Refugees in Tanzania urged to go home

Tanzanian Home Affairs Minister Mohammed Khatib and Burundi Settlement Minister Francoise Ngendehayo toured several refugee camps in western Tanzania from 24 to 28 February on a campaign to encourage Burundi refugees to go home. "It is time for Burundi refugees to return home, but we want them to go there voluntarily in line with the internationally accepted rules," Tanzanian Deputy Home Affairs Minister John Chiligati told AFP. Chiligati said Khatib and Ngendehayo had toured camps in the regions of Kigoma and Kagera to brief the refugees on security developments in Burundi and to reassure them of their safety, AFP reported. Asked whether he was concerned that pressure was being applied to the refugees to make them return home, a representative of the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Tanzania, Chrysantus Ache, said he was "very concerned". He said the feeling among the refugees in the camps was one of worry and uncertainty. In the absence of a cease-fire, he said UNHCR could not promote the repatriation of the refugees, but that it would assist those who wished to do so voluntarily. He said that the number of returnee refugees had increased recently, with 6,000 signing up to go home between 12 and 28 February. He added that the Burundi government had not made enough preparations to receive mass numbers of refugees. AFP quoted Joseph Karumba, the president of the Front national pour la liberation party (FROLINA) and one of the signatories of the Arusha peace accord signed in August 2000, as saying: "Yes, there is a transitional government since November last year, but there is no cease-fire, and the civil war is still going on around Bujumbura." "We are always told that people are being killed by both rebel and government troops. I don't understand why all these campaigns for the refugees to return to Burundi soon [are being mounted]," he continued. Similar feelings are being echoed by the Jesuit Refugee Society advocacy group. In a statement issued last week, the organisation said that pressure on Burundi nationals to return was "premature and may lead to further tragedy". The organisation believes that a cease-fire honoured by all parties to the conflict must be a precondition for return, and that pressure on the refugees to repatriate may result in exacerbating the existing problem of large numbers of displaced people in Burundi. A previous Burundi government delegation visited the camps in Tanzania on 18 February to encourage the refugees, among other things, to go home, a spokesman from the Ministry of External Relations and Cooperation told IRIN.