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Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published by the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC) from 1995 to 2001 and by Africa Action from 2001 to 2003. APIC was merged into Africa Action in 2001. Please note that many outdated links in this archived document may not work.

Zaire: U.S. NGO Statements
Date Distributed (ymd): 961111

Contains (1) Statement by US Relief Agencies; (2) Statement by
Human Rights Watch/Africa.

US Relief Agencies Call for US Action on Zaire
November 8, 1996

Eighteen prominent US relief agencies today issued a statement
calling on  the US government to take immediate action before
tens of thousands of  people die in eastern Zaire.  Here is
the full text of the statement and the  agencies that support
it.  All agencies are members of InterAction, a  coalition of
U.S. relief and refugee-assistance agencies.

Alarmed by the probability that tens of thousands of refugees
in eastern  Zaire will die within days unless urgent action is
undertaken, the  undersigned agencies call on the United
States Government to take the  following immediate steps:

1.  Establish at an airfield in the region a logistics
facility which can  assist with the arrival and onward
transport of personnel and supplies  needed to meet the
immediate needs of starving and sick refugees.

2.  Agree without further delay to work with African and
European  governments to field an international  military
force capable of providing  sufficient security to permit
refugees to be assisted in Zaire pending their  repatriation
to Rwanda or eventual resettlement. The military force also
would insure that combatants do not receive aid intended
exclusively for the  civilian population.

3.  Exercise leadership within the United Nations Security
Council to see  that the Council makes clear to the
governments of the region that any  interference with
humanitarian relief operations will alienate them from  their
friends in the international community.

This crisis in the Great Lakes region has erupted due to the
failure for  over two years of the international community to
muster the  political will  necessary to address  the
underlying causes of instability in the region. As  the most
powerful and influential member of the international
community, the  United States government must commit itself to
playing a leadership role in  the resolution of this crisis,
as it takes immediate steps to limit loss of  life.

Signed,

Africare; Church World Service; Doctors of the World; Doctors
Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres; Food for the Hungry
International; International Aid; International Rescue
Committee; International Medical Corps; Lutheran World Relief;
Map International; Operation USA; Mercy Corps International;
Refugees International; Save the Children; United Methodist
Committee on Relief; World Concern Development Organization;
World Relief; World Vision

More information on these organizations, and current
information on their programs relating to the Great Lakes
Region, is available on the Interaction Web Site
(http://www.interaction.org).  For more information contact:
Colleen Ryan or Jim Bishop, InterAction, 1717 Massachusetts
Ave. NW, Suite 801, Washington, DC 20036.  Phone:
202-667-8227, ext. 132; e-mail: [email protected] or
[email protected].

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Human Rights Watch/Africa, 485 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
10017-6104; TEL: 212/972-8400; FAX: 212/972-0905; E-mail:
[email protected]; 1522 K Street, N.W., Washington D.C. 20005
TEL: 202/371-6592; FAX: 202/371-0124; E-mail: [email protected]

Website Address: http://www.hrw.org
Gopher Address:
gopher://gopher.humanrights.org:5000/11/int/hrw
Listserv address: To subscribe to the list for HRW/Africa
press releases, send an e-mail message to
[email protected] with "subscribe hrw-news-africa" in the
body of the message (leave the subject line blank).

For More Information: Alison DesForges (716) 881-2758; Janet
Fleischman (202) 371-6592 x114; Peter Takirambudde (212)
972-8400 x248

Human Rights Watch/Africa Calls for Protection of Refugees in
Eastern Zaire

(New York, November 7, 1996)--Human Rights Watch/Africa today
called upon the international community to guarantee
protection to the refugees in eastern Zaire. The human rights
organization stated that to coerce them to return to unsafe
situations in their home countries amounts to refoulement,
which is a clear violation of international refugee law. "The
international community cannot solve the humanitarian crisis
in eastern Zaire by sacrificing the basic rights of refugees
to avoid being forcibly returned to countries where they have
cause to fear persecution," according to Peter Takirambudde,
Executive Director of Human Rights Watch/Africa. "At the same
time, those persons suspected of involvement in the 1994
genocide in Rwanda as well as those now engaged in armed
attacks against Rwanda and Burundi must be excluded from the
protection afforded to legitimate refugees."

