UN refugee agency protests forced relocation of Sudanese refugees in Uganda
By HENRY WASSWA Associated Press Writer
KAMPALA, Uganda, Sep 02, 2003 (AP) — The U.N. refugee agency protested Tuesday against the forced relocation of thousands of Sudanese refugees to northern Uganda, saying authorities fired on them and are denying U.N. officials access to the old camps, the head of the agency in Uganda said.
Castro Magluff said police rounded up 16,000 Sudanese refugees Monday at Kiryandongo camp 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of Kampala and told them to pack their belongings. When camp residents resisted, police fired volleys of rubber bullets into the crowd, injuring two of them.
Magluff said police denied refugee agency representatives access to the camps Tuesday as they began loading people on trucks for the journey to another camp in West Nile region 160 kilometers (99 miles) north of where they had been.
Some 165,000 Sudanese who have fled from southern Sudan during the country’s 20-year civil war now live in camps in Uganda; some 29,000 lived at Kiryandongo.
In August 2002, the agency transferred some 24,000 people to Kiryandongo from another camp in northern Uganda after they were attacked by rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army, who have waged a 16-year bush war against the Ugandan government. About 100 people were killed in the attack.
Magluff said police said they kept U.N. representatives out of Kiryandongo for unspecified “security reasons.”
“According to international conventions, U.N. staff have unlimited access to refugee camps,” Magluff said. “We have notified our head office and forwarded a protest to Ugandan authorities.”
Carlos Twesigomwe, commissioner of Uganda’s office of disaster preparedness and refugees, said the Kiryandongo camp had become too congested and needed to be thinned out. He said residents feared being attacked by LRA rebels again if they moved, which prompted their resistance.
“They are being moved in a humane manner,” Twesigomwe said by telephone. “We have an obligation to ensure their security and welfare, and we are also abiding by the convention. The area where they are going is safe.”
Twesigomwe said police shot into crowds after the situation got out of control, adding “refugees like other citizens have to abide by and respect the law.”
He said the new camp is in an area not held by LRA rebels who have been fighting President Yoweri Museveni since his forces came to power in 1986 after a five-year bush war. They stage attacks in much of the northern third of the country and have recently been moving southeast.
The group, believed to number in the hundreds, replenishes its ranks with youngsters it abducts to use as fighters, porters or concubines.
In March 2002, government troops crossed into southern Sudan in what was billed as a brief mopping up exercise against LRA camps there. What became known as “Operation Iron Fist” pushed the rebels back into northern Uganda and has been extended several times.