Refugees at Gatumba refuse relocation

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) sent a truck convoy to Gatumba transit camp, on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), to start transferring Congolese Tutsi refugees to Mwaro, a new camp farther inland, but the refugees refused to board the vehicles. Only one family - a man, his wife and two children - boarded the convoy, said Christine Neveu, a UNHCR official at Gatumba where 160 of the refugees were massacred only a month ago. She said 80 refugee families had registered to be moved. Mwaro is now ready to receive 240 of them. "It will be able to accommodate 600 by next Tuesday," she said, adding that its potential capacity would reach 6,000. But the refugees at Gatumba said they had decided to wait till Thursday when a delegation of DRC officials is set to arrive and discuss repatriating them. Since the massacre at Gatumba on 13 August, the surviving Tutsi refugees have been staying at a nearby school. But the Burundi school year is about to start and school children there have lost their classrooms. A DRC delegation led by the vice-governor of South Kivu, Thomas Nziratimana JiJi, had earlier visited the refugees to encourage their return, but the DRC has yet to officially reopen its border with Burundi.