Another exodus of terrified Hutu refugees from Rwanda may be starting, relief officials said Friday as a small but steady stream of people crossed the border from southwestern Rwanda.
But a French official, confirming that France will withdraw its troops on schedule from the safe zone it set up in southwestern Rwanda, said most of the 2.4 million people in the region appeared willing to stay put.They would do so despite powerful propaganda apparently being spread in the zone by backers of Rwanda's former government, to the effect that ethnic Hutus will be slaughtered in revenge by ethnic Tutsis once the French leave.
The French set up the safe zone in June in an effort to stop genocidal massacres in which an estimated 350,000 to 500,000 Rwan-dans were slaughtered since early April. Most victims were minority Tutsis killed by the army of the former Hutu government and its civilian militias.
There has been no evidence of systematic reprisals by the new government installed by the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front. But aid officials fear an exodus if the Hutus are not assured of safety after the French leave Aug. 22.
The French fear getting bogged down if they remain past the dead-line.
"With the imminent departure of the (French) forces, people in the southwest are packing up and getting ready to go," Sybella Wilkes of the U.N. Rwanda Emergency Office said from her office in Nairobi, Kenya. "Something has to be done very urgently to give these people the confidence not to leave."
About 100 refugees were crossing the border every 10 minutes at Bukavu, some 60 miles south of the squalid refugee camps in Goma, said Marianne Coradazzi, spokeswoman for the International Red Cross.
Over the past three days, perhaps 15,000 people have left the western Rwandan city of Kibuye, on the northern border of the zone, and headed for Cyangugu, across the border from Bukavu. They were expected to cross the border by morning, Trevor Page, a U.N. Food Program officer in Bukavu, said Friday.
"We have asked them why they are coming," Page said. "They said, `We're afraid - we don't know what's going to happen when the French leave.' "