In Wake of Massacre, UN Moves Congolese Refugees Further Into Burundi

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

http://allafrica.com/stories/200408190789.html

snip
At a memorial service in Geneva for the nearly 160 Congolese refugees killed in Burundi's Gatumba transit centre last weekend, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees denounced the attack as an "appalling massacre of innocent civilians" and announced that the survivors were being relocated away from the tense border.

"We have to relocate these people - it is not safe in the area," Ruud Lubbers said yesterday of the 20,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who have fled to Burundi since ethnic violence broke out in DRC's South Kivu Province in June.

On Monday, the Burundi Government offered the UN refugee agency a camp location in Giharo in southeastern Rutana Province, far from the Gatumba transit camp, which is 15 kilometres outside Bujumbura and near to the DRC border town of Uvira.

Gatumba camp has been closed and its 860 refugees relocated to a nearby school, UNHCR said. Some of the refugees moved to Bujumbura on their own.
/snip

[struggle4progress]

1. UN fears Hutu-Tutsi warfare

AP at the UN
Saturday August 21, 2004
The Guardian

The United Nations sees a "real danger" of a new war between Hutus and Tutsis in central Africa and is appealing to leaders in Burundi, Congo and Rwanda to deal with extremists and return to the path of reconciliation, its under-secretary general Jean-Marie Guehenno said.

He was speaking after briefing the security council on Thursday that threats of retaliation by key figures in the three countries following last week's massacre of at least 160 refugees at a UN camp in Burundi could lead to renewed fighting.
<snip>

More than 10 years of violence between Hutus and Tutsis has racked central Africa. It spawned the 1994 Rwandan genocide, a continuing civil war in Burundi, and two invasions of Congo by Rwanda and Burundi.

A Burundian Hutu rebel group, the National Liberation Forces, claimed responsibility for the attack on Gatumba.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/rwanda/story/0,14451,1287868,00.html