WFP recently announced that it was suspending supplies from the southern route via Dar-Es-Salaam port because of the insecurity created by the BANYAMURENGE. The remaining route is therefore trough Uganda but the attacks on the area of BUNAGANA will very soon make it also impracticable.

The campaign to drag rwandese refugees in the BANYAMURENGE rebellion is also meant to justify their rebellion under the alibi of fighting "hutu extremists"wherever they are , as called for by an editorial of Radio Rwanda of Saturday 12th October 1996, a few days only after the gunning down of two refugees in Nairobi by RPF death squads.

Finally, the long term design of the governments of Rwanda and Burundi in abetting BANYAMURENGE rebellion is to create a safe zone along their border with Zaire, and the attack on camps of refugees in that area is precisely meant to scare them and force them to leave. Owing to the health of the president of Zaire, there is no better opportunity for those regimes to curve a small sanitary belt inside Zaire.

RDR would like to restate that refugees are mere victims of circumstances and should cease to be scapegoats for military adventurism of military dictatorships in the sub-region.

The manipulation of information on the misfortune of refugees is therefore tantamount to enhancing and protect the expansionist policies of those military dictatorships.