BURUNDI-TANZANIA: Refugees reluctant to return home

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

NGARA, 30 Dec 2005 (IRIN) - On a routine repatriation day in the Ngara District of northwestern Tanzania, convoys organised by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, lined up to take Burundi refugees home.

An 11-year-old boy stood crying next to one of the trucks. Momentarily, there was a flurry of activity as UNHCR officials tried to verify that the boy had not been left behind. He had not. Still crying, the boy explained that he was sad because his "family" was leaving. Even though he was staying at the camp with his biological mother, he was heartbroken that another family he had considered his own was returning to Burundi without him.

The number of returnees has dropped sharply recently, compared with the peak period from August to October, when more than 5,000 people returned to Burundi each month. To accommodate these numbers UNHCR had made plans to increase the frequency of transport convoys from two to three a week. However, they were never increased and now, with fewer than 100 returnees per week, the agency is considering limiting the convoys to one a week.

Cyclical movement

The decrease in the number of returnees does not surprise UNHCR officials in the region. Since the start of repatriation in 2002, there has been a cyclical movement in terms of repatriation. At this time of year, it is the rainy season in Burundi. Refugees therefore prefer to stay put and plant their crops in Tanzania. Those in Ngara said the next wave of repatriations would probably begin from May to July 2006, after the harvest.

Since its inception in 2002, at least 60,000 Burundian refugees have returned home under the Voluntary Repatriation Programme. However, UNHCR says some 238,000 Burundian refugees remain in Tanzanian camps and another 198,000 live in settlements in the west of the host country.

Although the rainy season is a major deterrent to repatriation, there are other reasons for the decline in returnee numbers. One particular concern of the refugees from Ngara is the serious food shortages in the northern provinces, from where the majority come.

"Several radios in Burundi have covered the famine in northern Burundi," said Sabine Nshimirimana, a woman refugee from Ngara whose hometown is in that area in Kirundo Province. "I know this is true because the radios cannot lie. If they did, the government would not let them broadcast this news."

Nshimirimana said she could not return under these circumstances because she had children to feed. She lost her land and home in Burundi to her husband's killers.

"There is nothing to go back to," she said.

Moreover, she said, food aid did not last long. The return package of food and non-food items given to each refugee has been calculated to last for three months. Each family member is given its own ration as well as non-food items.

Continued military activity of the Front national de liberation (FNL) rebel group, led by Agathon Rwasa, is also discouraging refugees from returning. Some of the refugees cannot understand why, despite the presidential election victory of Pierre Nkurunziza of the Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie-Forces pour le defense pour le democratie (CNDD-FDD), the government cannot negotiate with the FNL since both are from the country's majority Hutu ethnic group.

Nshimirimana said she was unhappy about the government's ultimatum to the FNL and its members: that they must surrender their guns and join peace talks by 30 December or face fighting a regional military force. This kind of tough talk has spread fear among the refugees that they may be harassed, arrested, tortured or killed for ostensibly giving political support to the FNL. This was the experience of Fidele Manirambona and Francois Ndikubwayo, who both fled the eastern province of Ruyigi in 1994. They ended in prison for a week after returning from Tanzania because police suspected them of being FNL members.

"We were informed that our names were on a list of suspected FNL recruits," Ndikubwayo said. "This list has 40 names on it, and it was written in 1993. Even though we have been freed, people regard us with suspicion."

A local official in the area acknowledged the existence of the list but did not know who had compiled it.

Another factor discouraging refugees from returning is a rumour in the camp that each person wishing to do so must present a receipt proving financial contributions to the CNDD-FDD.

"When you return, people are sent to your home at night and ask what your contribution to CNDD-FDD's victory was," said Athanase Barutwanayo a refugee from Ngara. "If you do not present a receipt proving your financial contribution during the war, you are labelled an FNL supporter, thrown in jail, tortured and even murdered."

Pressure from Tanzania

Fears of persecution in Burundi are compounded by the mounting pressures Tanzanian officials place on refugees. According to Radio Kwizera, a Jesuit-run refugee station, the Kibondo district commissioner in northeastern Tanzania, John Muzulikwao, told the refugees there on 5 December that he would close two of the three camps in the area in the next three months.

"I used to be a harmless barking dog, now I bark and I bite," he told the frightened crowd.

Muzulikwao also told them that his government could not understand why refugees did not want to repatriate since seven million other Burundians were living in peace at home. Therefore, he ordered all refugees above the age of 18 years to explain in a letter their reasons for not repatriating before 15 December.

Muzulikwao's visit was followed by more restrictive measures such as stopping all refugees from working for relief organisations in the camp because, he said, jobs encouraged them to remain in Tanzania. He was acting in compliance with Tanzanian law banning all income-generating activities in the camps. In August, police had already destroyed all the shops in the camps that the refugees had opened after authorities closed the main refugee market in 2003 because of increased armed robbery.

As a result of these constraints, many refugees feel trapped: They do not feel peace is real enough for their return, yet the camps are unsafe because of nightly attacks by armed thugs. To safeguard their families, men in the camps have organised night patrols within the facility.

Tripartite meeting

The refugees also dread meetings bringing together the Burundi and Tanzania governments with UNHCR, which launched the voluntary repatriation scheme in 2002. Each time these meetings are held the refugees fear that Burundi and Tanzania would push for their immediate repatriation. This fear is fueled by Burundian and Tanzanian government officials who visit the camps, each time there is a tripartite meeting, urging the refugees to return home.

"We are bracing ourselves for another blow with the next meeting scheduled sometime in January 2006," Pierre Sabimbona, a refugee from Ngara, said.

Although they are reluctant to leave Tanzania just yet, many refugees have signed up for repatriation as a precautionary measure against sudden expulsion, as happened with Rwandan refugees in 1996. Some prefer to stay in the camps until the last possible moment; meaning the definite closure of these facilities. Others with some money, however, are taking even more radical option: They are leaving Tanzania to seek asylum in places like Uganda and Malawi where, they have said, refugees were being better treated.

"Either way you look at it, there is death at the end of the road," said refugee Theresa Bucumi, 40. "Here in the camps, you can die a slow death with the reduction of food rations and restriction of free movement or at the hand of armed thugs. In Burundi, there is starvation and an unfinished war."

[ENDS]