October 25/2000

 PROTEST THE PLANNED DEPORTATION OF ETHIOPIAN REFUGEES FROM THE SUDAN

The UNHCR has refused to heed the cries of Ethiopian refugees in the Sudan and is going ahead with the deplorable plan of deporting them back to Ethiopia on the basis of the false assertion that conditions in Ethiopia are "safe enough for them to return". The UN body is sending 15 protection officers to the Sudan to screen thousands of Ethiopian refugees who are now denied their status following the arbitrary decision on March 2000 to apply the "cessation clause" (withdrawal of blanket refugee status from Ethiopians who fled during the Mengistu regime).

The concerned refugees have protested against this clause and the UNHCR move. It is common knowledge that the UNHCR offices in the neighboring countries (specially in the Sudan, Djibouti and Kenya) have collided often with the government in Addis Abeba and failed to protect the refugees. Numerous refugees have been deported from the Sudan (and many killed or disappeared by the EPRDF government) without the UNHCR even uttering a protest. Jattene Ali and Afeworki Alemseged were murdered in Nairobi, and others kidnapped from refugee camps in Djibouti and more with the UNHCR distinguished by its silence. To claim as the UNHCR does that Ethiopian refugees can return to their country because they are safe is to declare a falsehood of dangerous proportions.

SOCEPP and many other local and international human rights organizations have denounced the human rights violations of the one ethnic based government in Ethiopia, Most refugees in the Sudan are opposed to this government and many are linked to Opposition organizations fighting against it. If they are sent back, their lives will be in danger. The case is further compounded by the fact that the governments of the Sudan and Ethiopia are now politically close and the EPRDF government wants to have some of the exiled dissidents/refugees back so that it can repress them (and Sudan, for its own political reasons, is willing to oblige).

WITHDRAW THE SO CALLED CESSATION CLAUSE NOW!!

 STOP THE PLANNED DEPORTATION OF ETHIOPIAN REFUGEES!!

 Please write to the UNHCR (Mme Commissioner Sadaka Ogata ) and to President Omar el Beshir of the Sudan calling on them to stop the planned deportation.

SOCEPP