SA has done its best to provide assistance to the victims of the xenophobic attacks and should not be blamed for detaining undocumented people.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees failed to respond meaningfully to recent xenophobic attacks, civil society bodies say.
The Johannesburg High Court has granted an urgent interdict preventing the relocation of foreigners displaced by xenophobic attacks who are being accommodated at the city’s Cleveland and Jeppe police stations, Lawyers for Human Rights said on Monday.
There were a few tense moments on Monday when a crowd of several hundred refugees marched to Parliament to air their grievances over the recent xenophobic violence. After being addressed by, among others, Zackie Achmat of the Treatment Action Campaign, sections of the crowd surged towards a small line of police officers outside the main gates of Parliament.
Authorities began setting up tents at displacement sites in Johannesburg on Saturday to shelter some of the thousands of foreigners who fled a recent wave of xenophobic attacks. The death toll from the attacks across South Africa has risen to 62, with 670 injured, said national police spokesperson Sally de Beer.
President Thabo Mbeki has brushed off criticism that he failed to show compassion by not visiting areas affected by violent attacks against foreigners around the country, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Thursday.
On a beach in Bosaso, north-east Somalia, near the tip of the Horn of Africa, dozens of Somali and Ethiopian refugees perch on rocks or squat in the sand, peering across the Gulf of Aden to the promised land. They are waiting for boats to carry them to Yemen and away from a life of miserable poverty, persecution and a war in Somalia.
Thousands of people marched through Johannesburg on Saturday, calling for an end to the violence that has killed at least 50 African migrants and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes. People in Hillbrow, home to many African immigrants, cheered the march, which was organised by churches and labour unions.
South Africa’s security chief on Friday accused rightwingers linked to the former apartheid government of fanning xenophobic violence that has spread to Cape Town, the second largest city and tourist centre. At least 42 people have been killed and thousands driven from their homes in 12 days of attacks.
South Africa’s aspirations to lead the continent are being shredded by the xenophobic mobs who have hacked, shot and beaten to death at least 42 African migrants in the land where apartheid was defeated. The mobs accuse the immigrants of depriving South Africans of scarce jobs and fuelling crime.
An estimated 8 000 people have fled Mogadishu since last weekend’s clashes, the heaviest this year in the Somali capital, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said on Friday. About 700 000 people have already fled the coastal capital over the past year, sparking one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Two staff members of the United Nations refugee agency narrowly escaped an ambush on their vehicle by armed militiamen in Somalia’s northern breakaway region of Puntland, the agency said in a statement on Tuesday. The vehicle was carrying a foreign aid worker and a local driver.
The United Nations refugee agency on Tuesday unveiled a new partnership with internet giant Google to help track refugees from Iraq to Darfur and raise public awareness of its work. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees launched its new service using the ”Google Earth Outreach” programme.
The United Nations refugee agency on Friday launched a fresh appeal for ,3-million to help more than 2,5-million displaced people in the Sudanese region of Darfur. ”The funds will be used to help 2,5-million displaced Darfurians”, UN High Commissioner for Refugees spokesperson Ron Redmond said.
Somali Islamists on Monday took control of a central town after clashes with government forces that left 11 people dead, residents and Islamists said. The Islamists wrested control of Buulo Burte town, 206km north of the capital, Mogadishu, they said.
Cash-flow problems and logistic headaches are blighting preparations for Sudan’s census, a cornerstone of the fragile peace ending a devastating civil war and paving the way for key elections. The largest civic exercise in national history will go ahead from April 15 to 30 despite complaints about disorganisation.
The sun-blasted desert between this small Chadian border town and Sudan’s Darfur is scattered with stunted trees and thorny shrubs. Beneath each one, Sudanese refugees huddle under blankets or sheets tied to branches, desperately seeking shade.
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/ 19 February 2008
The United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday it had withdrawn a team caring for refugees from the Chad/Darfur border after aerial bombing. Seven refugees from Darfur crossed the border into Chad on Monday night, carrying with them a 55-year-old woman who had lost both her legs during an alleged bombardment.
