Hutu Exiles Call For U.N. Safeguards Claim ‘Double Standard’ Is Shown Following Rwandan Tutsi Genocide
Saying the plight of Hutu refugees in eastern Zaire cannot be ignored, Rwandan Hutu exiles urged world leaders Thursday to ensure that U.N. officials are allowed to investigate reports that refugees had been massacred.
The Brussels-based Rally for the Return of Refugees and Democracy in Rwanda said the international community urged justice for the mostly Tutsi victims of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. It said the United Nations would be showing a “double standard” if it did not try to “identify and bring to justice all those responsible for the horrendous massacres committed against refugees in eastern Zaire.”
The group called on the world community to press Zairian rebels and their Rwandan Tutsi and Ugandan allies to allow the U.N. investigations.
The exile group said the rebels’ refusal to let U.N. human rights workers check reports of Hutu refugee killings and disappearances was due partly to fears by the Rwandan and Ugandan governments that they might be implicated in the killings as well.
On Wednesday, rebel soldiers prevented Robert Houdeck, the U.S. official in charge of relief aid, and U.N. officials from inspecting suspected mass grave sites beyond Biaro, 25 miles south of the Zairian city of Kisangani.
Peter Kessler, a UNHCR spokesman in Kisangani, said the team turned back after it was stopped by three soldiers at a checkpoint, who insisted it was “too dangerous” to drive further.
Since April 27, the U.N. refugee agency has airlifted 26,000 Hutu refugees home to Rwanda from Kisangani, part of the 80,000 refugees who had camped south of the city.
The whereabouts of about 200,000 ther refugees are unknown, although Rwandan and rebel officials claim those numbers have been exaggerated.
The malnourished refugees have reported several gruesome attacks by rebel soldiers, and by machete-wielding Zairian villagers angered at the aid the refugees were getting.
In 1994, Rwanda’s former militant Hutu government organized the 90-day slaughter of 500,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.
Tutsi rebels overthrew the Hutu government and ended the genocide in July 1994. About 1.2 million Hutus fled to eastern Zaire, fearing retribution for the massacres.
About 700,000 of the Hutus returned home late last year after Zairian rebels attacked former Rwandan Hutu soldiers and militiamen in their bases in the refugee camps.
The United Nations believes about 300,000 Rwandans, including armed former Hutu soldiers, pushed west deeper into Zaire, where they have been attacked by rebels.
Rebels have blocked U.N. teams from carrying out an independent investigation of the reported massacres. The rebels wanted to include some of their own people on the team, but rights workers say that would compromise the investigation.