Congolese Tutsis refuse transfer to northeastern refugee camp

Hundreds of Congolese Banyamulenge refugees in the Burundi capital, Bujumbura, refused to board trucks belonging to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Tuesday for relocation to a camp in Kinama village, Gasorwe Commune, in the northeastern province of Muyinga, an official of the UN refugee agency said.

"UNHCR doesn't know why the Banyamulenge are refusing to go to Kinama," Gabriel Bangui, the agency's senior field officer in charge of operations, said on Wednesday.

However, he added, "There's a lot of pressure being put within the Banyamulenge - and from some politicians in UPRONA [Union pour le progres national] - for their members no to go".

The government warned the refugees last week that it would dismantle their camps in the Bujumbura neighbourhood of Ngagara. However, Bangui said, the camps were still intact. A camp inmate, Paul Ruvyagiza, said the Banyamulenge - who are of Tutsi origin - knew that the government would, one day, dismantle the camps for refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), including the Banyamulenge, as it did last week in the case of a camp in Rugombo, northern Burundi.

The Burundian human rights advocacy group, Iteka, said on 3 June that the Banyamulenge feared for their security in the new camp, which is sited close to the borders of Rwanda and Tanzania. They had expressed fears of possible arrest and deportation to Rwanda which, they said, was "at war" with them in the plateau region of South Kivu, eastern DRC.

They were referring in this respect to a mutiny in early 2002 by Tutsi troops in the Rwanda-backed rebel Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) - which controls about one third of the DRC - which resulted in heavy fighting around Minembwe, South Kivu, between RCD-Goma troops and the mutineers, led by Commandant Patrick Masunzu.

The Banyamulenge also told Iteka that the proposed camp was 36 km from Tanzania, where there were "negative forces" - meaning Rwandan Hutus, who had killed Banyamulenge in eastern DRC.

Moreover, Iteka reported, the Banyamulenge perceived Muyinga residents as hostile, because of a letter nine Muyinga parliamentarians wrote to the president of the Burundi National Assembly, referring to the "negative behaviour of the refugees, which is detrimental to security in general, and the distrust between local residents of Muyinga and the refugees".

However, Bangui said armed government troops were providing security at Kinama. Some of these soldiers were women, who had been deployed there to provide female refugees with special protection.

The Burundi government and the UNHCR began transferring Congolese refugees to Kinama on 27 May, where the agency is providing 1,082 people with water, education and health needs.