Iraqi man climbs tall antenna in Khartoum for Canada visa
May 6, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — An Iraqi man climbed a tall telecommunications antenna in the Sudanese capital and stayed there for 13 hours on Sunday to protest the U.N. refugee agency’s refusal to send him to Canada.
Hesham Faleh, 20, climbed the 30-metre (98 foot) antenna at 3 a.m. (2400 GMT) carrying a Canadian flag, a bottle of water and a hat to protect him from Khartoum’s scorching sun, his wife said.
He stepped down after more than 13 hours and turned himself over to Sudanese police, witnesses said.
Samira Youssef, 20, said her husband had fled Iraq after the fall of Baghdad in 2003. She said he has applied to be resettled in Canada through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) agency in Sudan.
“On April 30, I got my rejection letter,” said Youssef, an Eritrean refugee. “And he got his on May 3. It was a shock for him,” she added.
Youssef earlier told Reuters Faleh had climbed the antenna “to attract attention to his problem”.
Scores of onlookers gathered near the UNHCR offices to watch Faleh. At one point he took off his shirt and wrapped a blue rope around his neck, a Reuters photograph showed, in an apparent threat to hang himself.
Chrysantus Ache, the UNHCR representative in Sudan, said Faleh did not have a refugee status.
The United Nations says around 2 million Iraqis have been displaced inside the country since the invasion, while the others are being sheltered in neighbouring countries, mainly Syria and Jordan.
(Reuters)