MOZAMBIQUE/TANZANIA: Horn migrants
beaten, deported, imprisoned
19 September, 2011 | IRIN
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
of migrants desperate to complete a journey that began thousands
of kilometres to the north stopped arriving at the river’s banks.
“For the last two or three months we haven’t had big movements
like we had between February and April,” said Henry Chacha, an
immigration officer from the nearby Kilambo border post. “For the
last two or three weeks, we haven’t had any migrants.”
At the height of the activity around Mtwara in early 2011, the
migrants - most of them from Ethiopia and Somalia - typically
arrived in groups of 100 or more on boats operated by smugglers,
usually from the Kenyan port city of Mombasa.
According to one Somali migrant who made the trip, the groups
were dropped off near Mtwara, and then found their way to the
river delta where they paid the waiting fishermen in money or goods
for passage to the other side. From there, they trekked through
thick forest for several days before crossing into Mozambique and
arriving at Palma, a small coastal town where the UN Refugee
Agency (UNHCR) and the government’s National Institute for
Refugee Assistance (INAR) had set up an informal camp behind the
local police station to cater for the migrants’ basic needs before
transporting them to Maratane refugee camp in Nampula Province.
For most, Maratane was merely a place to rest, regroup and make
contact with their smugglers’ agents who would help them reach
their final destination: South Africa - the only country in the region
where asylum-seekers and refugees have freedom of movement and
the right to work and run businesses rather than being confined to
camps.
But around May of this year, the movement of migrants from the
Horn of Africa across the River Ruvuma began reversing in
direction. According to immigration authorities in Mtwara, groups of
migrants, stripped of their belongings and clothing, and many
bearing the marks of severe beatings, began appearing near the
river.
“We saw them at the delta, naked,” said Hamidu Mkambala, the
regional immigration officer for Mtwara. “We gave them food and
clothing and then we took them to a court of law and then prison.
We don’t have any other shelters for them.”
About 500 Ethiopians and 50 Somalis are now being held at
Mtwara prison, while about 600 Ethiopian and 170 Somali migrants
are in other prisons around Tanzania.
Harrowing journey
Most of those interviewed at Mtwara prison told similar stories of
weeks at sea on overloaded boats that either dropped them off in
Mtwara or took them all the way to the north coast of
Mozambique. From there they were picked up by police but
instead of being transferred to Maratane, they were robbed of their
possessions, beaten and then dumped next to (or in) the River
Ruvuma.
One young Somali woman recounted a harrowing month-long
journey from Mombasa to Mozambique on rough seas. At one
point the crew of the boat she was travelling on forced three of her
fellow passengers off the over-loaded vessel and into the sea where
they were left to drown. When they finally reached Mozambique,
the migrants were greeted by locals who “took all they had”.
“A white man came and put us in a mini-bus and took us to another
place near a police station,” she continued. “He told the police to
take us to the refugee camp but after he left, they beat us and fired
bullets over our heads,” she said, crying and showing a badly
swollen leg that had not healed two months after one of the
policemen struck it with the barrel of his gun.
One of the Ethiopian prisoners at Mtwara said four of the men in his
group had died after they were beaten so severely by the
Mozambican police that they drowned when they were thrown into
the River Ruvuma.
Others survived by waiting for a low tide and then forming a human
chain to wade to the other side of the river where they were
discovered by local villagers.
“They came from nowhere with no clothes,” a woman from one of
the villages near the river told IRIN. “They said they came from
Mozambique. We fed them and then showed them the way to the
immigration office in Kilambo.”
Small border posts like the one at Kilambo are ill-equipped to deal
with large groups of naked and hungry migrants, most of whom
cannot speak the local language. “We have no budget to feed
them,” said Mkambala. “We feed them from our own pockets and
give them clothing.”
After a day or two staying in the open outside the immigration office
in Kilambo, the migrants were transported to the police station in
Mtwara for processing before being taken to court and then to the
now overcrowded prison.
Government denial
UNHCR has confirmed the migrants’ accounts and called on the
Mozambican government to stop the deportations which contravene
the country’s obligations under the UN Convention on Refugees.
However, at a meeting on 16 September convened by local NGO
the Mozambican Human Rights League, which also has evidence of
abuses against migrants found near the Tanzanian border,
representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry
of the Interior denied that irregular deportations were taking place,
while at the same time describing the migrants as a threat to national
security.
“It’s a very clear sign that the position of the government is
becoming stricter on the issue,” commented Matteo Gillerio, a field
officer with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in
Mozambique who was present at the meeting.
