The Scene in Cyangugu

With the French soldiers regarded by Rwanda's new Tutsi installed government as allies of the ousted regime poised to complete their withdrawal from southwestern Rwanda, I decided in mid-August 1994 to travel again into the security zone they created to check on the situation there. I ended up in the southwestern Rwandan border town of Cyangugu.

Like a trickle of water that becomes a stream and then a river, Hutu refugees are surging by the thousands toward the Zairean border at Bukavu, just across from the Rwandan town of Cyangugu.

This latest procession of human misery starts along a winding road that passes through the mist-shrouded hills of the Nyungwe forest in southwestern Rwanda. It builds in size and momentum over a distance of more than 50 kilometers until the refugees reach the frontier.

Most are on foot, some on bicycle, and a few crammed in heavily laden vehicles. They carry their mattresses, their machetes, their bags, blankets, and their babies.

All are trying to get out of Rwanda before UN peacekeepers take over from the French soldiers who have been patrolling this so-called safe haven humanitarian aid zone in the southwest.

The Tutsi-led forces who now control Rwanda have promised not to enter the southwest zone for the time being and to leave security to the UN. Officials of the new government in Kigali have also told the masses of Hutu refugees they have nothing to fear if they played no part in the bloody ethnic and political slaughter of Rwanda's civil war.

But while many have decided to stay in Rwanda and take their chances, many more have decided not to run the risk. Their fears have been fueled by rumors of Tutsi reprisals, rumors spread by Hutu extremists linked to the ousted government.

Aid workers have been doing their best to try and cope with this latest humanitarian nightmare, telling the moving throngs conditions are better and relief supplies more plentiful in Rwanda. That, too, appears to have cut into the numbers fleeing to Zaire.

But many remain unconvinced, and French soldiers say the UN troops now at the Rwandan border town of Cyangugu should brace for trouble. That is because Zairean officials have closed the main crossing point. The refugees are being told to try to cross further south.

But as one French soldier said, they are not happy.

Another potential source of trouble for the UN soldiers now taking up posts in the southwest could come from troops of the ousted Hutu-led Rwandan government.

On the night before the French pullout, armed and uniformed members of the defeated army were still visible in Cyangugu. They even manned a roadblock on the main road through town. The new Tutsi-installed government in Kigali hopes the United Nations will disarm these soldiers.