19 FARMERS DEAD AS TRUCK DIVES INTO RAVINE IN PHILIPPINES

Despite safety concerns, many Filipinos with limited financial means ride on cargo trucks because they are typically offered for free

Conner, PHILIPPINES

Nineteen farmers were killed and several others injured in the mountainous northern Philippines when the truck they were in plunged backwards down a deep ravine, police said on Friday.

The victims were on their way home from collecting government-subsidised seeds late on Thursday in the town of Conner, Apayao province when the driver lost control of the vehicle in the latest tragedy on the country's perilous roads.

Either the engine or brakes failed as the truck made its way up an incline. The vehicle, with some 40 people on board, as well as the supplies of rice seeds, then plunged back down the hill into a 20-metre (65-foot) ravine.

"The truck fell on its rear first and the passengers were crushed," local police official Manuel Canipas told AFP news agency.

He added that at least 20 other passengers sustained injuries, but were expected to survive. According to news reports, the truck driver was among those who survived. 

Canipas said the weight of the seeds may have made the crash worse, potentially crushing some of the victims.

Deadly road accidents are common in the Philippines, where inadequately maintained buses and poorly-trained drivers form the backbone of land transport options.

Twenty people, including children, were killed in September in the southern Philippine town of T'boli when a truck carrying a group home from a party at the beach crashed.

In many parts of the Philippine archipelago, cargo trucks also serve as passenger vehicles because there is little in the way of public transport.

Despite safety concerns, many people with limited financial means use the trucks because the journey is usually free.

STATE OF EMERGENCY DECLARED IN PARTS OF S. SUDAN DUE TO FLOODS

Juba, SOUTH SUDAN

South Sudan's President Salva Kiir on Tuesday declared a state of emergency in different parts of the country affected by torrential flooding.

Presidential spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny told Radio Tamazuj on Wednesday that the state of emergency is aimed at enhancing humanitarian intervention.

Two boys pick their way along a flooded road in Maban county, South Sudan.

“This is to ensure there is intervention from the government and humanitarian organizations to the people who have been affected by the floods,” he said.

Areas affected by the order include Lol, Aweil East, Aweil West, Gogrial, Twic, Tonj, and Abyei in the greater Bahr el Ghazal region.

Much of the greater Upper Nile region including Maban, Longechuk, Maiwut, Ulang, Nasir, Fangak, Ayod, Pigi, Akobo, Waat, Nyirol, Uror, Duk, Twic East, Bor, and Boma State have also been affected.

President Salva Kiir

In the greater Equatoria region, Terekeka, Mangala, Rokon and Lafon areas have been affected.

According to the order, the emergency declaration takes effect immediately.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement last week that unusual amounts of rain have plagued large parts of South Sudan since July, placing entire communities below water and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.

According to the humanitarian body, nearly one million people in South Sudan have been affected, while the UN Children agency UNICEF estimates that about 490,000 of the victims are children.

KENYA COMMUNITY PUSHES FOR UN INQUIRY INTO TEA LAND THEFT

By Our Correspondent, NAIROBI Kenya

Kibore Cheruiyot Ngasura was just a small boy when his family was violently expelled from their ancestral land in Kenya's lush tea-growing western highlands by British colonisers, and banished never to return.

Eighty-five years later he still bristles at the memory, recalling the fear and confusion as his community was marched to a distant, unfamiliar place, and people around him begged their white overseer for answers.

A tea plantation in Kenya's Kericho highlands in Kericho county. The Kipsigis community says it was forcefully evicted from the land in 1934 to pave way for the plantations owned by multinationals and are is demanding a return to its home and reparations from the United Kingdom. British and Kenyan lawyers who have filed a complaint with the UN on behalf of the community were to visit the region on October 30, 2017 on a fact-finding mission.

"They asked him, 'What wrong did we do? Why are you punishing us like this?" said 94-year-old Ngasura, the only living survivor of a mass deportation in 1934 from Kericho, where rolling green hillsides ripple with Kenya's world-famous tea.

It is a question those forced off their land over decades in Kericho have been asking ever since.

