Word: hutu
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...health. Richardson carried a letter along those lines from Clinton. The special envoy was also trying to persuade Kabila that he should accept a cease-fire, commit himself to early elections and open the way for aid agencies to help feed and evacuate tens of thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees who fled the fighting only to starve in the Zairean jungle. Both men disliked the terms and played coy over formal negotiations...
...biggest cloud over Kabila's emergence is the conduct of his troops, some of whom have systematically blocked access to suffering refugees. International aid agencies also accused his troops of participating in the slaughter that took place two weeks ago at Hutu camps where 80,000 refugees were huddled in rebel-held territory. More than 1 million Hutu fled into Zaire from Rwanda in 1994 after genocidal tribal warfare there, and an unknown number have been running ever farther west to escape Kabila's advancing Tutsi-led fighters. In recent weeks they have become the hapless victims of many attackers...
...eastern Zaire. Relief workers say several refugee camps, each of which held tens of thousands of Rwandan refugees only a few days ago, are entirely deserted -- and no one knows what happened to the people. Rebel forces had sealed the area off Monday, allegedly to protect the Rwandan Hutu refugees against rampaging villagers. When U.N. aide workers were allowed to return to the camps days later, no one was left. Refugees have abandoned the camps before, usually when rebels approached and chased them away. But always they have left behind hundreds or thousands of people too weak to walk...
...problem started in 1994 when the Kivus found themselves playing host to some 1.2 million Hutu refugees from Rwanda. Many of those refugees were members of the former Rwandan government, which had orchestrated the genocide of nearly 1 million Rwandan Tutsi. When the predominantly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front took over the country in July, Hutu began pouring into Zaire to escape retribution. There they set up vast encampments, from which their leaders launched raids and incursions back into Rwanda. By July 1996 the Hutu refugee militias were also murdering Tutsi tribesmen who lived in eastern Zaire...
...this proved too much for Paul Kagame, Rwanda's strongman. Enraged, Kagame recruited some 2,000 ethnic Tutsi living in eastern Zaire and trained them with his army. In October, when the Hutu persuaded local Zairian authorities in the Kivu provinces to expel all ethnic Tutsi from Zaire, Kagame ordered his commandos back into Zaire. The alliance of Zairian Tutsi rose to resist the edict, and Zaire's notoriously undisciplined army turned and fled. Within two weeks, the rebels had seized a swatch of eastern Zaire 600 miles long...