Authorities forcibly close IDP camps in southern Darfur
NAIROBI, Jan 16, 2004 (IRIN) — Authorities in Nyala, southern Darfur, closed two camps housing 10,000 displaced people on Thursday, following a failed attempt to relocate them to new camps without their consent, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).
The new camps were located about 20 km outside of Nyala “in an area considered unsafe” due to ongoing fighting, difficult to access for humanitarian workers, and where there was neither shelter, food, nor sufficient access to water and latrines, said MSF.
On Wednesday, the authorities had arrived at the camps and begun the “forced transfer” of people by trucks to the new sites, the agency reported, after which a number of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) fled in panic. Some of these families have severely malnourished children.
By Thursday morning, when police and other authorities arrived in the camps, they were up to 90 percent empty, most of the population having fled.
MSF teams were being prevented from distributing drinking water to those who were left and, for the second consecutive day, malnourished children were prevented from receiving the vital care they needed, said a statement.
The IDPs, who come from farming communities, had been living in the two impromptu camps on the edge of Nyala, known as Intifada [Arabic for “uprising”] One and Two. Since the beginning of the year between 50 and 150 IDPs had been arriving every day, according to MSF, mostly empty-handed, having fled from their villages which have been looted and burned by nomadic Arab militias.
The humanitarian aid commissioner in southern Darfur, Jamal Yusuf Idris, told IRIN last month that he was under pressure to move the IDPs away from Intifada quickly, but added: “They [the IDPs) are saying they need to go back.”
“It is not an order, it is a debate, a very long discussion between the authorities and the IDPs,” he said.
Meanwhile, authorities were “unable” to dig pit latrines for the IDPs, because the land was reserved for residential purposes, he said.
Whereas local authorities have insisted that the “transfer” process is voluntary, the Intifada inhabitants say they are being pushed away from Nyala town, because their presence is “embarrassing” to local officials. Too many visiting officials have already seen the conditions they are living under, they say.
They would rather stay close to the town, which is safer and where they can do odd jobs to survive. “I don’t want to move. If we move again, they [the militias] will attack us again. I feel safe here,” a displaced woman with eight children told IRIN.
Currently, about 85 percent of the 900,000 war-affected people in Darfur – the vast majority of whom come from the Fur, Zaghawa and Massalit ethnic groups – are inaccessible to humanitarian aid, according to the UN, mainly because of insecurity.
Over 600,000 of these have been pushed off their land by nomadic militias, in what some humanitarian and diplomatic sources have referred to as “ethnic cleansing”.
An further 95,000 have fled to neighbouring Chad.
Bombing raids by government aircraft and militia attacks have escalated in Darfur since mid-December, when peace talks between one of the region’s two main rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army, and the government broke down. President Omar al-Bashir has vowed to annihilate the rebels militarily, who are calling for greater political and economic rights.
It is unclear to what extent the militias are currently controlled by either the government or the region’s main Arab tribes, according to regional analysts. They have, however, been given carte blanche to loot villages, and rape and kill with impunity, according to observers, and are being supported by the Sudanese army.