Fed up with being ignored, the Kipsigis and Talai peoples have urged a United Nations special investigator to open an inquiry into their plight.

British and Kenyan lawyers representing the victims will on Wednesday make their first visit to Kericho since filing an official complaint with the UN, accusing the UK government of failing to account for this colonial-era injustice.

They allege that the British army and colonial administrators deployed rape, murder and arson to seize swathes of arable land in Kericho from its traditional owners - rights violations for which nobody has ever answered.

The victims - more than 100,000 are signatories to the UN complaint - want an apology, and reparations for their homeland being usurped and reallocated to white settlers, who turned the fertile soils to cultivating tea.

Kericho boasts some of Kenya's most profitable agricultural land - but the Kipsigis and Talai say they reap none of the benefit.

The land today is largely owned by corporate giants such as Unilever, which sources tea from Kericho for some of its best-selling global brands like Lipton.

The alleged expropriation of land began in the early 20th century but accelerated from the 1920s, after Kericho's exceptional suitability for tea was realised.

"There is blood in the tea," said Godfrey Sang, a historian whose grandfather's land was doled out to white farmers.

"People were killed. Livestock was stolen. Land was taken. Women were raped... And a crop was planted."

Lawyers pushing for UN special rapporteur Fabian Salvioli to launch an inquiry say the intentional displacement and resettlement of Kipsigis and Talai occurred when Kenya was under the Crown, making the UK responsible under international law.

The UK Foreign Office, in a statement, said it supported the work of UN special rapporteurs, and would "respond accordingly" if contacted by Salvioli, the independent expert for the promotion of justice.

Those thrown out of their land were herded into so-called "native reserves", marginal areas where conditions were often appalling.

In an extreme case, the entire Talai clan - hundreds of families, including that of 10-year-old Ngasura - was deported by decree in 1934 and interned in Gwasi, a barren land two-weeks walk to the west near Lake Victoria, where malaria was endemic and water scarce.

"Life was so difficult. People were dying," said Ngasura, speaking through a translator, surrounded by his extended family.

Today, many Kipsigis and Talai live as squatters, humiliated and landless, generations after their forebears were exiled from Kericho's verdant slopes, land known locally as the "White Highlands".

Most possess nothing more of their past than chunks of pottery and other fragments, unearthed surreptitiously from beneath the tea fields: proof, they say, that their people once lived there.

"It is very bitter, to see where you used to live, and (know) you were chased away," said Joel Kimutai Kimetto, staring wistfully at distant hills where his father's land was razed, and tea planted in its place.

A spokesman for Unilever Kenya Ltd said by email they would not comment on colonial-era claims against the UK.

Williamson Fine Tea, and James Finlay Limited, two other multinationals with major tea estates in Kericho, did not reply to requests for comment.

"First of all, they need to acknowledge that it is stolen property," said Kericho County Governor Paul Chepkwony, who has fought for reparations for years.

In March, they scored a rare victory when Kenya's National Land Commission ruled that the Kipsigis and Talai did suffer injustices, and recommended the UK apologise.

But efforts to broker dialogue have not been successful, said Joel Kimutai Bosek, a Kipsigis lawyer representing the community.

The UK has faced a slew of compensation claims from across its former empire, including from Kenya.

In 2013, the government paid reparations to victims of its bloody crackdown on the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion against colonial rule in Kenya.

But similar appeals have failed.

Rodney Dixon QC, a British lawyer representing the Kipsigis and Talai who is visiting Kericho this week, said the UN special rapporteur could assist in mediating a settlement.

Mr Salvioli has vast experience investigating long-past historic abuses.

"This is a precedent that could equally apply here," Dixon told reporters in Geneva in September.

Ngasura, reaching the end of his years, just wants an apology before he dies.

"After that, we would shake the hands of the British, and forget the past," he said.

AT LEAST 65 DEAD IN PAKISTAN TRAIN FIRE - POLICE

A fire burns a train carriage after a gas canister passengers were using to cook breakfast exploded

Islamabad, PAKISTAN 

At least 65 people were killed and 45 others injured after a fire engulfed a train travelling through central Pakistan, completely destroying at least three coaches.