Donor governments, the UNHCR, and some aid organizations hope
that the current desperate conditions in Zaire will drive most
refugees to return, thus ending the problem of the refugee
camps. The camps have been a source of insecurity because the
former Rwandan army and militia have used them as bases from
which to launch armed incursions into Rwanda. Those
responsible for the genocide continue to control the camps,
spurring hopes for a return to Rwanda by force and using
terror and intimidation to discourage voluntary repatriation.
One of the strategies currently being proposed by the United
States and the UNHCR is to provide food and medical services
within the refugees' home countries so as to attract the
refugees back. While repatriation is an appropriate option for
some of the refugees, it must be a voluntary process. Although
migrants can be forcibly returned to their home countries,
international law prohibits forcibly returning genuine
refugees. Many of those who fled Rwanda and Burundi have
legitimate grounds to fear persecution, given the
nonfunctioning judicial systems and continuing military
attacks on civilians, as described below. Given this, and in
the absence of screening procedures to determine which of the
migrants formally qualify as refugees, the presumption must be
that all are refugees -- that is, that no forcible return is
permitted.

Positive steps by Rwanda and Burundi to improve respect for
human rights and ensure that the killing of civilians stops
and that those responsible for past and present killings of
civilians are investigated, tried with full respect for due
process, and punished would certainly persuade more refugees
to return voluntarily. Assurances that the international
community would provide long-term monitoring of their
situations should they return would also increase the
likelihood of substantial numbers of people returning of their
own volition.

Those suspected of genocide and crimes against humanity, like
those involved in military activity against the governments of
the home countries, have no right to the status of refugee and
should be excluded from such status. Despite the difficulties
in identifying the killers, mechanisms must be put in place to
screen out those suspected of genocide from genuine refugees.

There are thousands of legitimate refugees in Zaire and many
of them fear returning to Rwanda or Burundi because of
insecurity: assassinations, disappearances, and attacks by
military or militia on civilians. Those slaughtered by the
Burundian army and militia affiliated with it number in the
thousands this year, while some 600 civilians have been killed
this year by Rwandan soldiers. In general, military
authorities in Rwanda and Burundi refuse to acknowledge abuses
on the part of their soldiers, often falsely asserting that
the civilians were in fact infiltrators or their accomplices
or that they were accidentally slain in an exchange of fire
with infiltrators. In a rare and welcome departure from this
policy, in late October a military officer in Burundi admitted
that soldiers in the southern province of Bururi had massacred
some fifty civilians and said that soldiers responsible would
be punished.

Refugees also fear arbitrary arrest to be followed by an
apparently limitless period of detention without trial -- as
is the case in Rwanda, where 83,000 languish in inhumane
conditions -- or by trial under conditions that fail to meet
international standards of justice, as was recently the case
in Burundi, where eighty-nine persons were sentenced to death
and thirty-nine to life imprisonment without having had access
to defense counsel. Initially lacking both the money and the
personnel needed to begin trials, the Rwandan government is
now adequately supplied with the necessary resources to start
proceedings. A law adopted on September 1 divides perpetrators
of genocide into different categories and assigns punishments
for each. The government is conducting an information campaign
to inform prisoners of the details of the law and to give them
opportunities to confess, in return for which some may receive
reduced sentences. This procedure should finish by the end of
the year and the Rwandan government should be ready to begin
trials by early January at the latest. Implementing the
genocide law in a manner that ensures trials or release for
all detainees within a reasonable time is essential to avoid
creating legitimate fears of arbitrary detention among
refugees.

In order to guard against arbitrary detention based on false
or unsupported allegations of complicity in the genocide, the
Rwandan government should establish prompt judicial review of
all detentions. In addition, to assure that those detained
face trial within the near future, the government should
announce the date when the trials of those accused of genocide
will begin, and provide concrete information about the
proceedings and provisions being made for defense counsel. To
address the refugees' fears of attacks by the Rwandan military
once they return to their home communes, the government must
acknowledge and condemn killings by the military and begin
investigation and prosecution of those responsible. Since the
military courts are functioning, these trials should begin
immediately.

