Refugees subject to serious abuse, HRW says

Refugees in Guinea are vulnerable to serious human rights abuses at the hands of Guinean authorities and civilian vigilantes, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released on Thursday. Guinean security personnel and civilians regularly harass refugees near their camps or as they move through the country to safer areas, the New York-based watchdog said. Checkpoints along the roads are particularly dangerous locations, where refugees are often subjected to arbitrary strip searches, beatings, sexual assault and extortion. In the report, ‘Refugees Still at Risk: Continuing Refugee Protection Concerns in Guinea,’ HRW also documented the cases of refugees who were tortured or beaten to death in Forecariah Prison, southeast of Conakry. Many Guineans blame the refugees for the conflict on their country’s borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia. HRW said that while Guinea had legitimate concerns about the threat to national security by rebel infiltration from its neighbours, this did not excuse the harassment and abuse to which refugees in Guinea were exposed. Since September 2000, a combination of Sierra Leonean Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels and armed Liberian forces have repeatedly attacked and burned refugee camps and Guinean villages along the border, killing, injuring, abducting, and forcing their residents to flee, HRW said. The Liberian government has also launched cross-border attacks, accusing Guinea of providing support and hosting a Liberian rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). UNHCR completed the relocation of refugees away from the border in May 2001 but many refugees remained in border areas, where they were now entirely without international protection. Donor governments have also failed to provide the money needed to help and protect refugees in Guinea. HRW said that while it welcomed the relocation as a major step towards assuring refugee protection, it urged UNHCR to pay closer attention to abuses being committed against refugees by the Guinean authorities and civilians hostile to the refugee presence. [The report can be found at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/guinea/]