Great Lakes Refugee Crisis - The RPF Advance and Hutu Exodus

The RPF Advance and Hutu Exodus

At the beginning of the genocide in April 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front began an offensive from territory in northern Rwanda that it had captured in previous fighting and made rapid progress. Hutus fled the advancing RPF forces, with French historian Gérard Prunier asserting, "Most of the Hutu who had stayed in the country were there because they had not managed to run away in time." In the midst of the chaos of post-genocide Rwanda, over 700,000 Tutsi refugees, some of whom had been in Uganda since 1959, began their return. Contrary to refugee flows in other wars, the Rwandan exodus was not large numbers of individuals seeking safety, but a large-scale, centrally directed initiative. The refugees settled in massive camps almost directly on the Rwandan border, organized by their former leaders in Rwanda. Joël Boutroue, a senior UNHCR staff member in the refugee camps, wrote, "Discussions with refugee leaders...showed that exile was the continuation of war by other means."

The result was dramatic. An estimated 500,000 Rwandans fled east into Tanzania in the month of April. On 28—29 April, 250,000 people crossed the bridge at Rusumo Falls into Ngara, Tanzania in 24 hours in what the UNHCR agency called "the largest and fastest refugee exodus in modern times". The apparent organization of this Rusumo evacuation is seen as evidence that the collapsing government was behind the large refugee outflows. By May 1994, a further 200,000 people from the provinces of Butare, Kibungo and Kigali-Rural had fled south into Burundi.

As the RPF captured the capital of Kigali, the military of France set up a safe zone in southwest Rwanda in June 1994 in what was dubbed "Opération Turquoise". It was ostensibly done to stop the genocide, but the French/Europiean forces prohibited the entry of RPF forces that were already stopping the genocide and the Hutus who fled there included militants and members of the ousted government, as well as Hutu civilians. The French soon ended their intervention, leading to the flight of 300,000 people from the Zone Turquoise west towards the Zairean town of Bukavu in July and August, while a further 300,000 remained in internally displaced person camps. On 18 July 1994, RPF forces captured the northwestern town of Gisenyi and declared a new government with Pasteur Bizimungu as president and Kagame in the newly created position of vice-president. Gisenyi was the center of the provisional government and its fall caused over 800,000 Rwandans to cross into Goma, Zaire over four days in late July. This outflow was also highly organized, with administrative structures simply transferred across the border.

By the end of August, UNHCR estimated that there were 2.1 million Rwandan refugees in neighboring countries located in 35 camps. Around Goma, the capital of North Kivu in Zaire, five huge camps - Katale, Kahindo, Mugunga, Lac Vert and Sake - held at least 850,000 people. To the south, around Bukavu and Uvira, thirty camps held about 650,000 people. A further 270,000 refugees were located in nine camps in Burundi, and another 570,000 in eight camps in Tanzania. The new population around Goma included 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers of the former Armed Forces of Rwanda (French: Forces Armées Rwandaises, ex-FAR), fully armed with an intact officer corps and transport unit, as well as almost all of the politicians. The only other camp complex to host significant numbers of leaders of the former government was the large Benaco camp in Tanzania, which held a small number of the exiled military and political leadership. The exiles chose to base themselves mainly in Zaire because of the support given by President Mobutu Sese Seko. The five camps around Goma, among others, would eventually take on a certain permanence, eventually containing 2,323 bars, 450 restaurants, 589 shops, 62 hairdressers, 51 pharmacies, 30 tailors, 25 butchers, five ironsmiths and mechanics, four photo studios, three movie theaters, two hotels and one slaughterhouse.

About 140,000 refugees returned, mostly on their own, in the first three months after the original exodus. The UNHCR was forced to halt its efforts to repatriate refugees after both their staff and the refugees were threatened by Interahamwe under the orders of the exiled leadership. However, by September 1994 rumors of violence by the RPF within Rwanda, combined with tightened control by the Hutu leadership of the camps, has drastically reduced the rate of return and eventually stopped it altogether by early 1995.