DATE=11/4/1999
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=KENYA / ETHIOPIA REFUGEES
NUMBER=5-44691
BYLINE=JENNIFER WIENS
DATELINE=KENYA-ETHIOPIA BORDER
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: Hundreds of Kenyan refugees are stranded along
the border between Ethiopia and Kenya after the
government of Kenya suspended a United Nations-
sponsored operation to return them home. As Jennifer
Wiens reports from the border area, the impasse is
causing even more hardship for the refugees.
TEXT:
/// ACT OF CROWD SHOUTING - FADE UNDER ///
Kenyan refugees scramble to load trucks with
everything they own - suitcases crammed with clothes,
wooden boards covered in Koranic verses, and huge bags
full of grain.
/// ACT WOMEN SHOUTING - FADE UNDER ///
In the stifling heat, men and women fight for space on
the trucks that are parked just yards from the border
crossing between Ethiopia and Kenya. The vehicles
will be taking them back home to Kenya.
For the past seven years, these Kenyans have been on
the wrong side of the border, living in makeshift
camps on the outskirts of the Ethiopian border town of
Moyale.
The Kenyans fled to Ethiopia in 1993, after Kenya held
its first multi-party elections and political and
tribal fighting broke out in some parts of the
country. In the dry, northern section of Kenya, close
to both Ethiopia and Somalia, there were clashes
between various groups of ethnic Somali Kenyans.
Around five-thousand people fled from the Wajir
district in north Kenya into southern Ethiopia. Fear
of more fighting kept them there.
The U-N refugee agency, U-N-H-C-R, helped supply food
and other necessities to the refugees while they were
in Ethiopia.
When the situation in north Kenya stabilized, the U-N
agency - along with the governments of Kenya and
Ethiopia - made arrangements to bring the refugees
home. And earlier this week (Tuesday, November 2nd),
a convoy of 14 trucks was brought to a transit center
here so the refugees could be moved across to the
Kenyan side of Moyale.
/// ACT OF TRUCK ENGINE - FADE UNDER ///
One refugee, 32-year-old Halima, has been standing for
two hours near one truck, trying to get a space for
herself and her three children.
/// ACT HALIMA - IN AMHARIC - FADE UNDER
///
Halima says she is anxious to get back into Kenya, and
that she thinks life will be better in her home
country than in Ethiopia.
Finally, around 600 people boarded the trucks for the
ride to the Kenyan border checkpoint. But, there the
convoy stopped. After hours of discussions between
representatives from the U-N-H-C-R and Kenyan
authorities both in Moyale and in the capital,
Nairobi, the final word was that the refugees would
not be allowed in. Not that day, and maybe not for
days to come.
That leaves the refugees stuck on the border, crowded
into the trucks and the small, tin-roofed transit
center. The camps they were living in have been taken
down and stripped in preparation for this move.
So, as U-N-H-C-R's Xavier Lopez-Cifuentes explains,
the refugees are now even worse off than they were in
the camps.
/// ACT LOPEZ-CIFUENTES ///
They have dismantled the living structures, the
"tookus," and we cannot ask them to go back,
so we have decided to hold them here. I don't
know for how long we will be keep them in the
transit center. There is no food, we will try
to make some arrangements for food. There is
some water, (but) sanitation is not that good
as you can see so it is not really a good
situation.
/// END ACT ///
Kenyan officials say they changed their minds about
admitting the refugees because of security concerns.
The first group of refugees from Moyale was to be
moved to the district of Isiolo, where local police
say at least seven police were killed in clan battles
earlier in the week. Kenya says it wants to make sure
the area is safe before the refugees arrive there.
But that means the refugees are left on the border
with no clear idea of what will happen to them.
Although many of the refugees were upset about the
delay, others said any hope of going home, even if it
means days or weeks of uncomfortable waiting, is
better than staying in the camps in Ethiopia.
One refugee, 20-year-old Hassan Mohamed, says life in
the Ethiopian camps was difficult, with grain provided
by relief agencies barely enough to keep people fed.
/// ACT HASSAN MOHAMED ///
The life was a very critical life. It was not
a good life really, because one person will get
10 kilograms a whole month. Can they possibly
live 30 days on 10 kilos? It's an impossible
life.
/// END ACT ///
Refugees such as Mohamed are determined to move back
home to Kenya. But with the Kenyan government not
willing - at least for now - to let them in, it is
not clear how or when the impasse at the Ethiopia-
Kenya border will be resolved. (Signed)
NEB/JW/JWH/JP
04-Nov-1999 10:59 AM EDT (04-Nov-1999 1559 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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