More than 1 000 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) refugees were still stuck on Saturday night in a strip of no man’s land between their country and neighbouring Burundi, despite promises by a DRC official that they would be allowed home.
Civilians on the DRC side of the border erected barricades on Saturday to try to prevent the return of the 1 176 refugees, some of whom have been camped out in the zone between the two countries since Wednesday.
Clashes in the eastern DRC in June prompted an exodus of ethnic Tutsis from the region to Burundi.
”We are going to talk with Burundian authorities and then we will meet them [the refugees] straight away to get them home today,” DRC Deputy Interior Minister Paul Musafiri Naluango said in Bujumbura earlier on Saturday after arriving in the Burundian capital on Friday night.
”We hope that the minister will come up with a solution to our problem, which is very simple, because we are Congolese people who want to go home,” one of the refugees, Pasteur Munyaruhanga, said on Friday.
”The government [in Kinshasa] sent us to find a solution,” explained the deputy minister.
”Of course we have to let the Congolese who are in the no man’s land return to their country, but we have to protect the DRC from infiltration by people who might want to cause trouble,” he added.
Most of the refugees are Banyamulenge, Congolese Tutsis of Rwandan ancestry.
In June, Banyamulenge former rebels integrated into the DRC’s new army mutinied against regular troops, prompting clashes that led to an exodus of Banyamulenge civilians from the eastern DRC.
”The Congolese authorities think that some of the [mutinous] soldiers are among the refugees, which explains their mistrust,” said a Burundian army officer, who asked not to be named.
The Banyamulenge also face hostility from civilians in the eastern DRC.
Residents of Bukavu, a town on the DRC side of the border, set up barricades on Saturday after Musafiri visited the town to urge residents to welcome back the refugees.
”People are preventing them returning. They have set up barricades to block traffic and there is noticable tension in the town,” said Leo Salmeron, a spokesperson for the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the DRC.
The DRC refugees have refused offers from the UN refugee agency to be moved to camps in Burundi further away from the DRC border.
The offer was made after as-yet-unidentified assailants massacred 160 refugees in a camp just next to the border on August 13.
”They feel the new camps are not safe,” said Naluango. ”If they have decided to go home, nobody can stop them.” — Sapa-AFP