Bujumbura - The United Nations refugee agency on Friday reported a new surge of Rwandan Hutus fleeing into neighbouring Burundi, many to escape local genocide trials at home.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said between 3 000 and 3 500 Rwandans had crossed the border this week, keeping the numbers relatively steady after 3 600 returned to Rwanda last month.
"We witnessed on Saturday and Sunday a massive influx of Rwandans fleeing to northern Burundi and we estimate that they are about 7 000 although we have not done a precise census," a UNHCR spokesperson Catherine-Lune Grayson told reporters.
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Many of those who have fled have said they fear persecution at home by so-called gacaca (pronounced "gachacha") village tribunals set up in March to try suspected participants in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
| 'They talk about disappearances and rumours of massacres' |
Their flight into Burundi angered Rwanda, which accused them of being fugitives from justice and demanded that they not be accorded refugee status.
Under the terms of an April agreement between Bujumbura and Kigali, the two countries set a up a joint committee to convince those who had fled they would not be mistreated and oversee their return.
A total of 3 600 of them were estimated to have returned but on Friday a senior official in Burundi's interior ministry told reporters that there were now almost 8 600 Rwandans in northern Burundi.
"According to the information we have, almost all of those who returned to Rwanda have come back to Burundi," the official said on condition of anonymity.
Last Friday, the UNHCR expressed concern over reports of that the Rwandans in Burundi were being intimidated into going back home, but Lune-Grayson said the agency had not received such reports this week.
| 'It is a general climate of fear' |
And, she stressed that not all the Rwandans to have fled were doing so to avoid the gacaca, which are trying genocide suspects for small roles in the 1994 slaughter of 800 000 minority Tutsis and Hutu moderates.
"We need to clarify something important: all these people are not fleeing the gacaca," Lune Grayson said. "They tell us they face other other discrimination."
"They talk about disappearances and rumours of massacres," she said. "It is a general climate of fear." - Sapa-AFP
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