Rwandan refugees reluctant to return home

Despite the prevailing peace in Rwanda, thousands of refugees who fled the country following the 1994 genocide and found refuge in the Republic of Congo (ROC) are hesitant to return home.

They have settled in perfect harmony with their hosts, so much so that they have not been in favour of a plan hatched in June 2003 by the ROC government, Rwanda and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, for their repatriation.

The Rwandans fled their country after the genocide in which up to 937,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed in a period of about three months.

Some refugees say some of the reasons for their not returning home are simply because they have put down roots in their host country through marriage with locals; no family members left back home; and the lack of trust in the authorities there. Fear of possible prosecution in Rwanda's traditional justice system, known as "Gacaca", or retribution by still angry surviving family members of those killed in the genocide is a compelling reason to stay in the Republic of Congo.

"Each one of us can go back to Rwanda if one wants but when I know already that my entire family was killed in Kigali. What will I go back there for?" Naomie Ntsenga, Hutu refugee living in Mbé, 155 km northeast of Brazzaville, said.

Mbé District is the home of the Batékés, the ROC's largest ethnic group. Here the Rwandan's have settled into farming; working as farm labourers; engaging in other odd jobs; and some locals appreciate their presence. The district chief, Domenica Mounzouani, said the refugees had been particularly useful to the local economy after tractors broke down in the area due to poor maintenance.

"The refugees are for us a strong labour. They help us cultivate and we help them to live like us," Mounzouani said.

Businesses

Although highly mobile and industrious - engaging in farming, fishing, bakery, taxi services and the selling of palm wine - there is an ugly side to some of the Rwandans' activities. For example, local chiefs provided farm land around Kintélé but because the soil was sandy and unproductive some refugees started felling trees around the village for firewood and charcoal; actions which have led to environmental problems.

"They destroy the natural and man-made forests," said Gabriel Ontsira, a director of information and the promotion of humanitarian international law at the Office of Solidarity and Humanitarian Action within the Ministry of the Social Affairs.

Refugees at Kintele Camp, 25 km north of Brazzaville, the capital.

The UNHCR says most of the Rwandans have been able to fend for themselves and, therefore, no longer require the agency's help. Today, only some 800 of the original Rwandan inmates of the 4,413 at the UNHCR's Kintélé Refugee Camp remain there, according to a UNHCR Brazzaville document in July 2005 titled "Les Objectifs pour 2005". Many have gone to the departments of Cuvette, Sangha and Likouala in the northeast and central Congo as well as south to Kouilou, the department of the Pointe-Noire.

In fact, the executive director of the Congolese Observatory for Human Rights, Roger Bouka Owoko, said the Rwandans were pretty much present in all the country's administrative departments.

Uprooting the refugees from Congo and repatriating them voluntarily is proving particularly difficult; even though in June the Rwandan minister for community development and social affairs, Marie Christine Nyatanyi, visited Brazzaville in an effort to assure them that it was safe to return home.

"We are rebuilding the country, and we need the assistance of all Rwandans who are abroad and inside the country," she told them; but her words have gone largely unheeded.