Kenya
Kenya slammed on forced refugee repatriation

afrol News, 9 June - Kenyan authorities are threatening to repatriate hundreds of Ethiopian and Somali refugees rounded up in a police sweep in Nairobi on 30 May. "If returned, many could face arbitrary arrest, torture, and other serious abuses in their countries of origin," human rights groups warn. 

- The Kenyan government must not return people to the hands of their abusers, Alison Parker of the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said yesterday. "International refugee law prohibits sending people back without a proper hearing to determine whether they will face persecution on their return," Parker added. 

According to the group, these Somali and Ethiopian refugees are likely to face torture and persecution if they are returned. The statement said that during an investigation in Nairobi last April, HRW interviewed 23 Ethiopians who said they had fled the country after being tortured in detention. The Somalis risk return to civil conflict - even in the past week, Somali refugees have fled renewed fighting in the Mandera region of Somalia. 

The group claims that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) "has not been granted free access to the arrested refugees being held at Nairobi's Kasarani police station to ascertain whether any of them are refugees.

According to HRW's statement, "this is not the first time that the Kenyan government is flouting its obligations under international refugee law." In its April 2002 investigation, HRW had documented numerous instances in which refugees or asylum seekers living in Nairobi were forcibly repatriated after being arrested by the police. 

As a result of the sweeps, the Kenyan government is also detaining one hundred and forty-five documented refugees, the majority of whom are from the Ethiopian Oromo ethnic group and one-third of whom are children, at the Gigiri police station near Nairobi. The government is planning to relocate these refugees to camps in the remote northeast of the country, close to the fighting on the Somali side of the border. 

The human rights group stated its concern "that the relocation may separate the children, many of whom are detained without their parents, from their families. It could also deny torture victims and others specialised medical care available only in Nairobi." 

The one hundred and forty-five refugees have been charged with failing to register with the government of Kenya, a statutory violation that is being enforced for the first time. But no refugee is able to comply with the statute because there has been no governmental registration service for the refugees since 1991, HRW holds. Prior to 1991, the Kenyan government was conducting its own refugee status determination and registration. However, with the arrival of large numbers of refugees from Somalia and Sudan in 1991, the government handed the processing of refugees over to UNHCR. 

- Foreigners, including refugees, are often blamed for crime and insecurity and targeted for arbitrary arrest and detention in Kenya, the HRW statement says. Similar round-ups occurred in September 1998, when refugees had to surrender their "protection letters" from UNHCR, without being given replacement identity documents. More recently, group arrests of thirty to one hundred foreigners occurred in October 2001 and twice during February 2002. Individual non-nationals are harassed and arrested on a daily basis in large cities, particularly in Nairobi. 

According to the French news agency AFP, police say more than 90 Somalis additionally are being held in the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa alone, while an unknown number are being held in Nairobi and elsewhere in the country.

Sources: Based on HRW and afrol archives

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