Panic In The Rwandan Refugee Camps in Burundi: Some Try to Flee to Tanzania

In northern Burundi in early 1995, UN officials and aid workers were busy setting up a temporary camp for some 30-thousand Rwandan refugees who fled toward the Tanzanian border in fear of getting caught up in renewed ethic violence. I traveled to the area and had this report.

UN officials are calling the new camp near Gashoho a re-groupment center. Although they are busy digging latrines and trucking in drinking water, they say it will only be a temporary home for some 30-thousand Rwandans until other arrangements can be made.

For the moment, UN spokesman Fernando del Mundo says Burundian authorities, citing security reasons, will not allow the refugees to return to their original camp, at Magara, in Ngozi province. Mr. del Mundo says negotiations on a return are continuing, but if Burundian officials refuse to budge, then a new location will have to be found.

Already some 10 to 15-thousand refugees are setting up shelters and cooking fires at the temporary sites, some 50 kilometers west of the Tanzanian border. The camp is nestled among eucalyptus and pine trees not far from the main road to the frontier, where the Rwandans stopped after being told Tanzanian authorities would not allow them in.

Some 50-thousand Rwandans in all fled camps in northern Burundi last week after a mysterious attack by unidentified gunmen in which 12 of the refugees were killed and 22 others wounded. But the refugees, all of them members of the Hutu ethnic community, say there was more behind their frightened decision to flee than just that one attack. They claim to have heard rumors they will all be massacred in raids from Rwanda linked to the impending first anniversary of the start of the genocide there.

Besides the refugees now grouping near Gashoho, some 10-thousand others have agreed to be trucked back to the camps they left. Several thousand more have settled at yet another camp near the Tanzanian border, while several hundred actually managed to slip across the frontier.

UN spokesman del Mundo says Burundian authorities have agreed to bolster security in all the refugee locations. But while some of the Rwandans interviewed said they saw no alternative but to return to the camps, they made clear the promise of a stepped-up Burundian military and police presence would not calm their fears.

One refugee, a 31-year-old man who gave his name as Nyandwi, said he would prefer having foreign troops guarding the camps. And another Rwandan, 22-year-old Jean-Marie Mporwiki, told reporters he still intends to flee into Tanzania if the border re-opens.