Survivors moved to safety

2004-09-17 18:21

Nairobi - Thousands of Congolese refugees in Burundi are to be moved from the volatile border area to safer locations further inside the country, a spokesperson for the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday.

UNHCR said the transfers would start early next week, and that transit centres near the border would be closed down as soon as the refugees had been relocated.

The survivors of the August 13 massacre at Gatumba camp close to the Congolese border, who have been living in schools and other nearby places since the attack, will be moved to the Giginha camp 50km from capital Bujumbura.

The UNHCR spokesperson said on Friday that the Burundian government had taken the decision to close all transit centres in the border area in the aftermath of the August attack.

The Congolese refugees have been given three options: to relocate to the camps further inland, to apply for residency in their local areas in Burundi, or to return to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Large numbers of Congolese refugees have returned to DRC recently, according to the UNHCR, despite a continued lack of security in the border area.

The massacre of the Congolese Tutsi refugees at Gatumba sparked a war of words between leaders in the Great Lakes region.

In the days following the gruesome attack, when over 150 men, women, children and babies were shot, hacked, clubbed and burnt to death, both Rwanda and Burundi warned they may enter DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) territory to hunt down extremist Hutu militias they believed were involved, unless the Congolese government dealt with them.

The human rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) however said last week that the massacre had been carried out by the FNL, the Burundian Hutu rebel group that initially claimed responsibility for the attack.

"Tutsi increasingly fear genocide but people of other ethnic groups increasingly fear a war that could be undertaken on the pretext of averting genocide," said HRW.

The conflicts in the three central African countries, Rwanda, Burundi and DRC are closely linked. Armed Hutu extremist groups based in eastern DRC are fighting the armies in Rwanda and Burundi, which are both Tutsi-dominated.

Rwanda and Burundi have sent their armies twice before to hunt down Hutu extremists in the DRC. The second invasion, in 1998, started a five-year war, which involved several other African countries and came to be known as Africa's World War. - Sapa-dpa

- SAPA