Voluntary Repatriations of Rwandan Refugees Resume

The United Nations, in late August 1995, restarted its program of voluntary repatriations of Rwandan refugees. The resumption came after relief workers won Zaire's agreement to halt its controversial and much-protested program of forced military expulsions. Again, I reported from Goma, site of the largest camps in eastern Zaire.

The UN's voluntary repatriation program appeared to get off to a slow start despite what aid workers described as a high demand among refugees to return home to Rwanda.

A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said about 220 Rwandans were voluntarily repatriated from the Goma area on the first day of the resumed program. Another three-thousand stepped forward from camps in Bukavu to the south for repatriation.

But the spokesman said a lack of vehicles and other resources prevented relief workers from moving them back to Rwanda immediately.

Further to the south, meanwhile, near Uvira along the Burundian border, thousands of refugees who fled into the countryside to escape Zairian troops during the forced expulsions of the past week began returning to their camps.

Zaire, frustrated at the slow pace of repatriation, began forcibly deporting refugees last weekend. In five days they expelled about 15-thousand refugees, most of them Rwandan but also including some Burundians.

After sharp international protests, Zaire agreed to suspend the expulsions and the United Nations agreed to restart its voluntary repatriation program.
UN officials now believe tens of thousands of refugees are ready to go back to Rwanda -- in part because Hutu extremist elements linked to last year's genocide fled the camps when Zairian soldiers moved in, fearing reprisals if they were forced across the border.

But disturbed relief workers in the Goma area said they had received credible reports the extremists were once again filtering back into the camps. They expressed fear the extremists might again attempt to use violence and other forms of intimidation to dissuade refugees from considering a return