The accident took place near the town of Liaquatpur, about 150km (93 miles) south of the city of Multan on Thursday morning, Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told Al Jazeera by telephone.

"The death toll could rise further," said Muhammad Asfandyar, a local hospital official. He said all of the victims were being treated for burns. 

The train was carrying passengers from the southern city of Karachi to Rawalpindi.

"The injured have been taken to the hospital, but unfortunately there is no nearby hospital [with a burn unit] so we are trying to get them by helicopter to Multan," said Ali Nawaz, a railways ministry spokesman.

The two affected coaches were "overcrowded", Ahmed added.

Each coach typically holds about 70 passengers, and Ahmed said the death toll could rise.

The fire occurred when passengers used a portable gas-powered stove to prepare for breakfast.

"One of the stoves exploded, causing the fire and the other one exploded with it," said Faisal Niaz, an official with the minister's office.

Ahmed said firefighters had completed their work at the site of the blaze.

"Rail service has been resumed on the tracks and rescue work is completed," he said. "The fire is under control."

Pakistan’s aging railway system is still based in many areas on colonial-era infrastructure, and accidents have been a frequent occurrence in recent years.

People and rescue workers gather near the site after a fire broke out in a passenger train and destroyed three carriages near the town of Rahim Yar Khan

Security on intercity rail transport is also more lax than other forms of transport.

"A tragedy that could have been avoided but ever since I can recall while travelling by train no baggage check or restrictions enforced," said Pakistani human rights minister Shireen Mazari following the accident.

TANZANIA BILLIONAIRE ASKED HIS KIDNAPPERS TO 'SHOOT' HIM

Tanzanian billionaire Mohammed Dewji

By Our Reporter, Dar es Salaam TANZANIA

Tanzanian billionaire Mohammed Dewji, who was kidnapped and held for 10 days in October last year, says he was ready to die, having been disoriented by his captivity.

43-year-old Dewji, who is widely considered to be Africa’s youngest billionaire, told the BBC he asked his kidnappers to shoot him. He was speaking to mainstream media for the first time since he was abducted outside a hotel gym in the country’s main city, Dar es Salaam.

Dewji said he was disoriented and blindfolded at the time he asked the kidnappers to end his life.

“I was blindfolded and there were times they kept on threatening me with guns to my head and five days, six days into it I was thinking I was losing my eye sight,” Dewji narrated.

“[The kidnapper] was like ‘I’m going to shoot you’ and I was like ‘you can shoot me and kill me’, because I was losing it. You get disoriented, you’re tired, because it’s a form of torture.”

Ten days after his abduction, Dewji was released, and he says no ransom was paid.

Neither the authorities in Tanzania nor Dewji have established a clear motive for his abduction. The billionaire says he was abandoned in a field near the same hostel where he had been kidnapped.

“I still don’t know why it happened,” he said. “Obviously the intention looked like it was money that they wanted. In the end they left me without the money.”

A Tanzanian taxi driver, Mousa Twaleb is the only suspect who is being held in connection with the case.

There was a huge investigation after Mohammed Dewji was kidnapped in October 2018

Dewji says he has made a few lifestyle changes following this traumatic experience, including replacing the lights in his house with brighter bulbs and abandoning his habit of jogging alone on the beach.

With wealth estimated at $1.5bn (£980m), Dewji says the experience has also intensified his appetite to ‘give back’.

He says he will invest up to $400m in agriculture in Tanzania over the next two years, ‘not for profit but to make an impact’.

His company, MeTL has interests in textile manufacturing, flour milling, beverages and edible oils in at least six African countries, and Dewji is credited with turning the company from a wholesale and retail enterprise into a multi-billion dollar pan-African conglomerate. - BBC

MOZAMBIQUE'S MAIN OPPOSITION PARTY APPEALS ELECTION RESULT

RENAMO leader, Ossufo Momade

By Manuel Mucari, MAPUTO Mozambique

Mozambique’s main opposition party Renamo on Tuesday appealed the result of the Oct. 15 general election, calling on the country’s top court to annul incumbent President Filipe Nyusi’s victory.