According to Mtwara regional immigration officer Mkambala, a
recent meeting between immigration chiefs from Mozambique and
Tanzania to discuss the irregular deportations did not end in any
agreement, but the situation may have resolved itself, at least
temporarily, as smugglers appear to have started circumventing the
trouble spot between Palma and Mtwara.
Chacha, the immigration officer at Kilambo (on the Tanzanian side),
said no migrants had been seen near the river since July, and Gillerio
said the camp in Palma was also currently empty. However, he
worried the movement would resume in November with the start of
the rainy season which would bring improved conditions at sea and
make it more difficult for the Mozambican police to patrol border
areas.
“The [refugee] camps in Kenya are filling up,” he pointed out. “I
think when they’re in a condition to travel, they will, because they’re
not going to find jobs in Kenya.”
Homeward bound?
For the Ethiopians imprisoned in Tanzania, their journey will soon
end where it started. An IOM initiative funded by the Japanese
government, brought a delegation from Ethiopia’s Ministry of
Foreign Affairs to Tanzania in August to document those being held
in prisons and arrange their voluntary return home starting from the
end of September.
“All of them told us they want to go back home,” said Ethiopia’s
director of Foreign Affairs, Melaku Bedada, who formed part of
the delegation. He added that his Ministry would be engaging their
Mozambican counterparts in a discussion about the abuses the
migrants experienced in that country. “A person has to be treated
humanely, even if they’re illegal,” he said.
The fate of the Somali prisoners is less clear. In the absence of a
functioning government in Somalia to negotiate their release,
members of Dar es Salaam’s local Somali community have been
advocating on their behalf. Ahmed Ally, a leader in that community,
said that after repeated calls to various relevant agencies and
government departments, immigration officers had informed him that
the Somalis would be released soon and taken to the Kenyan
border. From there, he said, Somali elders have agreed to pay their
transport to Nairobi where they will likely find refuge among that
city’s sizeable Somali community.
Most of the imprisoned migrants IRIN spoke to declared they
would not attempt the journey again.
“If I go home, I will just pray for rain. I won’t come to Mozambique
again,” said one young man who left Ethiopia because the drought
had made it impossible for him to farm.
But the young Somali woman with the injured leg insisted she did
not want to go home. “There is still fighting there,” she said. “I want
to go somewhere peaceful… maybe South Africa.”
.Courtesy
beaten, deported, imprisoned
19 September, 2011 | IRIN
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Near the coastal town of
Mtwara, Tanzania’s border
with Mozambique is
marked only by the River
Ruvuma which is wide and
relatively shallow at this
point just before it drains
into the Indian Ocean.
Young men loll in small,
wooden boats checking
their cell phones and
waiting for passengers to
ferry across to the other
of migrants desperate to complete a journey that began thousands
of kilometres to the north stopped arriving at the river’s banks.
“For the last two or three months we haven’t had big movements
like we had between February and April,” said Henry Chacha, an
immigration officer from the nearby Kilambo border post. “For the
last two or three weeks, we haven’t had any migrants.”
At the height of the activity around Mtwara in early 2011, the
migrants - most of them from Ethiopia and Somalia - typically
arrived in groups of 100 or more on boats operated by smugglers,
usually from the Kenyan port city of Mombasa.
According to one Somali migrant who made the trip, the groups
were dropped off near Mtwara, and then found their way to the
river delta where they paid the waiting fishermen in money or goods
for passage to the other side. From there, they trekked through
thick forest for several days before crossing into Mozambique and
arriving at Palma, a small coastal town where the UN Refugee
Agency (UNHCR) and the government’s National Institute for
Refugee Assistance (INAR) had set up an informal camp behind the
local police station to cater for the migrants’ basic needs before
transporting them to Maratane refugee camp in Nampula Province.
For most, Maratane was merely a place to rest, regroup and make
contact with their smugglers’ agents who would help them reach
their final destination: South Africa - the only country in the region
where asylum-seekers and refugees have freedom of movement and
the right to work and run businesses rather than being confined to
camps.
But around May of this year, the movement of migrants from the
Horn of Africa across the River Ruvuma began reversing in
direction. According to immigration authorities in Mtwara, groups of
migrants, stripped of their belongings and clothing, and many
bearing the marks of severe beatings, began appearing near the
river.
“We saw them at the delta, naked,” said Hamidu Mkambala, the
regional immigration officer for Mtwara. “We gave them food and
clothing and then we took them to a court of law and then prison.
We don’t have any other shelters for them.”
About 500 Ethiopians and 50 Somalis are now being held at
Mtwara prison, while about 600 Ethiopian and 170 Somali migrants
are in other prisons around Tanzania.