Many Rwandan refugees also fear that they will have no home or
no fields to plant if they return; they fear that if they find
their property occupied and attempt to regain it, they may be
imprisoned on false charges of genocide. Soon after the
establishment of the current government, it set up property
commissions to resolve conflicts between returned refugees and
squatters who had occupied their property, but such
commissions have been unable to resolve most such disputes.
The Rwandan government should increase the resources and
authority of such commissions so that they are able to
guarantee the rights of the returned refugees.

To help ensure the security of those who return, the
international community must commit itself to engage in
long-term monitoring of refugees in their home communes. The
most appropriate mechanism available to conduct such
monitoring would be the United Nations Human Rights Field
Operation in Rwanda, which has a mandate "to monitor the
ongoing human rights situation, and through their presence
help redress existing problems and prevent possible human
rights violations from occurring." Deploying the additional
human rights officers needed to monitor the return of the
refugees will require significant new resources, but this cost
is far less than what would be needed to provide continuing
assistance for people too fearful of persecution to return
home.

Those legitimate refugees who choose to remain in Zaire,
however, must not be deprived of the essentials of life in
order to force them to repatriate; to engage in a program of
selective feeding and offer them food only if they return to
Rwanda would be the equivalent of refoulement, a practice
prohibited by international refugee law. The international
community did nothing to stop Burundi from forcibly returning
some 80,000 refugees to Rwanda in July and August. Those
refugees have been generally well-received in Rwanda, but
their relatively trouble-free return does not excuse the
practice or make it acceptable as a model for the current
situation. Nor does it eliminate grounds for fear among the
refugees now in Zaire. In the absence of the establishment of
the rule of law through a denunciation of arbitrary killing,
the investigation and prosecution of those responsible, and
the creation of a mechanism to avoid arbitrary detention,
there is nothing to prevent the Rwandan authorities from
persecuting returning refugees.

In delivering assistance to those who decide to stay in Zaire,
the UNHCR and aid organizations must exclude those suspected
of genocide or crimes against humanity and those involved in
military activity against their home governments. Despite the
inherent difficulties in identifying the killers and
conducting effective screening, the international community
should seize the opportunity provided by the movement of large
numbers of the refugees and the possibility that international
troops might be deployed in the region to attempt to separate
the killers from the general refugee population. Those
indicted by international or national courts, and those who
held command responsibility in either the civilian or military
structures of the former Rwandan government or in the militia
should not receive aid and they must not be able to take
control again of refugee camps. At a minimum, arms should not
be permitted in any camp where humanitarian aid is going to be
provided. If new camps are established, they should be located
a sufficient distance away from the international borders to
prevent them posing a threat to neighboring countries.

The international community has thus far failed in its
obligation to bring to justice persons charged with genocide.
It was slow in providing the needed resources for the
International Tribunal for Rwanda to begin its work. It has
allowed Cameroon to delay for months in delivering Col.
Theonest Bagosora, the most important leader indicted, to the
custody of the Tribunal in Arusha. It has done nothing about
establishing an international tribunal to investigate and try
cases of genocide and crimes against humanity in Burundi,
although the United Nations Commission of Inquiry found that
acts of genocide had been committed there. The international
community, including neighboring states, must be reminded of
the importance of cooperating with the Tribunal.

If the UNHCR, donor governments, and aid organizations
determine that an armed force is necessary to permit delivery
of humanitarian assistance, such a force must include the
protection of human rights in its mandate. At the very least,
any such force must have the authority to locate and detain
persons suspected of leading the genocide in order to deliver
them to the International Tribunal or national courts. The
lesson of UNPROFOR in Bosnia clearly demonstrates the futility
of an international force with a mandate only to feed people
but not to protect them from violence. Thus, if a force is
deployed, it should be mandated and adequately equipped to
protect and promote human rights within its zone, including
protecting the civilians from attack.

The international community has not taken seriously its
efforts to control the flow of arms to this region. Although
the UN established a commission to investigate allegations
that arms were being delivered to the forces of the former
Rwandan government in violation of a UN arms embargo, it has
done nothing to act on the findings of the commission. In
fact, the Security Council is currently deciding whether or
not to release the commission's report, which deals with arms
transfers as well as issues directly relating to the genocide
and the current crisis.

