Suicide scam to scare authorities into action

Foreign nationals displaced by xenophobic violence and sheltering in a temporary camp near Cape Town, South Africa, have threatened mass suicide to draw attention to their plight.

Soetwater camp, 30 km south of Cape Town, has become home to over 4,000 foreign nationals displaced by the violence that has driven tens of thousands from their homes and left over 60 dead. Local media reported that about 100 people, mainly Somali nationals despairing over conditions at Soetwater, had threatened to drown themselves and said four people were already feared dead.

But according to the South African National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI), which had deployed three boats to search the waters on 8 June, the rumours proved false.

“The incident turned out to be a non-incident – we were on standby following the groups allegations [that four were already missing] and the threat that they wanted to commit suicide in the water,” NSRI spokesman, Craig Lambinon, told IRIN.

Nowhere to go

The aggrieved group reportedly claimed they would rather die than go back to their home country or stay in South Africa under current circumstances. 

A statement released on 8 June by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a South African HIV/AIDS activist group, called for the immediate closing of Soetwater, where “a tradgedy was unfolding” because the settlement fell far “below international humanitarian standards”.

“There is enormous dissatisfaction at the camp. The conditions are awful: it is cold and insufficiently sheltered - Both the [Western Cape] province and civil society have condemned these camps,” the statement said.

A meeting with UN officials on 7 June at the camp reportedly fueled the incident. “Displaced refugees had several meetings with a representative of the United Nations at the TAC and AIDS Law Project offices in Cape Town. One of these meetings broke down. Unconfirmed reports indicate that the latest crisis is a consequence of this,” the TAC statement said.

According to Yusuf Hassan Abdi, spokesman for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, a “rumour had gone round that the UN would start registering people for resettlement in a third country – like the United States, UK, Australia or Canada.”

This was a “major pull factor,” drawing large numbers of Somali refugees to Soetwater. Abdi estimated that the camp now accommodated some 1,800 Somali’s.

But, Abdi said, given recent events and “the large number of refugees and asylum seekers affected, resettlement can not be a priority at this point in time.” He added: “There was no attempted suicide at all – they [the Somalis] used this to get attention.”

Abdi acknowledged that Soetwater fell far below accepted minimum standards and said that authorities would move to resettle its inhabitants.

But fear and loss of all their property meant most would be reluctant to reintegrate into South African society. According to Abdi one refugee representative he spoke to said: “you can make [the camp] a five star hotel – we are not interested.”

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