Paralyzed by Fear, Holdouts Stay in Rwanda Camp

Just five days ago, this camp was the size of a city. On Monday, there were only 500 or so holdout Rwandan refugees in the courtyard of a former school, trapped somewhere between living and dying.

Without water, without food, slumped deep in drifts of their own garbage and excrement, under clouds of fat flies, they were paralyzed by fear: They would be killed if they stayed, they would be killed if they left. And if they weren’t killed soon, they were perilously close to dying anyway.

All around them was the evidence of how right they were. To walk into the wretched, reeking debris of the camp was to tread carefully. Right there in the entryway alongside a cooking pot and a crushed water jug was the body of a small child. Eleven other bodies were lined up like firewood.

Outside were the mass graves of maybe 2,000 other refugees killed over the weekend by both soldiers and their own--graves so shallow and soft one dared not walk near them for fear of sinking in.

And beyond the graves were army marksmen.

From somewhere in the camp Monday afternoon a filthy refugee began his desperate dash for freedom down the slope from this high point in rural Rwanda. By refusing an order to halt, he was assumed to be guilty of something.

Gunshots. A pause. A final shot to the head. The body was left spread-eagled in the sun.

“I have been to massacre sites, I have been to refugee camps--this is both,” Alex Belida, veteran Africa correspondent for the Voice of America, said of the camp that until the weekend was home to 80,000 to 100,000 people.

Inside the courtyard Monday, militant Hutu thugs threatened to kill anyone who made a move to leave. U.N. observers said these militiamen, who no doubt fear being imprisoned and executed for last year’s genocide of minority Tutsis if they surrender, enforced their edicts with machetes, grenades and probably a few guns. They held their fellow refugees as virtual hostages.

“You see them in there--they’re killing each other. And you know what I think will happen tonight, I think they will kill more of each other in there, and this is the reality,” said Benedicte Giaeuer, a U.N. field officer.

More than 40 in the courtyard were reported killed Sunday and at least 11 Monday.

Outside the courtyard, the refugees faced the machine guns and automatic rifles of the Rwandan army--and beyond the army a hostile countryside. Last week, the Tutsi-dominated army moved to close this and three other camps inside Rwanda’s borders, camps where Hutus fled after the 1994 civil war and ethnic slaughter.

The army move on Kibeho resulted in the deaths of what U.N. officials believe were up to 2,000 Hutus over the weekend--some from army gunfire, some from Hutu militants and others in stampedes.

In Washington, the State Department announced Monday that its top Africa expert, Assistant Secretary of State George Moose, has been sent to Rwanda to try to find out who was responsible for the massacre and to determine what the international community can do to help restore order.

Department spokesman Nicholas Burns refused to blame the Rwandan government or its army for the killing. He said it is not clear who started the shooting, although he said the United States “is appalled at the horrific violence.”

But U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali strongly condemned the Rwandan government Monday. From Bandung, Indonesia, he blamed government troops for what he said was “the indiscriminate killing of thousands of unarmed civilians, including women and children,” the Reuters news service reported.

On Monday, Rwanda’s army set--and then extended--several deadlines for refugees to evacuate the courtyard. U.N. troops promised them safe passage.

But after the weekend slaughter, the remaining refugees were gripped by fear. Somewhere down the road, the army would ambush them. Or in the villages, vigilantes would exact revenge for the rampage of Hutus against Tutsis.

“My wife and children died, so I cannot go. . . . We’ve got fear. There is word that those who left were shot, so most of us feel they will fall in the same trap,” said one frail refugee who barely had the strength to speak.

“We’ve examined all the avenues. We would rather stay here and die,” he said.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.