Zanzibari "refugees" return from Mogadishu

A group of 12 Tanzanians who fled violent clashes in Zanzibar in January 2001 and ended up in Somalia were due to be returned to their homes on Wednesday, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. "They have been accepted and are flying back today," Ivana Unluova, UNHCR spokeswoman in Tanzania told IRIN on Wednesday. Some 100 Zanzibaris had made their way to the Somali capital, Mogadishu, from the Dadaab refugee camp, northeastern Kenya, last October after having been transferred there from the village of Shimoni on the Kenyan coast - their first place of sanctuary. Although the exact whereabouts of the remainder of the Mogadishu group was unknown, it was thought they were probably still in the Somali capital, Unluova said. The group of 12 had approached UNHCR representatives in Mogadishu asking to be repatriated and, although they were not officially considered as refugees, UNHCR had agreed to provide assistance as they were still "people of concern to us". The principle of first country of asylum - which says that if a person has already been given refugee status in one country, he is not permitted to move to a second country to seek asylum for the same reasons - meant that Kenya was still the appropriate country of refuge for the Mogadishu group, UNHCR told IRIN at the time of the group's flight to Somalia. All Zanzibari refugees transferred to Dadaab who had not left the camp voluntarily, had now been returned to Tanzania. "There are none left," Unluova said. The Tanzanian government has given assurances that, on their return to Zanzibar, refugees would not be prosecuted for their part in the January 2001 unrest. UNHCR protection staff in Zanzibar monitoring repatriation had so far reported no serious problems, Unluova said. More than 2,000 Zanzibaris fled the Tanzanian island chain in January 2001 when political demonstrations turned violent. The clashes arose when police broke up demonstrations by supporters of the opposition Civic United Front (CUF) against what they considered were unfair elections, won by the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party, in October 2000. Hopes for a solution to long-term political instability in Zanzibar improved in October last year when the two parties signed an agreement under which the causes of the clashes would be investigated and political parties would be allowed to conduct their operations free of intimidation. However, CUF chairman Ibrahim Lipumba told IRIN recently that reform had been "a little slow", and called for renewed efforts to implement the agreement.