Burundi’s government calls it `regroupment’, but to the thousandsof Hutus chased from their land these places are concentration camps. Chris McGreal reports from Nyarurama, Burundi
AMELIE MUVUNI is not a prisoner in the conventional sense. There is no fence to keep her confined to the squalid, overcrowded hillside camp she was herded into by Burundi’s army.
But were she not to be found in her makeshift shelter at dusk, Amelie could not count on her age and infirmity to save her from a bullet.
“They made us come here,” she said. “They tell us it is for our own good, but they do not treat us well. They beat us and they kill people.”
Burundi’s Tutsi-led military government has forced hundreds of thousands of Hutus into camps dotted across the country. The authorities call it “regroupment” aimed at separating the majority Hutu peasant population from rebels battling the overwhelmingly Tutsi army and targeting civilians.
Critics – including the Hutu party driven from power by President Pierre Buyoya’s military coup a year ago – call them concentration camps. The United States has demanded their closure.
In military terms, regroupment has borne fruit. In many areas the rebels are no longer able to shelter among the population or rely on it for support. Attacks in Kayanza province, where Muvuni is one of about 100 000 people in camps, have dropped sharply.
But the grandmother, aged 58, and her fellow internees are paying the price. Severely overcrowded, heavily guarded camps in four provinces have been hit by typhus and dysentery. Starvation has pushed up the death toll.
Hutus in the camps accuse the army of torture, murder and rape. Others report the systematic disappearance of hundreds of young Hutu men. And with whole communities driven out, the military embarked on a scorched-earth policy, destroying homes and crops, and killing those who remained outside the camps. The government says about 300 000 people are interned. Outside agencies believe the real figure is twice as high.
The military governor of Kayanza province, Colonel Daniel Nengeri, concedes that most of those in the camps went reluctantly. But he says they were also the target of attack from what the government calls “armed bands”.
Nengeri said: “The population didn’t ask to be re-grouped. The population has been regrouped for its own security. At first they didn’t like it but they came to see it was for their own good. We want to separate innocent people from the armed bands so we could deal with them militarily.”
Muvuni does not see internment as for her own good. “The army came to our commune and told us we had to go to the camp the next day,” she said. “The soldiers said that anybody who was left in their homes was a rebel and they would kill them.”
In the eastern province of Karuzi, the army behaved in a particularly brutal fashion. It swept across hillsides after the deadline for people to clear out had passed, murdering those remaining.
A couple working the field in front of their scorched home talked nervously. “The soldiers ruined everything,” the man said. “They made us stay in the camp for weeks while they destroyed. They took all the young men from the roadside and the camp. We don’t know what happened to them.”
In the weeks after Muvuni and her family were herded into Nyarurama, they were not allowed to leave the camp, even to harvest crops. The military government was counting on foreign aid agencies to provide food and health care, but most were reluctant to collaborate with the incarceration.
Left to its own devices, and facing an international embargo, the government chose to spend its scarce resources on weapons. Malnutrition soared. With hunger came disease.
“There were some deaths,” said Nengeri. “I don’t know how many, but not catastrophic.”
Health workers and camp internees say the number of people who died from disease and malnutrition runs into the thousands.
In some areas the government is now moving to dismantle the camps. One large camp has been cleared in Kayanza, and Nengeri said he hopes to empty them all by the end of the year.
Muvuni is not optimistic. “If they let me go, I have to build a new house. Who says the army won’t come and destroy it again?”