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/ 11 February 2008
Chadian rebels fled south on Sunday pursued by government forces, the military said, as the United Nations refugee agency warned that recent fighting in the country had put aid agencies in danger. Although a calm returned to the capital Ndjamena a week after a bloody assault on the city which left more than 160 people dead, the rebel forces said they were heading south.
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/ 7 February 2008
United Nations goodwill ambassador and Hollywood megastar Angelina Jolie visited Iraq on a humanitarian mission on Thursday and met top officials to demand help for people displaced by the war. "There are over two million displaced people and there never seems to be a real coherent plan to help them," she said.
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/ 2 February 2008
Rebels seized Chad’s capital, Ndjamena, on Saturday after intense fighting with government forces, military and rebel sources said, as President Idriss Déby Itno remained holed up in the presidential palace. ”The whole of the city is in the hands of the rebels. It’s down to mopping-up operations,” said a military source.
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/ 2 February 2008
Fighting broke out between Chadian rebels and government forces just north of the capital on Saturday, both sides said, as France prepared to evacuate its nationals in the face of the rebel advance. ”Fighting between government forces and rebels has started at about 20km north of Ndjamena,” a military source said.
A devastating health emergency looms in Kenya where an explosion of post-election violence has killed hundreds and displaced a quarter of a million others, British charity Merlin warned on Sunday. Local aid workers fear an outbreak of diseases in crowded make-shift camps in schools, hospitals and churches, most of which were still out of reach.
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/ 18 December 2007
More than 1 400 would-be migrants, mostly Somalis and Ethiopians, have drowned off Yemen this year trying to cross the Gulf of Aden on rickety boats run by brutal smugglers. About 28 300 people leaving northern Somalia, mainly Somalis and Ethiopians, have made it to Yemen’s shores on 300 boats this year.
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/ 4 December 2007
The United Nations refugee agency on Tuesday warned that renewed fighting between government troops and rebels in eastern Chad has limited its access to refugee camps amid a heightened sense of insecurity. The fighting has not sparked any exodus but has ratcheted up tensions and worries among vulnerable sections of society, the UN said.
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/ 26 November 2007
Kenya has offered asylum to nearly two dozen Somali refugees, yielding to opposition to its plans to deport them to violence-torn Mogadishu, officials said on Monday. A military truck transported the 22 refugees from Nairobi to Kenya’s north-eastern Dadaab refugee camp on Saturday after the government dropped plans to deport them.
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/ 24 November 2007
Insurgents fired a barrage of mortars into an Ethiopian army camp in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Friday, triggering heavy fighting, residents said. The clashes shattered a fortnight lull in the city after weeks of heavy fighting that had claimed dozens of lives, mainly of civilians, and displaced at least 200 000 people.
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/ 20 November 2007
The number of Somalis uprooted by fighting in their own country has hit a ”staggering” one million, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said 600 000 people are believed to have fled Somalia’s lawless capital, Mogadishu, since February.
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/ 20 November 2007
A human rights group condemned Kenya on Tuesday for repatriating 18 Somali refugees who had already been turned away from Uganda despite the horrific security situation in their homeland. Ali-Amin Kimathi, chairperson of the Muslim Human Rights Forum, accused Kenyan police officers of beating some of the refugees.
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/ 19 November 2007
It was after the second beating by Ethiopian soldiers that Abdi Bashi Jama says he decided to head for the border. But though separated from family, far from his home village in Ethiopia’s eastern Ogaden region, and a refugee rather than a shop-owner now, Jama considers himself lucky.
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/ 17 November 2007
Sudan added to the international row over Zoe’s Ark on Friday, accusing Paris of having furnished visas to the French charity to fly 103 children out of Chad, before the Chadian authorities intervened. Sudan’s humanitarian aid commissioner Mohamed Abdel Rahman Hassabo also accused the United Nations agencies working in the region
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/ 2 November 2007
Aid workers are planning to travel to Chad’s western border with Sudan to try to determine the exact background of 103 children at the centre of a child abduction row, the United Nations Children’s Fund said on Friday. The group is aiming to meet village and community leaders around the Chadian towns of Adre and Tine.