Скачать или смотреть ZAIRE: ZAIREAN REBELS ATTACK TINGI TINGI REFUGEE CAMP

(4 Mar 1997) English/Nat

Hundreds of Hutu refugees are streaming back to Rwanda after advancing rebels attacked the largest refugee camp in eastern Zaire.

The refugees from the Tingi Tingi camp include Hutu fighters accused of taking part in Rwanda's 1994 massacres of a half-million mostly minority Tutsis.

Zairean rebel leader Laurent Kabila's forces attacked the camp over the weekend in their advance on the city of Kisangani.

Back on the move.

Hundreds of Rwandan Hutu refugees were heading east from their camp in Zaire on Tuesday towards the border with Rwanda.

The exodus was no where near on the scale of last November's when hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees made the long trek back home.

But these refugees are the ones who last time chose to stay behind.

An estimated 2 to 3-hundred-thousand Hutu refugees stayed in Zaire -- amongst them Hutu fighters accused of taking part in Rwanda's 1994 massacre of half a million people: for the most part members of the Tutsi minority.

These refugees remained in Tingi Tingi, a camp in the east of the country.

But now they too are being forced further eastward -- back to Rwanda.

In the end, it took an offensive by the Zairean rebel forces who overran the camp over the weekend during their advance on the city of Kisangani.

Laurent Kabila, the rebel leader, claims the Zairean military had armed the refugees there against them.

The local villagers appeared delighted to see the rebel forces.

They have lived under the Zairean government army's undisciplined regime for several months.

Kabila has Kisangani in his sights. The city -- which is the regional capital and Zaire's third largest city -- has been the base of the struggling army counter-offensive against the rebels.

Taking it would give Kabila not only a strategic victory: but also a psychological one.

Kabila's forces claim they are now within 14 miles of the city.

In a sign that the fall of the city may be imminent, international aid workers were evacuated from Kisangani on Saturday. Ill-disciplined Zairean troops have gone on looting sprees in nearly every town they have abandoned to the rebels.

Local villagers said they had been in discussion with the rebel forces.

SOUNDBITE: (French)
Yes, we just finished a meeting with the military authority. We discussed aiding the population on issues such as fixing the road, disarming the people who have weapons and taking away their firearms and finally to help the people to return to their villages.
SUPER CAPTION: Clement Viondi Kalondwa, chief of the Bakava collective

The rebels have made a swift advance through eastern Zaire in the last six months.

They have seized control of a 900 mile strip since they took up arms in response to government attempts to expel ethnic Tutsis from the region.

There was evidence here, too, that the rebel forces had quickly dispatched the Zairean government forces.

120 mm mortar shells lay scattered on the ground and a rocket launcher had been abandoned.

In South Africa on Monday, the Foreign Minister Alfred Nzo, announced a regional summit to discuss the uprising on March 25-26 in either Nairobi or Kinshasa.

SOUNDBITE:
We have emphasised over and over again -- we did so in Zaire -- that there is no alternative to people who are in dispute sitting down together to discuss the peaceful resolution of their problem.
SUPER CAPTION: Alfred Nzo, South African Foreign Minister

The uprising in Zaire has slipped from world attention in the last few months after a planned international intervention force was overtaken by events.


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