Security fears among refugees

Two-years-ago Nangweshi was just another remote farming community on the western fringe of Zambia - isolated from the rest of the country by the Zambezi river and marshes that flood during the rainy season. Now it is home to 15,000 Angolan refugees, fugitives from intense fighting last year between government troops and UNITA rebels. Many of the refugees had initially run to Sinjembela in the southwest corner of Zambia. But marooned by flood waters and uncomfortably close to an insecure border, UNHCR and the Zambian government organised a rescue mission, with Nangweshi as the final destination. The flow of Angolan arrivals - albeit at a reduced rate in the last few months - has continued. But Nangweshi, restricted by a gazetted forest and swampland, has reached its maximum capacity and UNHCR is scouting for more land in Zambia’s Western Province to accommodate any new influx. Nangweshi is unlike most other refugee camps in Zambia. Mayukwayukwa to the northeast is also a predominantly Angolan settlement, but the refugees there are old caseload who have been in the country for as many as 20 years. The Nangweshi residents on the other hand are mainly UNITA supporters, who fled the fall of the rebel headquarters of Jamba in southeast Angola, and include a relatively large number of professionals. They are highly suspicious of outsiders, including Angolan refugees from Mayukwayukwa. Nangweshi is a place where this month the refugees refused to come for a food distribution because they were celebrating the birthday of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi. Some still build bunkers for homes, with only a low wall showing there is a structure there at all, and UNITA officials fill most leadership positions among the residents in the camp. To allay concerns by the Angolan government that Nangweshi could serve as a recruiting ground for UNITA, UNHCR has begun to re-screen refugees with a possible military background. As most of the men have carried a weapon at some stage, and may even have been forced to fight, the selection criterion has been those refugees with military training. So far around 100 people have been identified - mostly middle-ranking UNITA officers - and they are to be moved to the Ukwimi refugee camp in eastern Zambia by the end of the month, UNHCR protection officer Sylvester Brigges Nkpaji told IRIN. But with their close association to UNITA, the Nangweshi refugees are especially concerned about their security. “What I fear is I’m coming from a conflict area but I can be harassed up to this place by the person who chased me,” refugee camp leader Sylvester Seketali told IRIN through an interpreter. “What we need most is protection. It’s important that we are protected by UNHCR and the Zambian government.” In July, a group of six journalists that had worked with the former UNITA propaganda station radio Vorgan tried to present the visiting UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers with a letter alleging that colleagues had “disappeared” from Nangweshi and claiming that their lives were now at risk. “At least five of our colleagues have disappeared mysteriously from this camp and from this country and they are being used as propaganda instruments for the Angolan government in Luanda,” the letter read. “Because of our past employment, our lives are [at] risk and we need political asylum.” Among the five former Vorgan employees who “disappeared” from Nangweshi was the station’s deputy director Arlindo Chimbili, who left in March along with seven family members. He has since been heard broadcasting on national radio in Angola calling on his colleagues still in the camp to join him in Luanda. However, the remaining journalists insist that Chimbili and the others did not leave of their own free will. “We can’t believe they did so on their own as they left during the night and didn’t say goodbye to their neighbours,” one of the Vorgan journalists Alberto Chinjumbia told IRIN. Suggesting that the Angolan consulate in the Western Province capital of Mongu was involved, he added: “We know that the MPLA government needs those people that spread the UNITA message to turn round and do it the other way.” Vorgan, the “Voice of the Black Cockrell”, was closed in 1998 under the terms of the Lusaka peace accord. Its national broadcasts had unflaggingly - and often venomously - pushed the UNITA line. Its impact was such that when the station’s former director Clarindo Kaputu crossed into Zambia last year with others fleeing Jamba, he was granted political asylum and resettled in a Scandinavian country. Chimbili, his deputy, did not stay long in Nangweshi either. Apparently he had business interests in Zambia and travelled regularly to Lusaka via Mongu. Rather than a clandestine departure, the story in the camp was that when he chose to leave a vehicle drove in and picked him and his family up. “He went voluntarily, maybe after being enticed after the [Mongu] consulate made contact,” the Zambian government’s refugee officer and head of security Dominic Sekeleti told IRIN. He denied there was any security risk at the camp. UNHCR also insists that the five Vorgan employees left Nangweshi of their own free will. At least one of them, Armandio Gomes Delgado, left a letter explaining his decision. He like Jose de Aranjo, a Vorgan technician and news writer Russo de Carvhalo had been captured by UNITA and taken to Jamba. All three had family in Luanda they wanted to see, UNHCR said. “They fear each other, they cannot leave openly, each one is trying to see what the other one is doing so they go at night,” Robert Machalo the UNHCR field assistant at Nangweshi told IRIN. “That’s their culture, they don’t trust anybody, these people have lived under a guerrilla type of life.” What is emerging in Nangweshi is that there are families who were kidnapped by the rebels and are not willing supporters. What is also expected to be reflected in upcoming elections for refugee office bearers is that UNITA’s political hold is on the wane. Even among the remaining Vorgan journalists their is a feeling that Zambia has offered an opportunity to escape what is widely documented as a harsh regime under UNITA and a bitter war. “For every country in war there is no respect for human rights,” one of them explained. “That’s why we are here, we had a chance to choose and we left (Jamba).” What they however fear, and is the basis of their asylum request, is that they if they chose to leave for Luanda they could not be neutral. “Since the war is still going on I don’t think it’s a good time to go to Luanda. The government doesn’t want us for anything constructive but to destroy the other side,” the journalist added.