Rwanda Refugees in Tanzania Flee
Hutu militants forced hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees to abandon U.N. camps in northwestern Tanzania on Thursday and hide in nearby forests to avoid going home, aid workers said.
Tanzania, which borders Rwanda, has the largest remaining population of Rwandan refugees--535,000 people--and says they all must leave by Dec. 31.
By late Thursday, at least four huge camps--Lumasi, Kitali, Mushuhura and Benaco--that used to hold about 390,000 refugees were nearly empty.
Aid workers blamed Thursday’s exodus on a campaign of intimidation by Hutu militants, who fear retribution for a 1994 genocide in Rwanda if they go back.
The exodus “was well-organized and orderly,” said Peter Kessler, spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Nairobi, Kenya, and the refugees apparently knew of the exodus in advance.
They sold off belongings, harvested beans from their tiny gardens and waited to get their two-week aid allotment of red beans, corn and cooking oil, aid workers said.
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