June 1/2002

STOP THE CRIME AGAINST ETHIOPIAN REFUGEES IN KENYA

THE Kenyan authorities have let it be known that they have rounded up close to a thousand refugees in Nairobi who they claim are illegal aliens. Such campaigns against refugees gives the police the occasion to commit numerous violations of rights against the defenseless refugees.

That Ethiopian refugees in Kenya have been continuously subjected to inhumane treatment has been repeatedly documented by SOCEPP and other human rights organizations. Ifo and Kakuma refugee camps where Ethiopians have been dumped are hell holes. Recently a female Ethiopian refugee who was traveling from Kakuma to Nairobi was brutally raped by a Kenyan man in Kitale town. Rapes and beatings have become the common lot of Ethiopian refugees as the local UNHCR, which has been accused of corruption and other offenses, seems unperturbed by the plight of the refugees. The raped refugee is Behaja Mohamed and she was a university student in Jimma, Ethiopia. Many students and journalists have fled to Kenya to escape repression by the EPRDF.

SOCEPP vigorously condemns the mistreatment of Ethiopian refugees in Kenya and once again calls on the UNHCR to assume its responsibilities and to protect the refugees in Kenya. Ethiopians in the Diaspora should voice their protests to the nearest Kenyan embassy and to the UNHCR. The Ethiopian refugees in Kenya, as well as those in the Sudan and Djibouti, desperately need the protection that the UNHCR has failed to give them.

SOCEPP