DRC allows refugees in
2004-10-11 21:23
Gatumba, Burundi - Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Monday finally allowed about 1 200 DRC refugees stranded on the Burundian side of the border to return home, UN sources said.
"I think most of them are already here," Leo Salmeron, a spokesperson for the UN peacekeeping mission in DRC, MONUC, said.
"They are being registered according to their final destination," he added, speaking by telephone from close to the border.
About half of the refugees are Banyamulenge, Congolese Tutsis of distant Rwandan origin.
There is considerable anti-Banyamulenge sentiment in many parts of eastern DRC's Kivu provinces and relations were made worse in June when Banyamulenge former rebels in the DRC army rose up against their regular soldier colleagues.
The ensuing clashes prompted an exodus of Congolese and other ethnic Tutsis in the Kivus to Burundi.
When a few hundred of the refugees tried to cross the border back into DRC last week, they found the frontier closed and, refusing to go back into Burundi, set up camp in the no-man's-land between the two countries.
On Sunday in Uvira, the town just over the border in DRC, local residents demonstrated and erected barricades to protest against the refugees' return, prompting Monuc troops to fire in the air to protect UN premises.
Witnesses said a teenage boy was killed by a Monuc bullet, an allegation denied by the peacekeepers.
Uvira was calm on Monday.
Sud-Kivu governor Augustin Bulaimu met the refugees in Burundi shortly before their return on Monday and told them they were not really the target of Sunday's demo in Uvira, saying the town's residents had other grievances.
In late September, half a dozen of 350 Banyamulenge returning from DRC were wounded when Uvira's residents threw stones at them.