The Tanzanian border village of Ntobeye is a four-hour walk from the nearest dirt road. Relief workers who made their way into the village for the first time this past week were stunned to discover an estimated 15-thousand newly-arrived Rwandan refugees there.
Unlike the quarter million or so Rwandans who fled into Tanzania with many of their possessions in late April, these refugees have little or no food; many are without warm clothing or blankets to protect them from the heavy rains that drench the lush, hilly countryside at this time of year, shrouding the valleys in a cold cloudy mist. 
What all too many of these new arrivals do have are shocking stories of alleged atrocities committed by the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front or RPF. Its forces only seized control of the border area around the Rusumo Falls crossing point with Tanzania during the past month. The rebels claim that crossing point is open -- and that Rwandans on both sides of the frontier are free to come and go as they wish.
Yet the 15-thousand refugees gathered in Ntobeye -- and thousands more who have arrived in Tanzania in the latest exodus -- have all purposely skirted the bridge built over the waterfalls there.
Instead, they have waded through swampland and used crude log canoes to cross the swollen Akagera river that marks the border. They say they took the hard way out to avoid the rebels, who they claim have begun killing civilians, including women and children, who are members of the majority Hutu ethnic group.
Until now, most reports of massacres have come from government-controlled areas in Rwanda and have been carried out by Hutu extremists against members of the minority Tutsi group. The rebel movement, largely dominated by Tutsis, has been credited with showing remarkable restraint in not engaging in revenge killings.
But UN officials and relief workers say the stories brought out by the latest refugees of rebel-orchestrated killings are credible and disturbing. They include accounts of Hutus being gathering in a single place such as a school and then murdered. There are tales of families being thrown into pit latrines and buried alive. There are stories of would-be refugees being shot by rebels within sight of the border.
Panos Moumtzis is a spokesman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. He expresses the frustration of relief workers over what now seems to be an unending spiral of violence.
“There is nothing changing in Rwanda. The situation is getting worse and worse every day. More and more people are killed every minute. Thousands of refugees are crossing the borders every day. The relief workers in the border feel very desperate. Something has to be done, I don't know what this would be, but something has to be done and has to be done immediately so at least some lives could be saved in Rwanda.”
The latest atrocity accounts by Hutu refugees coincide with reports from relief workers themselves of seeing piles of fresh corpses on the Rwandan side of the frontier as well as smoke and flames rising from burning villages. Moreover, journalists recently granted permission by rebel officials to visit the eastern Rwanda area have suddenly been denied access on the grounds that rebel escorts are unavailable.
One observation: during our trip to the border area, we noticed suspicious young men, usually wearing long trench coats and wrap-around sunglasses amongst the refugees, listening intently as we asked questions. In one such “monitored” gathering, a young man, apparently a farmer, claimed he had watched the rebels kill several family members, including his mother. An older woman was standing next to him. We asked who she was. He said, “this is my mother” --- which most observers will agree destroyed the credibility of his claim. We were later told the shady looking young men in their trench coats and shades were extremist Hutu leaders who were even then exercising their terror control over the refugee camps. As the months went on we learned they would even resort to murder to control refugee statements to the press and aid workers and to prevent Hutus from leaving the camps to return to Rwanda, something the RPF was encouraging.
No comments:
Post a Comment