Ethiopian students demonstrate

Ethiopian students who fled to Kenya seeking asylum, demonstrated outside the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Nairobi on Monday, Associated Press (AP) reported. The students were claiming that their lives would be at risk if they were put in Kenyan refugee camps, AP said.

The 40 Students said the camps, located in northern and northeastern Kenya, were unsafe, and that they wanted UNHCR to provide them with protection in the Kenyan capital. “We will not go. There is no security. We will not go to any camp,” AP quotes one of the students, Adane Wonde, a fourth year political science student from Addis Ababa University, as saying. The students said they had begun a hunger strike on Monday, which would continue until their demands were met, according to AP.

The Ethiopians, who are seeking political asylum following the April riots in Addis Ababa in which more than 30 people were killed, have been arriving in Kenya since the beginning of last month. An average of five a day were still entering Kenya, said AP. A UNHCR spokesman earlier explained to IRIN that the granting of refugee status and policy concerning where refugees are accommodated is decided by the Kenyan government, not UNHCR.