Le Pays des Milles Collines

Last Sunday I said goodbye to Kampala and my wonderful huge host family, and our group headed off on a long bumpy roadtrip south to Rwanda. On our drive down, we stopped over in Mbarara (say that 5x fast) for a couple of days in order to visit a Rwandan refugee settlement.
The Orchinga Refugee Settlement was originally founded by Tutsi refugees fleeing the revolution in Rwanda in 1959. It was pretty much a Tutsi settlement through the genocide in 1994, when there was a demographic reversal: Hutu refugees fled Rwanda and Tutsi returned home. At its peak in '94-'95, Orchinga had over 7,000 inhabitants. As of now, there are around 2,000 refugees living in the settlement--notice that I did not say "camp." Orchinga covers several square miles and looks like your standard African rural village. In fact, the settlement is very much a part of the area, fully integrated with the local economy and surrounding villages.
However, they are still refugees, thus "protected" under international laws and conventions and catered to by many well-meaning international NGOs. I think you can sense a little cynicism on my part concerning international refugee law and the UN refugee policies, in particular the forced encampment policy. In my humble opinion, forcing refugees to stay in camps near the border illegally restricts their movements, makes them totally dependent on outside aid, just so they (they= the host goverment, UNHCR, and a plethora of NGOs) can a) keep track of them and b) take pictures of them so they can guilt Western donors into supporting what is essentially an unsustainable and dehumanizing system. Ok, so that's my blurb on intl refugee policies...
Anyway, that is not to dismiss the situation of the Rwandan refugees in Uganda. They have been living at the settlement for over 10 years and are still afraid to return to Rwanda, where they fear retribution simply because they are Hutu and will be assumed to be "genocidaires." The ones I spoke to decried their innocence, but cited ongoing incidents of violence against Hutus. They get information about these incidents from other Hutu refugees, some are new arrivals and others tried to return home but came right back. They emphasized that security was their primary concern, but it became clear over the course of the conversation that they are also very concerned about their property. Many of them lost their land by fleeing and they don't really want to return and deal with that, when they can just stay at the settlement on the plot of land they were given. In fact, most of them said that they had no real desire to return to Rwanda at all!
In addition, many of the refugees talked about the problems with Gacaca, a traditional justice system that the Rwandan government revamped to deal with genocide-related crimes (in the regular system, trials for all those accused would have been backlogged for over a hundred years). The refugees complained that many people were forced into false confessions, and that others give false testimony if they have a grudge against someone... The Hutu refugees
have no faith in the current justice system, especially since it doesn't take into account crimes committed by the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front) against Hutus during the civil war. In addition, they fear the current government under President Kagame (who headed the RPF and essentially stopped the genocide) because they believe he wants to eliminate all Hutus and that he will continue to manipulate the political system until he does (Kagame won the elections in 2003 with 95% of the vote... Suspicious much?).
Anyway I was pretty suspicious of most of the refugees claims, especially their claims of continued mass killings and raids on villages. They seemed rather savvy about the international system and even specifically requested that we send Human Rights Watch (by name!) to come interview them so that the truth could be told. I'm sure that some of the stories are true, but it also seems like their stories have been hyperbolized and perfected to appeal to the international community, so they can continue to get support from UNHCR and NGOs. I mulled over this on the very bumpy ride back into Mbarara, 40km that took 2 hours... And continued to think about their stories the following day as we drove the long and winding mountainous road into the country of the thousand hills...