Children Journey Home Rebels Forcing Lost Rwandan Children To Leave Zaire
Fleeing Rwanda in 1994, Alphonse Habimana was separated from his parents. He was lucky to find a family in Zaire that took him in as a servant and made him feel like a son.
Now, rebels have taken control of eastern Zaire, and ordered all of Rwanda’s children home.
It is one more displacement, one more struggle for some of the youngest victims of Rwanda’s years of turmoil. Hundreds of youths will now be on the road again, facing new uncertainties in their native land - and the prospect of never finding their own families again.
Alphonse, now 18, thinks he can get a better job in Rwanda, probably making bricks, as he did before fleeing. But going home to Rwanda also means leaving his home in Goma, and that will be hard to do.
“I lived in perfect harmony with the family. Now, it’s the only family I have,” he said. “It will be sad to say goodbye.”
More than a million Rwandan Hutus fled to Zaire in 1994 after Hutu extremists orchestrated the slaughter of at least a half-million Tutsis. The Hutu refugees feared reprisals when Tutsis took over the government.
In the flight, many children became separated from their parents, and many found foster families.
In 1994, the international Red Cross registered 751 children living with foster families in eastern Zaire. The rebels say there are at least 1,730.
In a Jan. 15 decree, the rebels, who have captured a strip of eastern Zaire and are advancing westward, ordered all Rwandan children home.
“The presence of the (Rwandan) children in Zaire is no longer justified,” the decree read. “On the contrary, it is imperative that they be returned to Rwanda, where efforts can be made to reunite them with their families.”
At first, aid workers were horrified because finding their relatives in Rwanda could be impossible. “The family, as far as Westerners are concerned, is the best protection for a child,” said UNICEF regional adviser Marie de la Soudiere.
But de la Soudiere said the workers soon began to realize that even if the children were happy with their foster families, it might be in their best interests to go home.
“We started hearing from the local people, Zairians, who said we were wrong. No matter how much the mother loves the child, the child will never belong,” she said.
“In this part of the world, it’s all about belonging to a particular tribe, a particular group. Those who don’t belong are told they are foreigners who have to leave.”
Of the 751 registered foster children, aid workers have tracked down 205, and only 49 of those have returned to Rwanda.
But at the Kumbuka Watoto center - Swahili for “remember the children” - more than 100 young Rwandans, including Habimana, are waiting to go home.
Families are provided with counseling if the parents refuse to give up their foster child or if the child doesn’t want to go.
Red Cross official Henri Rwanika said families sometimes have selfish reasons for not wanting to give up their foster children. A 1995 UNICEF study found that 75 percent of children in foster families were exploited.
“A lot of families used Rwandan children as domestics, and they didn’t want to let them go,” Rwanika said. “Some families even asked for presents, up to $10,000, to compensate them for the money they say they spent on the children.”
Davite Akayesu, 15, said her Zairian foster family made her sell donuts on the streets of Goma and prevented her from leaving.
“I wanted to leave but I couldn’t,” she said. “The father wouldn’t let me. And I felt I had to stay because when I was very sick in the beginning they took care of me.”
Even though Davite has wanted to leave the family, she says she doesn’t want to return to Rwanda.
“I don’t miss anything about Rwanda - not the language or the land,” she said. “I am afraid to go back. I am afraid of what I might find there.”
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