NATION/WORLD UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, April 22, 1994
11
Rwandan death toll exceeds 100,000
Relief workers fear more slaughtered at border crossings
The Associated Press
NAIROBI, Kenya — With the death toll from Rwanda's brutal ethnic fighting already estimated at 100,000, relief officials voiced fears yesterday that tens of thousands more may have been butchered.
At least a half million people have fled their homes in the Central African nation since fighting between Hutus and Tutsis broke out two weeks ago. But fewer than 20,000 have crossed into neighboring countries, their traditional sanctuaries in times of trouble.
Rwanda's interim government has
put the number of displaced people at 2 million, nearly one-quarter of the population. But most aid agencies consider that figure inflated. Whatever the number, most refugees cannot be accounted for.
"The exodus has not yet occurred," said Goo Leanne, an International Red Cross official in Nairobi. "It's not clear why they have not left. We're getting confusing messages."
- Other aid officials feared the worst.
Heather Wall, in charge of humanitarian affairs at the Canadian Embassy in Nairobi, said the Rwandan army had sealed the country's borders with Burundi, Zaire and Tanzania.
"On the Tanzanian side, there are reports that people trying to get out have been killed by the army," she said. "There are bodies in the river that marks the border."
A similar report of bodies clogging the Rusizi River between Rwanda and Zaire came from Catherine Newbury, a professor who specializes in African affairs at the University of North Carolina.
Tony Cavaloh of the U.N. Children's Fund said his office had received reports of makeshift barricades on many roads manned by either Rwandan soldiers or gangs armed with guns, machetes, knives and spears.
"We all fear the worst. What else would one think?" Wall said, when asked if she thought many fleeing refugees had been murdered.
The extent of the slaughter is masked by the absence of U.N. or private aid workers in Rwanda's green, rolling countryside. Only a handful, from the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, remain in Kigali, the capital, where the orgy of violence began.
The Red Cross, whose workers have been present in the world's trouble
spots through much of the century, said the bloodletting in Rwanda was on a scale the group "has rarely witnessed."
"We are speaking of tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of dead," said Jean-Daniel Taux, the group's chief delegate for Africa. "The exact number of victims of the massacres that have swept Rwanda in the past two weeks will never be known."
In Kigali, the Red Cross and teams from Doctors Without Borders work as best they can under the protection of a U.N. peacekeeping force that has been scaled down to about 1,700 soldiers from 2,500.
U. N. commanders were waiting for the Security Council to decide whether to withdraw the entire mission, beef it up or change its mandate mainly as observers.
The force's original mission was to provide a buffer between the Rwandan army, dominated by ethnic Hutus, and the Tutsi rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front. The two groups signed a peace accord last August that ended a three-year civil war.
But the truce dissolved when the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, both Hutus, died in a mysterious plane crash April 6. Chaos erupted in Kigali the next day and the army and the rebels went back to war.
Seniors skeptical of Social Security proposal
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Hours after hep Dan Rostenkowski, D-III., proposed shoring up Social Security by trimming benefits, raising the retirement age and increasing payroll taxes in the 21st century, worried seniors were phoning Washington.
There's nothing like talk of cutting Social Security benefits to stir up strong feelings in a hurry.
"The proposal coming out now will hurt us." Havel said. "But we're the ones who aren't organized because we're all busy working."
"The working generation, the baby boomers, we better wake up and smell the coffee," said Roberta Havel, executive director of Save Our Security, a coalition of labor, age and disability groups.
Rostenkowski, who heads the House Wenkoski and Means Committee.
said when he introduced his blueprint Tuesday that it was intended to encourage debate about the long-range health of Social Security.
His plans also prompted, within hours, a flurry of calls to the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and the National Council of Senior Citizens, two advocacy organizations for seniors.
But Robert Myers, who was chief actuary at the Social Security Administration from 1947 to 1970, said Rostenkowski should be "applauded as a statesman" for tackling the issue.
Martha McSteen, president of the National Committee, fired off a statement calling Rostenkowski's proposal a "premature reaction" to a report last week that said Social Security's trust funds would run out of money in 2029.
"It's not as if nothing is left for the baby boomers," Myers said. "It might seem like less, but the baby boomers are going to get benefits longer, so you balance things off, one against the other."
Under Rostenkowski's plan, all of Social Security's 42 million recipients would receive a smaller cost-of-living adjustment in 1995, an estimated loss of $3 a month per person.
than it really is during an election year," McSteen said.
He also proposes a tax increase for single beneficiaries with incomes of $25,000 to $34,000 and married couples with incomes from $32,000 to $44,000.
"Given the financial squeeze they've had to endure from Congress and the White House in the last year, seniors are understandably skeptical that this is just one more effort to wring more money out of Social Security and make the budget deficit look smaller
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