Nyusi and his ruling Frelimo party won big in the election, which was hoped would calm tensions in Mozambique, soon to become a top global gas exporter. Instead, the contested result has stoked divisions as opposition parties have cried foul.

“We want the election results to be annulled because they were not elections. They were a caricature, a circus show,” Venâncio Mondlane, a Renamo representative, told Reuters by phone.

Mozambican election staff and materials are
transported to remote areas of the country ahead of
Tuesday's election, in Chongue, Gaza Province,
southern Mozambique, October 14, 2019

“Today we filed the appeal to the Constitutional Council (CC) against the deliberation of the National Election Commission, which we do not agree with. We demand that the CC annul the election results,” Mondlane said.

It was hoped the election could set the seal on a fragile peace pact, designed to put a definitive end to four decades of violence between Frelimo and Renamo.

The two fought a 16-year civil war that ended in a truce in 1992 but have clashed sporadically since.

Renamo had wanted to win control of a number of provinces in Mozambique’s center and north but came away empty handed.

42 PEOPLE KILLED IN CAMEROON LANDSLIDE

By Josiane Kouagheu, DOUALA Cameroon

A landslide caused by heavy rains in western Cameroon killed at least 42 people overnight, state media reported on Tuesday.

Rescue teams spent the day scouring the rubble of destroyed houses in the town of Bafoussam in the western highlands. Among the bodies recovered were those of 26 children, Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV) reported.

The search will resume on Wednesday for additional bodies believed to remain under the rubble, CRTV reported.

“Around 10 p.m. I heard a noise,” said Albert Kenge, who survived the landslide. “I saw a big cloud of dust and when it dissipated, I saw that the mountain had collapsed.”

Heavy rains have continued beyond the end of Central Africa’s rainy season, causing severe flooding which has displaced nearly 30,000 people in Cameroon’s neighbor, the Central African Republic.

The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF said last week that exceptionally heavy rain in South Sudan had destroyed health centers and roads, making access to food and water more difficult for nearly 1 million people.

GOLD RUSH? NOT FOR US SAY TANZANIA'S SMALL-SCALE MINERS

TANGA, Tanzania (Reuters)

A new network of government-controlled gold trading centers was meant to ensure Tanzania’s small-scale miners got a bigger share of the country’s mineral wealth. But most still can’t get a foot in the door. Literally.

Entry to the 28 exchanges scattered around the East African nation is restricted to those who can afford the licenses needed to sell the precious metals, which at around $44, is beyond the means of most small-scale miners who often run up debts just to extract gold and other precious metals from rented land.

That means they are effectively excluded from trading on these formal marketplaces – the centerpiece of President John Magufuli’s drive to curb the black market in mineral wealth.

Magufuli has built his base by promising to empower poor Tanzanians, and his attempts to formalize the sale of gold and other minerals are seen as progressive compared to other countries, such as neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, where there have been violent crackdowns here) on informal miners.

The new mineral trading centers make pricing more transparent, but there is no law that guarantees the miners a fair share.

Instead, the new system has strengthened the position of pit owners and, in particular, the middlemen who help finance them, according to small-scale miners, analysts and non-governmental organizations.

It has also poured money from royalties and clearance fees into government coffers since its inception in March.

Known locally as dealers or brokers, middlemen have traditionally controlled Tanzania’s vast informal mining sector, through the loans they make to miners and pit owners and their ownership of many of the facilities used to process the gold.

Dealers own the majority of the trading licenses needed to buy minerals in the exchanges, and pit owners own the majority of the mining licenses needed to sell in them, according to Tanzania’s Mining Commission, which is the government department that issues the licenses and oversees the industry.

“The concern is we have a new class of mining entrepreneurs,” said Edward Hobey-Hamsher, analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, a consultancy.

“It’s the workers at the bottom who are the most vulnerable and will continue to be.”

Since 2000, 29,000 mining licenses have been distributed, including 3,000 between July 1 2018 and June 31 2019, according to Professor Shukrani Manya, head of the Mining Commission.

That compares to an estimated 6 million people who work as informal miners, according to The Tanzania Mines, Energy, Construction and Allied Workers’ Union (TAMICO), mostly mining gold after its price rose 16% this year.

