With chaos and conflict spreading, Zaire, the UN and Western nations are seeing the consequences of their callous neglect, reports Chris McGreal
THEODENNE KALENDA waited uncertainly one side of an invisible line that marks the border between Zaire and Rwanda, halfway across a bridge over the Ruzizi river.
His neighbours watched from the hillside behind him. Some were no doubt pleased with their success in driving the village cobbler from his home. But there must have been many who wished they could have gone with him. Behind Kalenda was Bukavu, a city that has given way to looting and anarchy as Tutsi rebels bear down on it. Over the weekend, there was fresh mortaring by the Banyamulenge, Zairean Tutsis who have rebelled against a campaign of ethnic cleansing with remarkable success.
The United Nations has evacuated all aid workers from the city as the prospect of a battle loomed, abandoning hundreds of thousands of Rwandan and Burundian Hutu refugees.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, said: “A catastrophe greater than the one we knew in 1994 is what worries me most. I appeal to the combatants: please spare the refugees and local populations.”
Kalenda and his wife are more recent arrivals than the Banyamulenge, who can trace their roots in eastern Zaire back several centuries. Kalenda, aged 48, fled Rwanda in 1960. But, after 36 years living at peace with his neighbours, he was treated no differently from the Banyamulenge or any other Tutsis in Zaire when the persecution began.
“People came to our house and told us to go away. They called me a rebel. We were threatened by soldiers who looted everything from our house, and said: `You’d better leave or we’ll kill you.'”
Kalenda’s house looked down on the bridge across the border, but he feared he might not make even that short distance. “Some neighbours were kind to me and accompanied me to the border,” Kalenda said. “We were frightened of the military so we paid them $40 not to menace us.”
As Kalenda fled, Bukavu radio was broadcasting a declaration by the provincial governor, Kyembwa wa Lumuna: “Do not join the panic created by the Rwandan Tutsis under the pretext of recovering the land of their ancestors. The murderers want to kill us. We are asking you to be vigilant, to find these people who have infiltrated among the refugees,” it said every 15 minutes.
It sounded remarkably similar to the extremist Hutu messages broadcast during the Rwandan genocide.
In Bukavu, many Tutsis have disappeared. Militiamen armed with nail-studded clubs patrol the streets. It is not clear if they are Zairean, or drawn from Hutu extremists among the Rwandan refugees. Tutsis have met a similar fate in Goma to the north, where rebels are moving towards refugee camps. The largest, Kibumba, emptied after fighting nearby.
“It’s tragic, appalling. We have a human river 25km long from the camp south to Goma,” said Panos Moumtzis, spokesman for the UN refugee agency. On Sunday several thousand Hutu refugees even returned to Rwanda – a sign of desperation as they have resisted returning for two years fearing retribution for the genocide of Tutsis.
Zaire continues to accuse Rwanda of organising and arming the Banyamulenge, or even invading, but the Rwandan president, Pasteur Bizimugu, denied on Monday that his country was providing military help to the Banyamulenge, though he said he morally supported their struggle against “extermination” by Zairean authorities.
Observers strongly suspect the Rwandan military of assisting the Zairean Tutsi militias.
The spreading conflict threatens the whole of Central Africa’s Great Lakes region and the unity of Zaire. Zaire, the UN and Western governments, which appear powerless to intervene, are reaping the whirlwind of their callous indifference.
In 1994, Zaire’s now ailing president, Mobutu Sese Seko, gave a home to more than a million Rwandan Hutu refugees as a lever to destabilise the new Tutsi-dominated government in Rwanda. Sheltering the refugees won him favour among former friends, such as France and the United States, which quietly dropped pressure for Mobutu to surrender power.
Through the UN, the West fed and watered the hordes in the camps, and the world assuaged its guilt at ignoring the Hutu-inspired slaughter by pouring in massive aid. But this helped to ensure the survival of the Interahamwe militias, which had led the killing of Tutsis. The UN turned a blind eye not only to the past crimes of these mass killers, but their efforts to perpetuate the slaughter.
Mobutu now lies sick in a Swiss hospital, and doubts whether he will survive his prostate cancer are increasing the chaos in his rudderless nation. Meanwhile the UN is pleading for an end to the suffering of Hutu refugees, after standing by as those same refugees slaughtered thousands of Zairean Tutsis and set the present crisis in motion.
Muller Ruhimbika, a Banyamulenge, is scathing. “For two years we’ve been telling people – diplomats and foreigners – it was going to explode. They were laughing in our faces when we asked for help. Now they want to mediate. Mediate what?”
The roots of the Banyamulenge rebellion lie not just in the fate of Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide, but also the mass slaughter of other Tutsis in Zaire over the past two years. Several hundred miles to the north of the Uvira area, the Banyarwanda were an early target for pogroms. Two years of attacks by Hutu militias drove 150 000 Banyarwanda from their homes; 15 000 people were killed.
Rwanda warned of another genocide in the making and appealed for international intervention, but the UN in the refugee camps looked the other way, on the grounds that the Banyarwanda were Zairean citizens – even though one reason they were being murdered was because Zaire said it had stripped them of their citizenship. Only now is the UN facing up to what occurred.
In a report on the killings in Masisi, issued last month, it accused the Interahamwe of conniving with Zairean troops to murder and expel Tutsis and blames the Zairean government, especially the “political class which has fomented xenophobic nationalist sentiment”. Even some Zairean human rights groups are said to have “fostered racial hatred and ethnic cleansing rather than defending the oppressed”.
For the Banyamulenge, the crunch came when South Kivu’s deputy governor, Lwasi Ngabo Lwabanji, gave them a week to get out of Zaire. Only too aware of the fate of the Banyarwanda in Masisi, they struck back last month.
There is a clear attempt to empty the refugee camps, which suits both Rwanda and Burundi. Some believe Rwanda may be attempting to carve out a buffer zone. But there’s also no doubt that for many of the fighters the battle is about something closer to home – their own land.
* A BBC journalist, Martin Dawes, was beaten and robbed at gunpoint by soldiers from the Zairean army in Bukavu at the weekend.