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More Rwandan civilians in DR Congo seeking repatriation, says UN agency

More Rwandan civilians in DR Congo seeking repatriation, says UN agency

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As an offensive against Rwandan Hutu militias continues in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a growing number of Rwandan civilians, many of whom have been there since the 1994 genocide in their country, are emerging from remote areas to go home, the United Nations refugee agency said today.

“The Rwandan civilians, mainly women and children, say that they are returning home willingly,” Ron Redmond, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said, noting that so far this year the agency’s teams have assisted 1,417 Rwandan civilians to return.

This morning more than 200 civilians were slated to go to a reception camp in Rwanda from Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province, where the agency has a transit centre, into which hundreds continue to arrive from assembly centres around the province, many walking for days from their villages to reach them.

“Some say they were told by their leaders it is time to return home. They are generally in good health, although visibly tired after long walks and truck journeys from UNHCR assembly points to Bukavu,” he added

Mr. Redmond said that the aspiring returnees are most likely escaping a joint Rwandan/Congolese military offensive against the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), which consists of Hutus who fled Rwanda after the Hutu extremist genocide of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus and have since contributed to the turmoil in strife-torn eastern DRC.

Indeed, many of those being assisted to repatriate from Bukavu are arriving from Walikale, a territory in neighbouring North Kivu province with a significant presence of FDLR rebels, he said.

Former FDLR combatants wanting repatriation are presenting themselves to the UN peacekeeping mission known as MONUC, which is responsible for their disarmament, demobilisation, repatriation, reinsertion, and reintegration.

In Uganda, meanwhile, UNHCR started to move Congolese refugees from the Matanda transit centre near the border with the DRC into a newly-designated settlement area called Kyangwali, 420 kilometres northeast.

Some 41,000 Congolese, mostly women and children, have fled fighting in North Kivu province to Uganda since August 2008, overcrowding the previously-designated Nakivale refugee settlement.

The UNHCR operation in Uganda assists more than 155,000 refugees, the agency said, mostly from the DRC and Sudan.