In a statement, TAMICO said it did not see dealers as obstacles to fair prices for miners but said they would have higher earnings if they bargained collectively, in a union.

Thomas Munis, chairman of the Tanzania Mineral Dealers’ Association (TAMIDA), denied that dealers, who number around 50,000 in Tanzania, exploited miners.

“These arrangements with the artisanal miners are legally binding and everyone is protected by the contracts signed,” he said on the sidelines of a meeting of small-scale miners in Tanga, a port city north of the capital, Dar es Salaam.

“There is no chance for anyone to be exploited.”

The Minister for Minerals Doto Biteko did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

Artisanal mining plays a key role in the wider mining sector because it can rapidly increase supply when prices rise. But it is dangerous with frequent accidents and the risk of contamination from the use of mercury, a highly poisonous substance, to recover gold particles from soil.

It can also be a hard way to make a living.

Even before they put a shovel in the ground, miners have to pay rent on the land they dig, which works out at around 45,000 Tanzanian shillings ($19.58) per year per acre, according to TAMICO, a large amount in a country where the average annual income is around $881, according to a 2017 analysis by the World Bank.

Instead of a regular wage, miners have production-sharing arrangements with pit owners. The pit owners, in turn, often give the dealers the right to process the metal and sell it on, because they are in debt to them.

The dealers usually divvy up the proceeds. Sometimes, if the miners strike lucky and the price is high, that can mean a windfall but much depends on how the takings are split.

Dealers typically take around 30% of the proceeds themselves, with another 30% going to the pit owner and the remainder split between ten or more mineworkers.

“Most artisanal miners depend on brokers for almost everything including food,” said Paulo Maliganya, a small-scale miner who works in Kakora, in Tanzania’s northern Geita region, close to the country’s biggest gold mine owned by South Africa’s AngloGold Ashanti.

“They [have] created dependence in many artisanal miners and they pay an amount which is a bit lower than the market prices.”

The government itself is turning out a big winner from the new system. Gold worth 465.7 billion Tanzania shillings ($202 million) has been traded through the exchanges since they were set up in March, earning the state 35.4 billion ($15.4 million) in royalties, inspection fees and service levies, according to Manya, the head of the Mining Commission.

The amount traded is a fraction of the $1.5 billion worth of gold exported last year from Tanzania, which works out at about 33 tonnes according to Reuters’ calculations.

Small-scale miners produce around 20 tonnes of gold per year in Tanzania according to a 2013 report by a parliamentary committee — the latest official tally — but the vast bulk of that is estimated to be illegally exported.

The state is hoping that as more licenses are issued, the official trade will grow.

“Revenue has increased drastically … the efforts are paying off,” said Gerald Mturi, executive secretary of the Tanzania Chamber of Mines. “I expect big volumes to be reported at the end of the year.”

Earlier this year, Biteko, the Minister for Minerals, told Reuters the government had canceled around 1,000 inactive mining licenses and would redistribute them to small-scale miners.

He did not respond to requests for an update on the planned redistribution of licenses.

PROTESTS AROUND THE WORLD: POLITICIANS MUST ADDRESS ‘GROWING DEFICIT OF TRUST’, URGES GUTERRES

New York, USA

Speaking to correspondents at UN Headquarters in New York, the UN Secretary General António Guterres said that although “every situation is unique” there are common underlying factors which constitute “rising threats to the social contract” between citizens and the political class. 

“People want a level playing field, including social, economic and financial systems that work for all”, together with respect for their human rights and a real say in decisions that affect them, Mr. Guterres added. 

Current or recent demonstrations and protests have raged in the streets of Bolivia, Chile, Hong Kong, Ecuador, Egypt, Guinea, Haiti, Iraq and Lebanon, said the UN human rights office, briefing reporters in Geneva earlier in the day. 

Major protests earlier in the year were also seen in Algeria, Honduras, Nicaragua, Malawi, Russia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom. 

OHCHR Spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said the UN had received reports of police using force against protesters in Bolivia following disputed election results this week, including tear gas, and she called on all actors, “including political leaders and their followers, to exercise restraint in order to reduce tensions”. 

