A new radio station started broadcasting to Rwandan refugees Friday as part of stepped-up U.N. efforts to get them to leave their squalid camps and return home.
Radio Gatashya began by advising the almost 1 million refugees of the need for sanitation to prevent disease."It will take about a week" for the station to gain enough confidence to start to convince listeners to return to their homes, said Pan-os Moumtzis, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. About 800 small, battery-operated radios have been distributed free in the camps.
The radio station, operated for the United Nations by Journalists Without Borders - a French relief group - is broadcasting hourlong programs three times a day in French, Swahili and Kinyarwanda, the language spoken by most Rwandans.
Gatashya is the Kinyarwanda word for swallow, a bird that brings good news in Rwandan folklore.
Most refugees in eastern Zaire are Rwandan Hutus who fled, fearing retribution from a victorious Tutsi-led rebel army for the genocidal massacres of Tutsis during Rwanda's 14-week civil war.
Up to 500,000 people died in the slaughter, blamed on the Rwandan army and death squads organized by extremist Hutu politicians.
Tutsis were the primary victims, but many Hutus seen as enemies of the government were also shot and hacked to death.
Despite epidemics of cholera and dysentery that, along with other diseases, have killed more than 23,000 people in the camps, only about 100,000 refugees have returned to Rwanda.
The United Nations says defeated Rwandan soldiers and exiled former government officials have created fear among the refugees, telling them they will be slain by Tutsis if they leave.
There have been isolated reports of revenge slayings of Hutus by Tutsis, but the United Nations insists it has no evidence of widespread killings. The new government set up by the Tutsi rebels in Kigali, the capital, has repeatedly said innocent refugees may return safely.
In Kigali, the country's new prime minister said the government is looking for 32,000 people linked to the massacres of Tutsis that began in April.