Alarm at Mandela call for repatriation preparation

The church group Jesuit Relief Services (JRS) on Wednesday expressed surprise at the 27 February call by Burundi peace facilitator, Nelson Mandela, for Burundian refugees in Tanzanian camps to prepare to return home. Mandela’s words had been met with alarm given the recent upsurge in violence in Burundi, and a “lack of perceptible progress towards implementation of the [Arusha] peace accord,” JRS stated in a refugee news briefing. “With the recent fighting in the environs of Bujumbura and in the south of Burundi, it was most surprising that Mandela saw fit to ask the refugees to prepare to go home,” it quoted JRS Eastern Africa Director Stephen Power as saying. Apart from the clashes in Bujumbura, there have been skirmishes in recent weeks in ‘traditional’ zones of insecurity, particularly in the south and notably in Makamba and Rutana provinces, according to humanitarian sources.

The JRS also referred to requests and suggestions presented by the Burundian refugees to Mandela during his visit to refugee camps in Ngara district, western Tanzania. Among the ideas presented, it said, were that President Pierre Buyoya should “return the leadership to the Burundian community from whom it was stolen.”
The refugees also said that any UN peacekeeping force for Burundi should not involve those countries involved in the Burundi conflict or “causing problems in the [Great Lakes] region,”, and that rebel groups’ demands should be heard in collective meetings. They said a refugee committee should be formed to visit all Burundi provinces before any repatriation exercise, that camps for displaced people in Burundi should be shut down before refugee repatriation took place, and that the auctioning of refugees’ properties in Burundi should be halted. [for more details, go to: http://www.jesref.org/inf/alert/bimandel.htm]