There was a similar message for politicians in Baghdad, where at least 157 have been killed and nearly 5,500 injured across Iraq. There are “credible reports” of serious rights violations including killing of unarmed protesters, and excessive use of force, combined with Government repression of information. 

In Chile, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet – twice elected president there – said on Thursday her office would send a team of three officers to the country to establish the facts behind allegations of rights abuses, following days of protests over inequality, the rising cost of living, and a declared state of emergency.  

And in Lebanon, the “biggest spontaneous protests in over a decade” have continued, despite a package of anti-corruption reforms announced by the Prime Minister, said Ms. Shamdasani: “Tens of thousands of peaceful protesters from all walks of life and confessions, continue to unleash anger across the country, against what they perceive to be decades of corruption and government mismanagement.” 

Mr. Guterres said he was “deeply concerned that some protests have led violence and loss of life”. Governments have an obligation to uphold free expression and peaceful assembly, and to “safeguard civic space”. 

But while security forces needed to use maximum restraint, it is also incumbent on protesters “to follow the examples of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and other champions of non-violent change”, added the UN chief. 

“There can be no excuse for violence – from any quarter. Above all I urge leaders everywhere to listen to the real problems of real people. Our world needs action and ambition, to build fair globalization, strengthen social cohesion and tackle the climate crisis.” 

He concluded with a final note of advice to those in power, from Algeria, to Zimbabwe: “With solidarity and smart policies, leaders can show they ‘get it’ - and point the way to a more just world.” - Africa

TANZANIA: ASYLUM SEEKERS COERCED INTO GOING HOME

Tanzania's interior Minister, Kangi Lugola and  Minister of State Burundi's Interior, Pascal Barandagiye, signing an agreement to relocate 2,000 refugees every week to his country.

By Our Correspondent, Nairobi KENYA

Tanzanian authorities unlawfully coerced more than 200 unregistered asylum seekers into returning to Burundi on October 15, 2019 by threatening to withhold their legal status in Tanzania, Human Rights Watch said today.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) facilitated the returns by registering the asylum seekers under its voluntarily repatriation program, despite threats from Tanzanian officials that they could risk arrest if they stayed in Tanzania.

The forced returns follow an August 24 agreement between Tanzania and Burundi that says about 180,000 Burundian refugees in Tanzania “are to return to their country of origin whether voluntarily or not” by December 31. On October 11, Tanzanian President John Magufuli said that Burundian refugees should “go home.” 

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights should press Tanzania not to forcibly return asylum seekers or refugees, and UNHCR should not facilitate such returns.

“The Tanzanian authorities have intensified pressure on unregistered Burundian refugees to the point of coercion, violating their rights under international law,” said Bill Frelick, refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Tanzania appears to be acting on its threat to drive out some 180,000 refugees who are at risk of serious harm in Burundi.”

In March 2018, Tanzania and Burundi agreed to repatriate 2,000 Burundians a week under a 2017 tripartite agreement with UNHCR to facilitate the voluntary repatriation of Burundian refugees.

However, the actual rate has been far lower, with only 76,000 returning between September 2017 and September 2019, an average of about 730 a week.

Between July and September, UNHCR and Tanzanian authorities conducted a “validation exercise” to verify the number of registered and unregistered Burundians living in camps in Tanzania. Many unregistered Burundians have encountered obstacles to registration, two sources independently told Human Rights Watch.

While the authorities have yet to publish the findings of the exercise, about 3,000 unregistered Burundians were identified, one of the sources said.

On October 11, 2019, camp authorities under the Tanzanian Home Affairs Ministry informed hundreds of unregistered Burundians living in at least one of three camps – Nduta, Nyarugusu, and Mtendeli – in Tanzania’s northwestern Kigoma region near the Burundi border that if they did not register for return they would be in the camps without legal status and could risk arrest, one source said.

Those without legal status would receive some food assistance but no other support. Many registered immediately.

The forced return of over 200 people on October 15 comes against a backdrop of increasing pressure on all refugees living in the camps to return to Burundi, Human Rights Watch said.

Since August, Tanzanian officials have made threatening public statements, closed down a market, and repeatedly changed administrative requirements for aid organizations operating in the camps.

