It’s Safe to Return Home, Rwanda Officials Tell Hutus

Three ministers of the new Tutsi-led Rwandan government paid an unprecedented visit to the French protected “safe zone” in southwest Rwanda on Sunday to tell frightened Hutu refugees it was safe to return home.

But their emotional appeal was met with skepticism and outright hostility by the refugees, even as French protectors vowed to pull out of the zone by a scheduled Aug. 22 deadline.

The cold reaction to the ministers indicated that fear and mistrust are still preventing hundreds of thousands of refugees, in neighboring Zaire or under French protection, from returning to their homes.

Interior Minister Seth Sendashonga, Repatriation Minister Jacques Bihozagara and Public Works Minister Charles Ntakirutenka flew from Kigali aboard a U.N. helicopter to Kibuye, at the northern edge of the French-held safe haven.

There, they met local leaders and later talked to about 2,000 people assembled at the town’s soccer stadium.

“I came down here to reassure people they can safely go home, that there will be no reprisals,” Sendashonga told reporters.

“People tell me they hear rumors of returnees being massacred,” he added. “What I say is they should ask those who went to Kigali and returned and rely on credible testimonies.”

In Paris, Prime Minister Edouard Balladur said Sunday that his troops will pull out of Rwanda by the deadline despite fears of a new exodus of refugees.

“We said at the end of July that we accepted to put off (withdrawal) to Aug. 22. We do not intend to extend the deadline beyond that date,” he said in a radio interview.

The French-planned departure from the humanitarian and demilitarized zone only a week from now, at the end of their two-month U.N. mandate, is causing great concern among a population fearing further ethnic massacres.

U.N. and aid agency officials fear a new refugee exodus in southwestern Rwanda, but they stressed Sunday that there was no influx yet.

In Kibuye, they said 3,000 to 5,000 refugees left the town Saturday. They headed south for Cyangugu just over the border from the eastern Zairian town of Bukavu.

The former Hutu-led government, which fled to Zaire after it was overthrown by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front, is urging the refugees to leave, saying they will be killed by the RPF if they return to their homes.

An estimated 500,000 people, mostly Tutsis, were killed by government soldiers and Hutu death squads before the RPF victory.

The new Rwandan government, approved by the RPF, is campaigning with U.N. approval to coax the refugees back.

But when Sendashonga told the crowd listening to him that the Kigali authorities are not vengeful, most people laughed at him.

“People just don’t believe him,” Kibuye Mayor Augustin Karaba said.