Refugees Choose Camps Over Uncertain Fate in Rwanda

GOMA, Zaire -- Despite the death and misery in their wretched camps in eastern Zaire, nearly 1 million fearful refugees are rejecting United Nations pleas to return to Rwanda.


Officials of the UN refugee agency met with elders and community leaders among the refugees Tuesday in an attempt to get them to persuade their people to return to their farms and homes.


"It was very unsuccessful," said Ray Wilkinson, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees on Wednesday. "It's going to be a massive effort to convince them."


Wilkinson said an estimated 22,000 refugees from the camps near Goma had returned to Rwanda through official border crossing points. Up to 90,000 may have returned through the bush, he added.


But that is a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands packed in squalor in the camps and dying by the hundreds every day of cholera, dysentery and other diseases.


Most of the refugees are Hutus, the ethnic majority, who fled Rwanda in fear of retribution from a Tutsi-led rebel army for the slaughter of at least 350,000 people, mainly Tutsis, from April to July. The UN and human rights groups blame the massacres on the Rwandan army and civilian militias guided by extremist Hutu politicians.


No reports have surfaced of large-scale revenge killings by the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front, which has established a new government in the capital of Kigali. It has repeatedly said innocent Hutus have nothing to fear in returning home.


But remnants of the defeated Rwandan army and some Hutu politicians are actively spreading rumors in the Zairian camps, telling the refugees they will gouge out their eyes and slit open their bellies if they recross the border.


The fiction, said Wilkinson, is stronger than the truth.


Wilkinson said he hoped his agency would be able to take some elders and community leaders back across the border on a tour to prove to them that it is safe for their people to return.


In the squalid camps, the refugees are dying at a rate of 600-700 a day, Wilkinson said. That's down from 800-900 two days ago, and far fewer than the 1,800-2,000 who were dying each day early last week.


But, Wilkinson added, "All signs are that dysentery is on the rise, so this may be only a temporary drop in deaths."


More than 22,000 have died since the crisis began two weeks ago, and although governments and aid agencies have made progress in stemming the deaths, much more is needed. The French military has lowered its estimate of the number of refugees in the Goma region to 890,000. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees acknowledged its original estimate of 1.2 million refugees was exaggerated, but declined to give a new estimate.


With the arrival of the first American trucks in Zaire, U.S. Army convoys delivered more than 100,000 gallons of water Tuesday to the gruesome Kibumba camp, where more than 250,000 Rwandans have taken refuge. The U.S. Air Force landed eight jumbo cargo jets at Goma's single-strip airport, carrying four bigger American trucks able to carry 5,000 gallons each and nine water trucks donated by Finland.


The U.S. Army's 10 water pumps and chlorinators can produce half a million gallons a day. But the UN estimates the refugees around Goma need 1.25 million gallons, more if they are to keep clean -- essential for preventing disease.