The Hutus Start to Flee As The French Pull Out of the Rwandan Safe Zone for Killers

In August 1994, UN and other international relief agencies were preparing for a possible new crushing flow of refugees along the southwestern Rwandan border with Zaire (Congo). From Kigali, I reported that aid officials said they had a plan to minimize a catastrophe while helping the government keep Rwandans inside their own country.

Relief workers say there is no sense of panic yet, but they report thousands of displaced Rwandans -- mainly members of the Hutu ethnic community -- are on the move in southwestern Rwanda, heading toward the Zairean (Congolese) border town of Bukavu.

It is a scene like the one played out a month ago in the northwest of the country, when hundreds of thousands of Hutus fled over the frontier to the Zairean town of Goma. This time though, aid workers, like Sybella Wilkes of the UN Rwanda emergency office, say the exodus could have even more tragic consequences.

“It will be far more horrific than ever, because basically Bukavu doesn't have the infrastructure (resources) to support the huge influx of refugees in this area. And anyway the people that are actually leaving and are on the move are much weaker. A lot of people have been displaced for a significant amount of time. They've been displaced for up to three months. The area is traditionally one of drought and it will take a long time to get there.”

The southwest of Rwanda is a security zone controlled by French military forces, but those forces are pulling out and are scheduled to be withdrawn completely by next week. The United Nations is rushing in replacement peacekeepers from other nations to guarantee the safety of the more than one million displaced now in the zone.

But there is still a sense of fear among many of these Rwandans -- fear that they may face reprisals from the Tutsi dominated security forces of the new government in Kigali once the French are gone.

In part, their fear stems from what UN officials, aid workers and diplomatic sources describe as propaganda put out by Hutu extremists linked to Rwanda's toppled government. These agitators claim the new government intends to carry out mass revenge killings for the massacres of Tutsis by Hutus during the civil war earlier this year.

Some aid workers say there is evidence that not all displaced Hutus in the southwest are ready to believe their leaders so for now the numbers moving toward the Zairean border are not alarming. One American aid official, who has just toured the zone, says it appears they don't want to flee into Zaire (Congo), but do want to be close to the border just in case.

To encourage the displaced to remain in Rwanda where they receive enough food, medicine and other essential supplies to survive, relief agencies have devised a three-point strategy.

First, they are bolstering their own presence in the southwest and marshalling aid in the zone. Second, they are preparing to follow the displaced with those supplies if -- as they expect -- the displaced keep heading toward the border. Finally, near the frontier, they are preparing to offer the refugees transportation to new camps -- camps near the border, but still inside Rwanda.

Relief workers say if their efforts fail, then as many as half a million Rwandans could end up in the area of Bukavu in Zaire (Congo), joining about 300 thousand refugees already there. If they leave, the relief officials say they probably won't return for a long time and the lack of good roads and a high capacity airport at Bukavu, along with growing resentment among Zaireans (Congolese) could mean new misery for the refugees.