Only 47 Refugees Agree to Go Back to Rwanda

Little children ran out of houses and village elderly stood by the road to greet a handful of Rwandan refugees returning home Saturday for the first time since they fled to Zaire during last year’s civil war.

“Welcome, welcome,” villagers said to the small group who returned voluntarily to their commune in Gishiye in Rwanda’s northwestern border region after the United Nations’ refugee agency negotiated an end to Zaire’s forced expulsions.

The voluntary U.N. program that began Friday, a day after Zaire halted its mass repatriation of more than 15,000 Rwandan refugees, ground to a virtual halt Saturday when only 47 people agreed to go home.

Instead, tens of thousands of Rwandan Hutus who had fled the Zairian net came out of hiding in woods and hills, returning to their camps on Zaire’s eastern border and shunning the U.N. offer to escort them home.

After more than a year in camps partly controlled by Hutu hard-liners, many refugees fear that, if they return, the Tutsis now in power in Rwanda will wreak a merciless and random revenge for last year’s mass killings of up to 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

About 1 million Hutu refugees remain inside Zaire, and U.N. officials are concerned that, unless the pace of voluntary returns speeds up, Zairian troops could go back on the offensive.

Zaire started the forced expulsions after complaining for months that the international community was not doing enough to help it shoulder the refugee burden.

U.N. refugee agency officials were hoping Zaire would not resume forced expulsions before talks due Monday between agency head Sadako Ogata and Zairian Prime Minister Leon Kengo wa Dondo.