Starvation and disease facing thousands herded into camps

OPPOSITION politicians in Burundi who likened them to Hitler's concentration camps have been locked up and tortured. Aid agencies say they are a humanitarian disaster in the making.

Yet the government here insists it has herded up to 500,000 people from the majority Hutu population into so called "regroupment camps" for their own protection.

But even Hitler fed the inmates of his concentration camps. The Burundian army has forced people into camps which have no food, health or sanitary facilities, and little or no access to water.

Many sleep under the open skies or under makeshift shelters fashioned out of banana leaves and tree limbs. The camps are situated hours away from the fields which constitute their livelihoods.

The government wants international relief organisations to provide and pay for these facilities. If they do this, the agencies will be seen to be condoning the army's disregard for human rights. But if they don't, thousands are expected to die of starvation or disease, under the disregarding eye of the soldiers guarding them.

UN humanitarian officials have said they are "horrified" at the camps, but the international community has done nothing to discourage their development. "I hear fine speeches but we don't see any results," says Venerand Bakevyumusaya, who was Burundi's foreign minister until deposed by a coup last August.

The creation of the camps is the latest brutal turn in a ferocious civil war between the Tutsi led army and Hutu rebels which has resulted in at least 150,000 dead since 1993.

The technique has been employed before. The British used it effectively in Malaysia, the Americans were less successful with it in Vietnam. Civilian populations are cleared from their homes by moving them to regroupment points, and then the army goes in to kill off anyone who is left.

"We're trying to get the population out of harm's way. There have been many civilian casualties in exchanges between the army and the terrorists. By moving innocent people away, we can flush out the terrorists," says the presidential spokesman, Mr Jean Luc Ndizeye.

Few other parties accept this analysis. The moderate Hutu party Froedebu, which won 80 per cent of the votes in fair elections in 1993, says the regime is trying to exterminate the Hutu population. It says hundreds of internees are dying each day of cholera, meningitis and other diseases. It also claims the army is still using local Hutus as human shields in attacks on the rebels.

"This is a repeat of Zaire all over again, where humanitarian goodwill is being exploited for military ends, says one agency director in Bujumbura. Relief organisations spent £640,000 a day until late last year on the camps in eastern Zaire but much of this money ended up in the hands of armed militias.

The agencies acknowledge that some of those in the camps have sought refuge to escape the fighting between the army and the rebels. Some are allowed back a few times a week to tend to their farms.

But in other camps, they say, peasants have been forced there at the point of a bayonet. They are prevented from leaving, so their crops are rotting in the field. The UN says it fears a major food shortage if farmers are prevented from harvesting crops and sowing seeds for the next season.

The first camps appeared in central Burundi shortly after last year's coup gave the army full control over the decision making process. Since then they have spread, so that today there are dozens throughout the country.

Mr Ndizeye acknowledges the poor conditions in the camps, admitting that some of those being held are in "catastrophic" health, but he says the government's resources are meagre" and only the international agencies are equipped to help.

Like Rwanda, Burundi is 85 per cent Hutu and only 14 per cent Tutsi. However, the army, which is 98 per cent Tutsi, has ensured that the country has been under the control of Tutsi dominated governments for most of its 35 years of independence.

Most observers believe the army is now pushing hard for an outright military victory, sensing that the Hutu rebels are on the defensive. The success of Tutsi led forces across the border in eastern Zaire has deprived the rebels of their traditional bases.

The fiercest fighting is now concentrated in the east of Burundi, near the border with Tanzania, where the rebels are attempting to regroup.

Both sides have been accused of multiple atrocities during the war, which is widely regarded as the bloodiest in Africa. Reports of killings usually only surface weeks later, if at all, as most international observers have pulled out of rural Burundi. The UN has fewer than 10 human rights monitors in the country, all of them confined to headquarters in Bujumbura for security reasons.