Harrowing journey
Most of those interviewed at Mtwara prison told similar stories of
weeks at sea on overloaded boats that either dropped them off in
Mtwara or took them all the way to the north coast of
Mozambique. From there they were picked up by police but
instead of being transferred to Maratane, they were robbed of their
possessions, beaten and then dumped next to (or in) the River
Ruvuma.
One young Somali woman recounted a harrowing month-long
journey from Mombasa to Mozambique on rough seas. At one
point the crew of the boat she was travelling on forced three of her
fellow passengers off the over-loaded vessel and into the sea where
they were left to drown. When they finally reached Mozambique,
the migrants were greeted by locals who “took all they had”.
“A white man came and put us in a mini-bus and took us to another
place near a police station,” she continued. “He told the police to
take us to the refugee camp but after he left, they beat us and fired
bullets over our heads,” she said, crying and showing a badly
swollen leg that had not healed two months after one of the
policemen struck it with the barrel of his gun.
One of the Ethiopian prisoners at Mtwara said four of the men in his
group had died after they were beaten so severely by the
Mozambican police that they drowned when they were thrown into
the River Ruvuma.
Others survived by waiting for a low tide and then forming a human
chain to wade to the other side of the river where they were
discovered by local villagers.
“They came from nowhere with no clothes,” a woman from one of
the villages near the river told IRIN. “They said they came from
Mozambique. We fed them and then showed them the way to the
immigration office in Kilambo.”
Small border posts like the one at Kilambo are ill-equipped to deal
with large groups of naked and hungry migrants, most of whom
cannot speak the local language. “We have no budget to feed
them,” said Mkambala. “We feed them from our own pockets and
give them clothing.”
After a day or two staying in the open outside the immigration office
in Kilambo, the migrants were transported to the police station in
Mtwara for processing before being taken to court and then to the
now overcrowded prison.
Government denial
UNHCR has confirmed the migrants’ accounts and called on the
Mozambican government to stop the deportations which contravene
the country’s obligations under the UN Convention on Refugees.
However, at a meeting on 16 September convened by local NGO
the Mozambican Human Rights League, which also has evidence of
abuses against migrants found near the Tanzanian border,
representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry
of the Interior denied that irregular deportations were taking place,
while at the same time describing the migrants as a threat to national
security.
“It’s a very clear sign that the position of the government is
becoming stricter on the issue,” commented Matteo Gillerio, a field
officer with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in
Mozambique who was present at the meeting.
According to Mtwara regional immigration officer Mkambala, a
recent meeting between immigration chiefs from Mozambique and
Tanzania to discuss the irregular deportations did not end in any
agreement, but the situation may have resolved itself, at least
temporarily, as smugglers appear to have started circumventing the
trouble spot between Palma and Mtwara.
Chacha, the immigration officer at Kilambo (on the Tanzanian side),
said no migrants had been seen near the river since July, and Gillerio
said the camp in Palma was also currently empty. However, he
worried the movement would resume in November with the start of
the rainy season which would bring improved conditions at sea and
make it more difficult for the Mozambican police to patrol border
areas.
“The [refugee] camps in Kenya are filling up,” he pointed out. “I
think when they’re in a condition to travel, they will, because they’re
not going to find jobs in Kenya.”
Homeward bound?
For the Ethiopians imprisoned in Tanzania, their journey will soon
end where it started. An IOM initiative funded by the Japanese
government, brought a delegation from Ethiopia’s Ministry of
Foreign Affairs to Tanzania in August to document those being held
in prisons and arrange their voluntary return home starting from the
end of September.
“All of them told us they want to go back home,” said Ethiopia’s
director of Foreign Affairs, Melaku Bedada, who formed part of
the delegation. He added that his Ministry would be engaging their
Mozambican counterparts in a discussion about the abuses the
migrants experienced in that country. “A person has to be treated
humanely, even if they’re illegal,” he said.
The fate of the Somali prisoners is less clear. In the absence of a
functioning government in Somalia to negotiate their release,
members of Dar es Salaam’s local Somali community have been
advocating on their behalf. Ahmed Ally, a leader in that community,
said that after repeated calls to various relevant agencies and
government departments, immigration officers had informed him that
the Somalis would be released soon and taken to the Kenyan
border. From there, he said, Somali elders have agreed to pay their
transport to Nairobi where they will likely find refuge among that
city’s sizeable Somali community.
Most of the imprisoned migrants IRIN spoke to declared they
would not attempt the journey again.
“If I go home, I will just pray for rain. I won’t come to Mozambique
again,” said one young man who left Ethiopia because the drought
had made it impossible for him to farm.
But the young Somali woman with the injured leg insisted she did
not want to go home. “There is still fighting there,” she said. “I want
to go somewhere peaceful… maybe South Africa.”
.Courtesy
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