THE UN refugee agency expressed concern yesterday about reports that at least 150 Rwandan Hut us returning from Tanzania had been arrested in their villages, based on neighbours' suspicion of their role in the 1994 genocide.
A UNHCR spokeswoman, Ms Pamela O'Toole, citing reports from north-east Rwanda, said returning refugees had been arrested in the last few days on the basis of accusations levelled by other villagers.
"We've heard reports that on returning to their communes in some areas, people are being arrested as suspected genocide perpetrators on the basis of accusations levelled by individual members of the public," Ms O'Toole said in Geneva.
Few of the 90,000 Hutu genocide suspects crammed into overcrowded jails have case files and officials have forgotten when many were arrested, where and by whom. Rwanda has yet to pass legislation on genocide crimes and trials have been repeatedly delayed.
More than 800,000 refugees from Zaire and Tanzania have returned to Rwanda in the past five weeks. Almost one in six Rwandans is a recently returned refugee.
Aid officials in Ngara, Tanzania, said yesterday Tanzanian policemen were suspected of burning down a church and beating Rwandan refugees sheltering inside to make them join the mass return of Hutus to Rwanda.
They said 28 Rwandan refugees staying at the church in the deserted Benaco refugee camp were attacked at night and forced to join a column of refugees trekking towards the Rusumo border crossing into Rwanda.
"Someone went in there and beat them. The church was burned down," a UN official said.
In another development, aid officials said they had found the bodies of three refugees apparently killed by machete blows. The body of a 15-year-old refugee was found near Lumasi camp and two other corpses were dumped near Benaco.
Overall, aid officials have praised the Tanzanian army for showing restraint during the repatriation operation. "The army as far as we have seen have been very good," a foreign aid worker said.
Aid officials said, however, that Tanzanian security officers had ordered Kitali camp closed and burned down all the schools there, while Tanzanian troops ordered the nearby Keza camp closed and supervised the departure of some 5,000 people.
UNHCR has been criticised by Amnesty International for co-operating with the expulsion of refugees from Tanzania on the heels of more than 600,000 who streamed home from eastern Zaire last, month.