ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 16, 1996 TAG: 9611180055
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: GISENYI, RWANDA
SOURCE: Associated Press
MORE THAN 400,000 HUTUS who have been on the run since 1994 decided to make the long walk home.
In a sudden exodus that may alleviate central Africa's refugee crisis and ease the work of foreign relief troops, up to 400,000 ragged Rwandan Hutu refugees trudged homeward Friday after escaping from Hutu militants in Zaire.
Balancing meager belongings on their heads, carrying babies on their backs, waves of refugees moved slowly and steadily in a 25-mile column from eastern Zaire to Rwanda.
The refugees, however, still faced the dangers of disease and violence. Cholera has appeared in some refugee camps, 30 women and children were massacred Thursday, and some refugees feared Tutsi retaliation once they return home.
The tide of refugees took the world by surprise, but it may work to the advantage of an international military force, including up to 5,000 U.S. soldiers, being set up to save the refugees.
The U.N. Security Council on Friday unanimously approved the Canadian-led multinational force of 10,000 to 12,000 troops to help aid the refugees in central Africa. The force received a four-month mandate.
``Despite the heartening news that up to a third of the Rwandan refugees in Zaire may finally be going home, people will continue to die in eastern Zaire in appalling numbers and their presence there will continue to destabilize the region,'' Canadian Ambassador Robert Fowler told the 15-member council in appealing for passage of the resolution.
Although the biggest U.N. camp in Zaire was emptying, an estimated half-million Rwandan refugees further south in Zaire remain cut off from food aid.
As the head of the long stream of humanity reached Gisenyi on Friday, some 10,000 people were crossing into Rwanda every hour from Zaire, U.N. officials said.
``This is a historic moment for Rwanda,'' President Pasteur Bizimungu told cheering refugees as he stood on a pickup truck. ``You are our brothers.''
Bizimungu said the exodus meant the multinational force was no longer necessary. ``The need for military intervention is over,'' he said.
Rwanda insisted Friday on an airlift of supplies only to its territory, saying it no longer supported an international mission in Zaire. The U.S. Embassy in Kigali, Rwanda, told the State Department that the Zaire mission should be reconsidered in light of Rwanda's opposition.
The Rwandan refugee homecoming was orderly and peaceful, in contrast to the desperate crush in Gisenyi 21/2 years ago when more than 1 million Hutus fled Rwanda, fearful that the Tutsi army would take revenge on them for the slayings of a half-million Tutsis in Rwanda.
They have been living a precarious existence in U.N. camps. Fearful of returning home, their lives have been controlled by armed Hutu militias.
Hutu militia fired over the refugees' heads to stop them from leaving the Mugunga camp on Friday, but their sheer numbers overwhelmed the gunmen.
``I've had enough. I just want to go home, straight home,'' said Joseph Segatare, a frail, 56-year-old refugee.
Hungry and exhausted but generally healthy, the refugees were registered and searched for weapons at the border crossing between the Zairian city of Goma and Giseyni. They were given high-protein biscuits and taken to nearby U.N. transit camps, which filled up quickly.
``They are an unstoppable wave crashing up against the Rwandan border,'' said Ray Wilkinson, a U.N. refugee spokesman in Goma. ``What two years ago we called the road of death now could be the road of hope.''
The refugees' return could be a big step toward ending the turmoil in central Africa's troubled Great Lakes region.
Since they swarmed into eastern Zaire in 1994, the refugees and the armed Hutu extremists lurking among them have been a major source of instability.
They have cost the international community $1 million a day in aid to some 40 sprawling camps that the militias have used as bases for border raids against Rwanda.
When the Hutu militias joined the Zairian army in persecuting local Tutsis last month, they provoked an uprising that has driven government troops from a swath of eastern Zaire.
The militias' power was broken by a rebel artillery barrage against the sprawling Mugunga camp, 10 miles northwest of Goma, on Thursday. After the guns fell silent, the refugees began their trek from Mugunga - once the largest refugee camp in the world.
The first people arriving here appeared in good shape Friday, but further down the road toward Mugunga, frail refugees staggered under the burden of two years of life on the run.
The World Health Organization confirmed Friday that cholera had struck some refugees in Goma. A cholera epidemic swept through the Rwandan refugees in 1994, killing 50,000.
U.N. officials say those returning generally have not been mistreated, but there have been occasional revenge attacks. In the worst case, at least 2,000 people died when Rwandan soldiers tried to close down a camp for returnees at Kibeho in April 1995.
About 80,000 Hutus are being held in Rwanda's overcrowded jails awaiting trial in connection with the 1994 genocide.
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Refugees stream out of the Mugunga refugee camp inby CNBeastern Zaire Friday toward the Rwandan border. color. Graphic: Map
by AP.