The presence of former Rwandan soldiers and militia in eastern
Zaire has exacerbated pre-existing hostility against Zairians
ethnically related to the Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi. Former
Rwandan soldiers and militia reportedly joined in attacks on
Zairian Tutsi in North Kivu six months ago as well as in more
recent attacks on the Banyamulenge of South Kivu. The actions
of the Zairian parliament in declaring that Tutsi should be
removed from government employment, the statement of the
Deputy Governor of South Kivu that all Tutsi must leave within
one week or face attack, and the participation of Zairian
military in attacks on Tutsi or their failure to stop such
violence by civilians have created fears that the government
will permit or itself engage in large-scale killings of Tutsi.
Bands of civilians, sometimes with official support, have
already driven Tutsi from their homes and pillaged their
property in Kinshasa as well as in eastern Zaire. Zairian
political leaders and interest groups maintain that the people
attacked are transplanted Rwandans, although they were born in
Zaire and some of them descend from families that have lived
there for centuries. The government of Zaire must recognize
the right to nationality and must cease denationalizing
Banyamulenge and other people ethnically related to Tutsi who
qualify for Zairian citizenship. The government of Zaire is
responsible for the safety of all civilians within its
borders, regardless of their citizenship, and must take
measures to ensure that military and civilian authorities
provide such protection.

Recommendations:

To the Security Council, UNHCR, international donor countries
and international aid agencies:

1. Guarantee the right of legitimate refugees to protection
from forcible repatriation and ensure that humanitarian
supplies are provided in Zaire for those legitimate refugees
who decide not to return to their home countries.

2. Institute screening procedures in Zaire to exclude from
refugee status those suspected of genocide or crimes against
humanity and armed combatants. At a minimum, prohibit arms
from any camp where humanitarian assistance is being provided.

3. Publish immediately the UN Commission of Inquiry's report
on arms flows, and undertake to act on its conclusions.

4. Put pressure on the governments of Rwanda and Burundi to
ensure that returning refugees are protected from killing,
arbitrary arrest, and harassment. Work with these governments
to see that immediate steps are taken to encourage voluntary
repatriation.

5. Pressure the government of Rwanda to begin trials of those
accused of genocide by the first of the year.

6. Pressure the government of Burundi to institute immediate
reforms of its judicial system to comply with international
standards of due process and fairness.

7. Pressure the governments of Rwanda and Burundi to bring to
trial those soldiers responsible for serious human rights
abuses.

8. Ensure that if camps are re-opened, that they be situated
a reasonable distance from the Rwandan and Burundian borders.

To the Zairian government:

1. The government of Zaire should officially restore the
citizenship of the Banyamulenge and other persons said to be
"Tutsi" who qualified for citizenship prior to the 1981 law.

2. Zairian civilian and military authorities from the highest
levels down must acknowledge and condemn all attacks against
civilians. Zairian soldiers and civilians responsible for
attacks and looting throughout Zaire, as well as all those
responsible for attacks against Tutsi throughout the country,
should be investigated and brought to justice.

3. The government should institute reforms of the judicial
system to comply with international standards of due process
and fairness.

To the United Nations:

1. Publish immediately the UN Commission of Inquiry's report
on arms flows, and undertake to act on its conclusions.

2. Provide additional human and material resources for the UN
Human Rights Field Operations in Rwanda and Burundi, so they
are able to conduct long-term monitoring of the situation of
returning refugees.

3. Create an ad hoc tribunal to try genocide and crimes
against humanity in Burundi, since it is highly unlikely that
domestic courts would conduct fair trails for those
individuals on both sides who have been responsible for gross
human rights abuses. Because the continuing conflict in
Burundi results in large part from mutual fear between the
majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi, prosecutions are
especially important as a way to eradicate impunity and end
the cycles of violence that have plagued Burundi for so many
years.

Human Rights Watch is a nongovernmental organization
established in 1978 to monitor and promote the observance of
internationally recognized human rights in Africa, the
Americas, Asia, the Middle East and among the signatories of
the Helsinki accords. Its Africa division was established in
1988 to monitor and promote the observance of internationally
recognized human rights in sub-Saharan Africa.

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This material is being reposted for wider distribution by the
Africa Policy Information Center (APIC), the educational
affiliate of the Washington Office on Africa. APIC's primary
objective is to widen the policy debate in the United States
around African issues and the U.S. role in Africa, by
concentrating on providing accessible policy-relevant
information and analysis usable by a wide range of groups and
individuals.

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