RWANDAN refugees yesterday vowed to remain in camps in eastern Zaire and to defy a Zairean operation to pressure them to return home voluntarily.
"Protect us, God," sang thousands of Hutu refugees at a Mass in Kibumba, which was named by authorities as the first of 40 camps for one million refugees to be closed.
The mood in Kibumba, a small city of 190,000 people carved out of bush and planted on volcanic rock in 1994, was defiant.
"We fear nothing. We will stay in our camps. We will move nowhere," said Mr Jean Baptiste Harerimana, a refugee who works for a western aid agency in Kibumba. The crowd around him agreed.
The refugees are from Rwanda's Hutu majority who fled in 1994 during the civil war and genocide of up to a million Tutsis and Hutu moderates.
Rwanda's government says it will screen all male returnees to discover whether they killed in the genocide. Some refugees say they fear they will be killed in reprisal if they return.
According to a radio station in the Zairean town of Goma, the Zairean Foreign Minister, Mr Gerard Kamanda Wa Kamanda, said the closure of camps was frozen as the UN refugee agency violated an agreement by announcing plans in advance.
officials of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Goma were unavailable to comment on the report.
The Interior Minister, Mr Gustave Malumba Mbangula, gave details of the operation to speed up voluntary repatriation but did not say when it would start.