UNHCR worried over “clandestine returns”

UNHCR has expressed concern about clandestine returns of Congelese Tutsi refugees from Rwanda to highly unstable areas of eastern DRC. A UNHCR spokesman told a Geneva news briefing on Tuesday the agency had learnt of the night-time departure last Friday of a group of 33 Congolese refugees from Gihembe camp in Rwanda’s Kibuye prefecture for Goma in North Kivu. The transfer by private vehicle was at least the third of this type in the past two weeks, with 88 people known to have been transferred by bus from Gihembe to the DRC on 24 July and 123 on 2 August. Many of the remaining refugees have expressed concern about the clandestine nature of the departures. They told UNHCR that the individuals who have provided transport had also been visiting the camps to encourage refugees to repatriate.

UNHCR and the Rwandan authorities still judge the refugees’ home areas in North Kivu to be unsafe. The 27,000 Congolese in Gihembe and Kiziba camps are mainly of Tutsi origin and left the embattled Masisi area of North Kivu in 1995 and 1996.