It
is still only a trickle but they keep coming. Since mid-May
close to a thousand Rwandan refugees have come across the Rusumo
frontier between Rwanda and Tanzania, sometimes 10 a day, sometimes
20. Now nearly 240 families – nearly a thousand people
– sit in the Kiyanzi transit camp in Kirehe district in
Rwanda’s Eastern Province (formerly Kibungo Province)
and wait to go home.
Most of them have come from the refugee camps in Nyabayamba
and Ngara in the Province of Karagwe in the North West corner
of Tanzania, west of Lake Victoria. While all are Rwandan by
nationality, many of them were born in Tanzania where their
parents found refuge after upheavals and atrocities at home,
most following the 1994 genocide but others as far back as 1959.
They have not come of their own free will. Many had no intention
of going back to Rwanda, having lived all or most of their lives
in peace in neighbouring Tanzania – but now they had no
choice. “They expelled us,” they say of the Tanzanian
military. “They burned our homes and confiscated us our
belongings to make us go back to Rwanda.” It is a story
being repeated day after day involving destitute refugees and
migrants from Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi. (see http://www.ifrc.org/docs/news/06/06053101/
)
Fayce Uwamwezi, a 26-year-old mother of three children and eight
months pregnant, says that the local military had come around
in the early evening and told everyone to get out as they were
all going back to Rwanda, had no business being in Tanzania
– and that their house was to be burnt. “I implored
them to have pity on us,” she says, “but they told
me that if I didn’t leave the house with my children,
they’d burn it anyway. My husband was then taken away
and not allowed to talk to me.”
Fayce has not seen her husband since and does not know where
he is. Some people in the camp tell her that he is dead.
She, like the other refugees in Kiyanzi, has a hard time understanding
the reason for their expulsion from Tanzania. With many of them
born in Tanzania they know little of Rwanda, don’t know
of any family there - and some even claim Tanzanian nationality.
When they showed their Tanzanian identity cards they say that
the soldiers “nastily tore them up” and said: “You’re
not Tanzanians! Go back to Rwanda.”
12-year old Niyonshuti says he is third generation Tanzanian
and feels like a stranger in a strange land in Rwanda. He remembers
his grandfather telling him that the family had originated in
Rwanda but that they were now Tanzanians. Niyonshuti was in
the sixth form in the local primary school and bitterly misses
his friends, Hasumani and Tabo, who he used to play football
with. Now, all he can think about is going back to Tanzania,
go back to his old school and play football with his friends
like before.
“It’s not easy for these people,” says the
district official in change of social affairs. “They and
their parents were born in Tanzania and they don’t know
anyone here. And to make matters even worse, all their belongings
were left behind, so they come here with nothing at all. Naturally
they are very worried for the future and how they are going
to survive in this strange place,” he adds.
One of those is Ernest Kambere, a married father of six, who
cannot comprehend the situation he finds himself in. “I’m
wondering how I will lead my life, starting again from zero.
They chased me out with my 150 cows and I was separated from
my wife and children. Now I don’t know where they are.
When we were in the bush they told me to run and not turn back.”
The cows are lost, his family is lost, and Ernest is lost, frightened
and disillusioned. His eyes filling with tears he recounts how
some of the younger women and wives had been raped during the
confusion of the flight. “Is this only because we are
Rwandans?” he asks. “I don’t know, I don’t
know…”
To assist these unwilling returnees the Rwanda Red Cross, in
cooperation with the Rwandan government, distributes plastic
sheeting for shelter, kitchen utensils, blankets, clothing for
the women and children, and flour for making porridge for the
babies. Additionally, they’re given hygiene kits, buckets,
jerry cans and mosquito nets.
Groups of Rwanda Red Cross volunteers take 24-hour turns in
the camp to register the newcomers, promoting hygiene, showing
where to get potable water and distributing food supplied by
the government. The volunteers have also constructed latrines
and keep sensitizing the returnees to the importance of keeping
them clean to avoid potentially deadly cholera or dysentery.
Eric Ndibwami, the president of the Rwanda Red Cross national
volunteer corps and coordinator of the Red Cross activities
in the camp, says that at least five new families arrive daily
from Tanzania. As they’re not registered as refugees,
the UN’s refugee agency – UNHCR – has not
intervened and neither have other humanitarian organizations,
some of which have come for quick assessments. The Rwandan government
estimates that up to 25 thousand people are still ‘illegally’
in Tanzania and could be arriving in the coming weeks. Meetings
between the two governments to discuss the modalities of return
are being held.
Visiting the camp, Rwandan social affairs minister Musoni Protais
made a point of stressing that Kiyanzi was a transit camp, not
a new settlement, and that the returnees who had no family land
to go to would be settled in new communities. For the Rwandan
Red Cross it is obvious that the returnees will need extensive
support in order to be integrated into Rwandan society. The
support and assistance being offered by the volunteers in Kiyanzi
marks the first steps on that long road back home.
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Many
of the returnees feel like strangers in a strange land.
While their families may have originated in Rwanda, many
of them have lived in Tanzania for 2-3 generations and
know nothing of life in Rwanda.
(p14231) |
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Niyonshuti
(right) with his friend in the camp is homesick for Tanzania.
(p14233)
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Fayce
Uwamwezi with her children: They said if I didn’t
leave the house they’d burn it down anyway with
me and the children inside.
(p14234)
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Ernest
Kambere: is this only because we’re Rwandans?
(p14235)
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Rwanda
Red Cross volunteers take turns assisting the returnees
in Kiyanzi camp, distributing basic essentials like water
buckets. (p14232)
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News
