UNHCR repatriates second-generation immigrants

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has repatriated 283 people to Rwanda in a case involving second-generation Rwandan immigrants living in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo town of Kalehe, a UNHCR official told IRIN on Tuesday.

The refugees claimed that Congolese military and local officials had rounded them up from their homes in Kalehe and detained them in a military camp in Bunyakiri, before forcefully expelling them into neighbouring Rwanda, said Mussa Fazil Harerimana, the governor of Cyagungu, a Rwandan town that shares the border with the Congolese town of Bukavu.

"These were Congolese nationals some with national identifications but have been forced out of their country," she said. "Some have torture marks and the girls were raped."

Harerimana told IRIN the refugees alleged that they were detained in a military camp for two weeks and, through the use of repeated torture, were forced to admit that they were Rwandans.

However, an official of the UNHCR told IRIN on Tuesday that the group was composed of second generation Rwandans who's parents had immigrated to DRC to work as farmers or miners.

On Friday the refugees were transported from Bunyakiri to Bukavu in three UNHCR trucks after local NGOs alerted UNHCR of their presence. In Bukavu, UNHCR interviewed all the refugees. "None of the people told us that they were tortured and you would have expected them to have done so in an interview," an UNHCR official said. "This is new information to us."

The official said in the interviews the refugees said they were from Rwanda, yet they were all born in DRC. "They are not going back to Rwanda, many of them are going there for the first time," the official said.

"They told us that they were Rwandans while in Congo but they suddenly changed and said they were Congolese upon crossing into Rwanda," the UNHCR said.

However, the official confirmed that some of the refugees were holding Congolese national identification documents. They were transported to the Rwanda border in UNHCR trucks on Monday.

Ethnic tensions have risen sharply in Congo since dissident soldiers, loyal to Gen Laurent Nkunda and Col. Jules Mutebutsi seized control the South Kivu capital of Bukavu.

The fighting unleashed a wave of hostility towards the Banyamulenge, Congolese Tutsis of Rwandan origins, many of whom were forced to flee into neighbouring Burundi and Rwanda as fighting, from 28 May to 8 June, between dissident and loyal government forces intensified. At the height of the crisis UNHCR reported that some 34,000 refugees of all ethnicities had entered Burundi alone.