Text:
http://www.africanews.org/central/congo-kinshasa/stories/19990316_feat7.html
Source App: [Fleeing soldiers seek passage back home - Netscape]
Fleeing soldiers seek passage back home
March 16, 1999
by Times Reporter
Lusaka - Congolese soldiers who fled into Zambia through Kaputa district in
Northern Province have requested Government to facilitate their return home, the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said.
UNHCR resident representative Oluseyi Bajulaiye said in Lusaka yesterday that leaders of the 750 former combatants had indicated that the disarmed soldiers wanted to return to DR Congo. "These former combatants were disarmed by the Zambian authorities and have been separated from the civilian population.
UNHCR received information in the meantime that the leaders of this group requested the Zambian Government to facilitate their return to DRC," Mr. Bajulaiye said. He said reports from Kaputa indicated that the refugees who were accommodated in various transit facilities in Kaputa and local villages along Kalanda-Sumbu road were in reasonable condition and in satisfactory health. The UNHCR was not directly supporting provincial authorities handling refugees with funding but operated through the commissioner of refugees in the Home Affairs Ministry.
Mr. Bajulaiye said the UNHCR estimated that the on-going influx of refugees could swell to 10,000 persons over the next few days if the fighting in Pepa and Pweto about 90km from the Zambian border continued. Initial reports from local people in Kaputa including area member of Parliament Samuel Mukupa were that the number of Congolese refugees in the district had already reached 10,000.
Mr. Bajulaiye said the UNHCR yesterday received reports that between 1,000 and 2, 000 refugees had crossed into Zambia through Kalanda border post in addition to the 5,000 who entered the country after March 5. The 400 refugees who initially fled into Zambia between September, 1998 and February, 1999 had been transferred to Maheba refugee settlement in Solwezi, but the latest influx was too huge to enter an established camp. The UNHCR planned to move the refugees to a camp site in Mporokoso about 200km further inland from the border town of Kaputa. "The size of the latest influx will not allow for a transfer of refugees into established settlements and we are grateful to the Government of Zambia for having designated Mporokoso to accommodate the refugees," he said.
Zambia is hosting close to 140,000 refugees from Angola, the DRC, Rwanda, Burundi and other African countries.
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