Zanzibari refugee group on the way home

The UNHCR-chartered boat ‘Sepideh’ carrying a first group of 205 returning Zanzibari refugees from the Kenyan port of Shimoni, south of Mombasa, left around midday on Thursday bound for Mokowani on Pemba island, according to a press release from the refugee agency. The refugees fled from political violence on the Zanzibari islands of Unguja and Pemba in late January. The ‘Sepideh’ was to make its second and third trips between Shimoni and Pemba on Friday. Each would carry around 210 Tanzanian refugees who volunteered for repatriation from Kenya, UNHCR added.
The agency’s offices in Tanzania and Kenya were facilitating the return of the Tanzanian refugees, “following assurances by the government of Tanzania that they will be able to freely return and reintegrate on the island of Pemba”, UNHCR stated in a press release. In order to monitor the return process, it has already deployed a small team on the island.

Over 500 of the Zanzibari refugees had left Shimoni for pre-existing refugee camps in Dadaab, northeastern Kenya, and several hundred others found shelter with local villagers in the Mombasa area, but UNHCR expected them to join the repatriation movement in the coming weeks. Refugees who decide to remain in Kenya even after the repatriation are to have their status reviewed individually by the authorities. More than 2,000 Zanzibaris fled a violent clampdown on the opposition Civic United Front (CUF), which was protesting what it considered fraudulent elections in October last year.