Rwandan Refugees Begin Returning Home After 2 1/2 Years in Tanzania

Balancing bundles of food and clothing on their heads, Rwandan refugees who previously refused to return home began crossing a narrow concrete bridge over a waterfall Saturday to reenter Rwanda after 2 1/2 years in Tanzania.

Earlier, Tanzanian soldiers and police had surrounded camps in the northwestern Ngara area and ordered the refugees to move out. Aid workers said they hoped all 535,000 Rwandan Hutus remaining in Tanzania would return home.

“I’m very glad to be in Rwanda. This is my home,” said Namani Munyantore, 26.

He said it had taken eight hours for him, his wife and their two children to walk 18 miles from the Lumasi camp.

The first returnees crossed in small groups--some on foot and some on bicycles. About a mile behind them stretched a dense, 11-mile-long column of refugees.

The flow of people abated as night fell. The main group was expected to cross today, aid workers said.

Last week, the Tanzanian government ordered all refugees to return to Rwanda by month’s end.

But Hutu militants who controlled the camps led the refugees deeper into Tanzania, vowing they would not go home. The militants said Rwanda’s new Tutsi-led government would kill returning Hutus in retaliation for the 1994 slaughter of minority Tutsis.