BURUNDI-RWANDA: Asylum seekers intimidated to return home, UN agency says

NAIROBI, 17 May 2005 (IRIN) - Hundreds of Rwandan asylum seekers, who had fled to Burundi in fear of tribunals at home, may have been intimidated to return to Rwanda, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has reported.

"UNHCR is not organising these departures and is often not present when the asylum seekers are leaving the sites," Ron Redmond, UNHCR spokesman, was quoted as saying on Friday in Geneva.

He said most of those departing Burundi were leaving between 4 p.m. and 9 a.m., when UN in-country staff was subject to a curfew.

"It is difficult to know exactly how many of the 7,000 Rwandans who arrived in Burundi since early April have left," Redmond was quoted as saying. "We cannot confirm that everyone who left has gone back to Rwanda. Some of the people who departed the sites are thought to be hiding in neighbouring areas."

The UNHCR reported that according to the asylum seekers at the Ntega site in Burundi's northeastern province of Kirundo, the "Burundian military broke into their shelters on Wednesday and beat them with batons". The asylum seekers were warned they would be beaten again unless they had left the site by the end of the next day, the agency added.

"When UNHCR staff arrived at the site the following morning, only a few hundred of the 1,500 asylum seekers who had been staying at Ntega were still around," UNHCR said. "Most were packing their belongings. In the next few hours, UNHCR staff saw approximately 250 to 300 people leave for Rwanda on two pick-ups and three trucks. Many others left on foot. Only two families remained on the site by the end of Thursday afternoon."

UNHCR said its office in the capital, Bujumbura, contacted the Burundian authorities once it received the report.

The agency added that the authorities had assured it after a meeting on 27 April that the fundamental principle of non-forced returns would be respected, as well as the voluntary aspect of repatriation.

UNHCR has also asked for UN peacekeepers in Burundi to be present at the sites in the border area.

Four of the seven temporary sites where Rwandan asylum seekers had been staying since early April are now empty. UNCHR said some of the asylum seekers were leaving on trucks sent by the Rwandan government to take them back home, but most were leaving on foot.

The agency reported that Burundian and Rwandan authorities were currently running an information campaign that they said was aimed at encouraging the asylum seekers to go home. The campaign was scheduled to end on Thursday but has been extended by a week.

Within curfew restrictions, UNHCR staff was attending as many of these meetings with the asylum seekers as possible, UNHCR added.

According to the agency, the asylum seekers said they fled to Burundi because of fears over the Gacaca courts - which are based on a traditional justice system - looking into the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

They also cite threats and rumours of massacres and revenge attacks as reasons for leaving Rwanda, the agency reported. The asylum seekers had been living in makeshift conditions along the border since early April.

In mid-April, UNHCR transferred 1,800 of them to two transit centres farther inland in Burundi. All transfers were halted on 23 April, however, following a decision by the Burundian authorities.

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