Word: cyangugu
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When a group of cabinet ministers from the new Tutsi-dominated Rwandan government arrived in the town of Cyangugu in the French-protected safety zone last Friday afternoon, several thousand people flocked to the local stadium to hear their words. Amid the commotion, few remarked on the site from which the ministers hoped to persuade 100,000 Hutu refugees that if they return to their homes, they will not suffer reprisals for the massacres of up to 500,000 Tutsi. Barely four months ago, this same stadium was crammed with tens of thousands of Tutsi men, women and children waiting...
...measure of the evil that has swept through Rwanda that the symbolic guilt represented by Cyangugu's stadium was more potent than any reassurances the ministers could offer. Before the speeches had concluded, 2,000 more Hutu, convinced that they would be killed by the new government if they stayed in Rwanda, were already trudging across the border to the Zairean town of Bukavu...
...near breaking point. For now, each new arrival pushes Bukavu another notch closer to the horrors at Goma, where epidemics of cholera and dysentery have killed at least 25,000. To prevent a similar refugee crisis, aid agencies are rushing food, water and medicine into the vicinity of Cyangugu in hopes of forestalling a mass departure. But if the humanitarian diplomacy fails, the images at Bukavu may soon reach a level of wretchedness and ignominy rivaling those at Goma...
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