HUMAN RIGHTS FIELD OPERATION IN RWANDA REPORTS DETENTION OF 5460 RETURNEES

Press Release
HR/4320

HUMAN RIGHTS FIELD OPERATION IN RWANDA REPORTS DETENTION OF 5460 RETURNEES

GENEVA, 7 January (UN Information Service) -- Some 5,460 recent Rwandan returnees were being held in detention throughout Rwanda as of 31 December 1996, according to a 6 January report from the Human Rights Field Operation in Rwanda (HRFOR) of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The detainees are among the 1 million former refugees who returned to the country from camps in Zaire and the United Republic of Tanzania starting in mid-November 1996. Around 473,082 returnees arrived in south-eastern Rwanda from Tanzania between 14 and 31 December, while 555,000 have come back from Zaire since November.

A majority of the returnees from former refugee camps in Ngara and Karagwe in north-eastern Tanzania were originally from Kibungo and Mutara Prefectures and arrived in Rwanda by foot via the Rusumo border crossing, the report indicates. In Kibungo Prefecture, 2243 returnees are in detention, while 676 are being held in Mutara Prefecture. Local authorities in some communes in Kibungo have responded to the large number of arrests by releasing detainees accused of common crimes.

According to the Operation, the number of arrests in Kibungo and Mutara Prefectures in the first weeks of the return was significantly higher than that recorded during the return to the northern prefectures of refugees from camps in Zaire in mid-November, when after two weeks only 162 returnees were being held in detention. Part of the explanation for the difference lies in that more people were killed during the genocide in Kibungo than in the northern prefectures of Gisenyi and Ruhengeri, home to a majority of the refugees that went to Zaire. The context in which returnees left countries of asylum is another factor: unlike the camps in Zaire, where organizers of the genocide were reportedly able to take advantage of war conditions to escape, many organizers of the genocide sheltering in Tanzania were unable to flee and were compelled to return to Rwanda.

The Human Rights Operation also reports that 310 members of the former Rwandese Armed Forces have been registered in Kibungo; registration figures for Mutara are still being compiled.

- 2 - Press Release HR/4320 8 January 1997

As for the treatment of returnees, the Operation continues to receive reports of ill-treatment in communal detention centres and during interrogations, as well as of illegal arrest procedures. Of particular concern is the level of tension between the local population and recently-arrived returnees in Kibungo. For example, between 20 and 26 December the Operation received reports of five separate incidents in which seven people had been killed. The Human Rights Operation has also been told of difficulties in Kibungo with the implementation of the Government's directive that all occupied houses should be vacated two weeks after the return of the owners. The problem is particularly acute in that area as more houses were destroyed there than in the north-west, and many of the first returnees settled in the region. In the Rusumo commune of Kibungo, for example, a quarter of all houses -- some 3,000 out of 12,000 -- were destroyed.

In another report also dated 6 January, the Operation welcomes the first genocide trials in Kibungo, Kigali and Byumba in Rwanda from 27 December 1996 to 3 January. The operation is concerned, however, over several aspects of the proceedings in Kibungo, in particular the lack of respect for the right to a defence as guaranteed by Rwanda's justice system and by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Rwanda is a party.

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