Goma, Tuesday
RWANDAN Hutu refugees, some of them children, stoned a man to death in
a camp in eastern Zaire today, accusing him of being a Tutsi spy.
The incident took place in Honga, a camp of 20,000 refugees to the
north-west of the frontier town of Bukavu.
''Children joined in the stoning and when he was dead they dumped his
body in the nearby lake and life in the camp went back to normal,'' said
Ray Wilkinson, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Rwanda's new government, installed by the Tutsi-dominated Rwanda
Patriotic Front after it won the civil war in July, has appealed to the
Hutu refugees to return home.
But it has said that Hutus blamed for the massacre of hundreds of
thousands of minority Tutsis will have to stand trial for their crimes.
Lynchings and beatings have become commonplace further north in camps
surrounding Goma, which hold more than 800,000 Hutus. The victims are
often refugees who showed signs of wanting to go home, incurring the
wrath of Hutu militiamen and thugs who are loyal to the ousted
government and who terrorise the camps.
Today's killing was the first incident of its kind in Bukavu, which
was swamped by 70,000 refugees when the French army pulled out of the
Rwandan ''safe zone'' and handed control to the UN earlier this month.
Reuter.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article