IRIN Focus on Pemba refugees

The case of the 2,303 supporters of the Civic United Front (CUF) opposition party - most of them from the island of Pemba - who are currently being accommodated in the small town of Shimoni in the south of Kenya’s Coast Province, about 20 km north of the border with Tanzania, is unique, UNHCR officials say. The asylum seekers, camping in the compound of Shimoni’s fisheries department, include 17 MPs, comprising both members of Zanzibar’s House of Representatives and of the mainland’s Union Parliament. Not only is the problem affecting the islanders of a political nature but they have actually expressed the wish to go home. “Safe repatriation home is UNHCR’s ultimate wish for every refugee,” the UNHCR officials noted. “The MPs are losing more by being in exile. They need to go back home and pursue their political ambitions,” the UNHCR’s Programmes Officer, Peter Karanja, told IRIN. The Kenyan government early this month said the refugees must be transferred from Shimoni to Dadaab, a designated refugee camp in northern Kenya, but the decision found favour from neither the asylum seekers nor the UNHCR. “We do not see taking these people to Dadaab as a justifiable solution,” Karanja said. “They have indicated their willingness to go back home.” According to Karanja, the process of giving the islanders full refugee status and then relocating them to Dadaab will take time. He went on to say that negotiations to effect their repatriation were under way, and that under these circumstances the expense of moving the refugees to Dadaab was unjustifiable. However, the charter governing the location of refugees in any country stipulates that they should be settled no less than 60 km from the border - which is not the case in the current instance - at the discretion of the host government, which also provides the land for their settlement. Moreover, there are other factors usually taken into account by the UNHCR. In this case, the cultural aspect and the fact that the refugees have expressed the wish to go home are “very important” factors to be considered. The UNHCR has therefore requested the Kenyan government to allocate some piece of land along the coast “temporarily” in order to gain “some more manoeuvering space”. This is also to ensure that their social and cultural norms can remain intact. About five acres of land had been offered in Matuga in Kwale District, some 25 km from Mombasa, but the allocation was subsequently revoked. Many people, including Kenya coast residents, have expressed surprise at the “special” treatment the islanders are being accorded. “Why should their case be unique?” one local resident asked. In his view, the islanders actually deserved the punishment they had received. “How could they march to a police station and even behead a policeman?” he asked. He blamed the happenings in Zanzibar, Pemba and Dar es Salaam on “multipartyism”, which, he said, “cannot work in our countries”. “I think this is just a group of cowards who, when threatened a little bit, take off,” he added. The refugees, meanwhile, are strongly opposed to the idea of being transferred to Dadaab. “Taking us to northern Kenya, which we hear is hot and dry, will be like taking a fish out of water. It will be like killing us,” MP Kombo Khamis Kombo told IRIN. “We are ready to go back home so long as our conditions are met,” another MP, Khamis Ali Saleh, said. The refugees are demanding the unconditional release of all political detainees arrested during the clashes of 27 January and that all charges preferred against CUF supporters both at home or in exile be dropped. They also demand that an independent commission of inquiry be established to investigate the killings of CUF members, and an immediate cessation of the “ongoing” selective repression of CUF members. They have also demanded that the UN guarantee that they will go home safely and with no loss of dignity. With this in mind, they have called on the UNHCR to open a temporary office in Pemba and keep it operating for a period of six to 12 months. Last week, a team UNHCR officials led by the organisation’s Assistant Representative for Protection, Sergio Calle-Norena, visited Pemba and Zanzibar to meet government officials and families of the refugees and also to issues relevant to repatriation. According to Calle-Norena, a number of details concering the guarantees to accompany repatriations are still being discussed by Tanzanian officials and UNHCR and CUF representatives, he noted. “There is willingness on both the government side, the opposition CUF and the asylum seekers that they should go back home,” he told IRIN on Monday. He said the families of the refugees were coping well, but expressed reservations over the issue of repatriation of their exiled relatives. “They need more concrete assurances,” he noted. Observers say arrests and detentions of opposition supporters were still continuing in Pemba and Zanzibar . “Some are framed for crimes like arson or looting, but people know they are actually being nabbed because of their affiliation to the opposition CUF,” one observer said. The number of the asylum seekers rose to 2,303 at the end of last week after six more people arrived from Pemba, citing persecution by authorities, a UNHCR official confirmed. Diplomatic sources contacted by IRIN on Tuesday said the situation in Pemba “seemed” to have returned to normal, but opinions differed over how safe it would be for the refugees in Shimoni to return. The sources said some Zanzibari officials were of the opinion that returnees should be arrested, while others adhered to the official line adopted by the national executive committee of the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), last week, that the refugees were welcome to come home. Zanzibar’s chief minister, Shamsi Nahodha, was recently quoted as assuring the UNHCR that the refugees could come home now that calm had been restored. A diplomatic source told IRIN that the issue of repatriation would be one of the four items on the agenda for talks to be held between CCM and CUF between 1 and 14 April at Mbezi Beach, Dar es Salaam. “CUF clearly wants some guarantees for a safe return. CCM on the other hand would like to see them return as soon as possible, to no longer tarnish Tanzania’s image abroad,” Nahodha said. “The refugees could easily become negotiation chips. The Tanzanian government could put pressure on the Kenyan government to move them to northern Kenya, to make CUF give in at the negotiations in Dar es Salaam,” he said. “CUF could, on the other hand, use the refugees and their safety upon return to get a lot out of CCM, because of CCM’s eagerness to get rid of the international embarrassment,” he added.