AP News

Hutu refugees fear forced return to Rwanda


"I have many scars, even in my heart," he said. "The people who put those scars on me still live freely in Rwanda."







But groups such as Human Rights Watch — which the government openly spars with — have long accused Rwanda's government of using a genocide ideology law to target the regime's critics. Independent journalists who have written critically about the history of the genocide have been threatened with jail terms. Many have fled.

Rwanda's government said in a statement Friday that "Rwandan refugees who hesitate to return home either lack enough information on the current situation in Rwanda or have developed significant ties with host countries."


In Nakivale, the Hutus who fled Rwanda at the end of the genocide spoke of a persistent witch-hunt, saying sons can be harassed for their father's crimes. Their grim opinion of life in Rwanda is reinforced by the accounts of refugees who returned to Rwanda and fled back to Uganda, saying they had been jailed on trumped-up charges and even tortured.


"It's still a country producing refugees," Beck said of Rwanda. "There is a large amount of fear (in Nakivale), and it's not helped that refugees have gone and come back again."

Belonging to a family seen in the community as having participated in the genocide carries a lifetime stigma, some refugees said, equating a Hutu's return to Rwanda to committing suicide. Some Tutsi families are still eager to exact revenge on neighbors they believe killed their relatives, said Rajab Simpamanuka, a Hutu refugee who has lived in Nakivale since 2001.


"The family you come from is still a problem to this day," he said. "If you return home, they will say the son of so-and-so is back. And the police will come for you. You can pay for your father's sins. I still like my country, but I will go back only if there's a change of government."

Hamida Kabagwira, a Hutu refugee, said she won't be forced to return to Rwanda.

"If they want it, they will have to come here and kill us. I will never find peace in Rwanda," said Kabagwira, who was recently reunited with her husband, Shaban Mutabazi.

Mutabazi, who said he spent 16 years in a Rwandan jail for alleged genocide, fled to Uganda in January after serving his sentence because "after that everyone in my village saw me like an animal."


Moses Watasa, a spokesman for the Ugandan department that manages refugees, said his office can't be expected to rely on the refugees' opinion of safety in Rwanda and that input from Rwanda's government and the international community would be crucial. "They would go back if their home areas are deemed safe," he said.


"I don't really go to sleep these days," said Ephraim Rutabingwa, a Hutu refugee who bears a deep scar on his forehead, the mark of a machete that he says was wielded by a Tutsi neighbor in 1996. He wants the U.N. to help refugees find safe haven in another country.

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