Millions Flee Rwanda; Rebels Say War Is Over

Millions of Rwandans fled toward uncertain safety in neighboring nations Monday as Tutsi rebels declared an immediate cease-fire, an end to Rwanda’s civil war and the installation of a new government.

But the rebels’ promise of a unilateral cease-fire did little to reassure millions of Hutu refugees--by one estimate nearly half the prewar population. They are seeking shelter in neighboring countries for fear the victorious rebels will retaliate for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people--most of them Tutsis--by Hutu militias.

Between Wednesday and Sunday, up to 1 million Hutu civilians and soldiers pushed into Goma, Zaire, from the northwestern Rwandan town of Gisenyi.

Late Monday, refugee officials reported that an estimated 1.9 million more Hutus were streaming toward the southwestern Rwandan border town of Cyangugu, heading for Bukavu, Zaire, 60 miles south of Goma.

“It happened so suddenly and nobody is ready. The barriers are open and nobody can stop them,” Marianne Coradazzi of the International Committee of the Red Cross said from Bukavu.

About 100,000 people crossed Sunday and Monday. If the rest of the 1.9 million on the move cross into Zaire, almost 3.5 million Rwandans--almost half of the estimated prewar population of 8 million--would be living in refugee camps in neighboring countries.

Before last week’s mass flight, more than half a million made their way into Tanzania, Burundi and Uganda. Hundreds of thousands more are displaced within Rwanda.

Meanwhile, transport planes flew more aid into Zaire on Monday for the refugees there. But relief agencies said they were overwhelmed and expressed fears about the eventual death toll.

Water was in critically short supply in this area of volcanic rock where rainfall just disappears, said Samantha Bolton of the relief agency Doctors Without Borders, adding: “It’s impossible to know how many are dying--dysentery, malaria and dehydration. People are collapsing in the camps.”

The United States on Monday pledged more to the relief effort, for a total of $118 million in humanitarian assistance to Rwanda and Burundi since April.

Brian Atwood, the Clinton Administration’s special envoy for disaster assistance, had said earlier Monday that the United States would work with the Rwandan Patriotic Front to rebuild the country if the rebels halted their offensive and formed an acceptable government that included moderate Hutus.

Hutus make up about 90% of the population in Rwanda, a mountainous, mostly agricultural nation the size of Maryland. Although Tutsis are less than 10% of the population, they ruled the area for centuries; the country has a history of ethnic massacres.

Violence flared in Rwanda on April 6 when President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, died in a suspicious plane crash. Within hours, Hutu militias began systematically killing anyone perceived to oppose the government.

The predominantly Tutsi rebels then relaunched a war against the Hutu government that had been halted by a peace accord in August.

Leaders of the rump Hutu government had apparently encouraged the latest human flood through Rwanda’s southwestern corner, where French forces have declared a humanitarian protection zone, said Fernando del Mundo, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva.

“The refugees are saying they are moving because their leaders told them they can no longer protect them,” del Mundo said.

Little evidence has emerged of widespread reprisals against the Hutus by the Tutsi minority, and leaders of the rebel front reiterated Monday that Hutus have no need to flee.

“We guarantee all Rwandans stability and security,” Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame of the RPF said in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital.

Radio Rwanda announced that Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu, would be the new president and confirmed that Hutu moderate Faustin Twagirimungu would be prime minister of a “sufficiently broad-based government of national unity.”

By giving Hutus the two top jobs, the Tutsi-dominated RPF appeared to be trying to reassure Hutus they have nothing to fear under a new government founded on the armed might of Rwanda’s onetime feudal overlords.

But the cease-fire announced Monday came less than 24 hours after the RPF’s image was tarnished by mortar attacks in which about 100 civilians, mostly Rwandans, were killed inside Zaire.

Panos Moumtzis, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said “strong evidence” indicated the rebels were responsible for the “criminal” attack near Goma.

In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp., Kagame said members of the Hutu government who took part in the genocidal campaign against the Tutsis would be tried and punished.

The rebels want the French to arrest the leaders of the Hutu government. France says arresting government leaders is not part of its humanitarian mandate.