Governor of Ruyigi appeals for aid

The governor of Burundi’s Ruyigi Province, Isaac Bujaba, has appealed for more humanitarian aid, saying that the repatriation of refugees to the area was "in full swing", government-run Radio and Television Nationale du Burundi reported.

Appealing for food and non-food items, he said that if help was not received the situation could become "overwhelming" and "catastrophic".

An official from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Ruyigi, Apollinaire Bigirimana, told IRIN that - between 31 May and 8 June - 2,027 people had spontaneously returned from Tanzania, with between 100 and 500 people arriving each day. Prior to this, about 300 people had been arriving per week.

Since last week, he said, all the refugees had been receiving a month's supply of food from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as well as plastic sheeting, hoes, blankets, jerry cans, kitchen sets, and soap - at a transit camp in the zone of Gisuru. He added that many refugees had reported having had their possessions stolen in transit, and having been beaten by unknown assailants.

In his appeal for aid, Bujaba described the current security situation as "relatively calm", but said he still feared rebel attacks in the area. "We fear that there will be an infiltration of rebels from Tanzania, who will come to sabotage the repatriation process going on in full force in Ruyigi," RTNB quoted him as saying.

A UNHCR spokesman, Ivana Unluova, said on Monday that all those returning to Ruyigi were doing so spontaneously, and that UNHCR would not facilitate repatriations to the area unless the security situation improved considerably. She said that "it was completely out of the question" to open the border crossing from Tanzania into Ruyigi, adding that pressure from the Tanzanian and Burundi governments to do so had "subsided" in recent weeks.

In preparation for the next tripartite meeting - of both governments and UNHCR - due to take place on 24 and 25 June, she said, UNHCR informed Tanzania and Burundi last week that conditions were not conducive to large-scale repatriation from Tanzania.