Rwandan refugees going home

2003-11-04 09:47

Kampala - The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has started preparing up to 25 000 Rwandan refugees who have been living in camps in Uganda for repatriation back home, officials said on Monday.

"The UNHCR, along the government of Uganda, have started with an information campaign in the camps to tell these people about the situation and we hope to have the first convoys leaving for Rwanda in December," UNHCR's protection officer Stephen Gonah said.

He said officials will also come from the government in Rwanda to give assurances to the refugees that the situation in their home country was good.

"We are using leaflets, video and audio tapes to pass on the message," Gonah added.

Ugandan minister in charge of refugees, Christine Amongin, along with UNHCR officials, was in Nakivale refugee settlement in southwestern Uganda's Mbarara district on Monday to assess the situation.

Some of the Rwandan refugees arrived in Uganda at the beginning of a civil war in Rwanda in August 199O, after the minority Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) attacked the majority Hutu government of the late president Juvenal Habyarimana from Uganda.

Others also fled to Uganda after the 1994 genocide following the assassination of Habyarima in a plane crash on April 6, 1994 that triggered the slaughter of up to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus by Hutu militias, which only ended when the RPF seized power in Kigali in July 1994.

- SAPA