A recent agreement between the Burundian and Tanzanian police to allow cross-border operations by both police forces has heightened fears of arrest among refugees, local media reported.

A Tanzanian policeman watches over as Burundian refugees gather on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in Kagunga village in Kigoma region in western Tanzania, where they wait for transport to Kigoma township, May 17, 2015.

On October 12, between 200 and 300 unregistered Burundians approached UNHCR officials in Nduta camp to sign up for voluntary repatriation, according to the two sources.

The UNHCR officials only asked each person whether they wanted to return, but not other questions normally asked, including why they had decided to return, one source said.

On October 15, they were among 812 Burundians whose repatriation was facilitated by the intergovernmental International Organization for Migration (IOM).

UNHCR, in response to Human Rights Watch findings provided on October 23, acknowledged that “refugees were added to the convoy on October 15 through government mobilization efforts” but that “it took issue with the suggestion that all [of them] were coerced.”

UNHCR disputed the Human Rights Watch allegation that UNHCR officials did not ask the Burundians registering to return further questions to determine whether their decision was genuinely voluntary.

“In explaining their decision to return,” UNHCR said, “refugees referred to a variety of push and pull factors, as they weigh up the known challenging environments in both Burundi and in Tanzania,” and added that “no refugee stated that they were being forced back to Burundi.”

Under UNHCR guidelines, refugees and asylum seekers do not need to state explicitly that they are being forced back for UNHCR to conclude that their repatriation is involuntary, Human Rights Watch said.

UNHCR should have fully taken into consideration that more than 200 asylum seekers asked to return to Burundi the day after camp authorities had threatened them with arrest if they did not “voluntarily return.” UNHCR did not appear to have done so.

UNHCR acknowledged “the increased amount of pressure being put on both refugees and our staff to increase the numbers of people returning each week,” but said that it “will continue to work with the government of Tanzania to seek adherence to principles of voluntariness in line with the tripartite agreement.”

The Tanzanian government’s actions have compounded an already deteriorating situation in the camps which increasingly risks coercing refugees into returning to Burundi, Human Rights Watch said. These include cuts in food rations between August 2017 and October 2018, a ban on refugees leaving the camps including to find work or firewood, and violence against some refugees who left the camps, as well as generalised insecurity.

The Imbonerakure, the Burundian ruling party’s youth league, which has a long record of widespread human rights abuses, has reportedly harassed and threatened refugees in the camps.

Human Rights Watch expressed concern that the Tanzanian authorities’ successful coercion of over 200 unregistered Burundians on October 15 might lead the authorities to target more such people.

“Tanzania’s intimidation of unregistered Burundians in the camps appears to be just the first step in targeting the most vulnerable people in the camps,” Frelick said. “All international entities, including UNHCR, need to play a stronger role to protect and assist all Burundians seeking refuge in Tanzania.”

On October 16, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) informed humanitarian agencies in Tanzania that it had transported 812 Burundian refugees by convoy from Nduta camp in Tanzania to Nyabitare in Burundi the day before.

Two knowledgeable sources said that this number included most or all of a group of 251 refugees living in Nduta camp who had registered for voluntary return before October 10.

Some or all of the 287 refugees living in two nearby Burundian refugee camps, who were transferred to Nduta camp on October 13, were most likely also included in this convoy.

The discrepancy between the 538 refugees who registered for voluntary return under normal procedures in all three camps, most or all of whom returned on October 15, and the total number of 812 returned to Burundi that day suggests that the convoy included over 200 Burundians coerced into leaving Burundi by Nduta camp authorities just days before.

The two sources corroborated that, saying that the group of 812 included up to 300 Burundians living in Nduta camp who had signed up after the October 11 meeting with Tanzanian authorities.

In its latest report, the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry on Burundi concluded that “serious human rights violations – including crimes against humanity – have continued…across the country.” The targets, it said, were real and suspected opposition supporters, Burundians who have returned from abroad, and human rights defenders.

Although President Pierre Nkurunziza has said he will not run for re-election, the commission drew particular attention to the “major risk” posed by the 2020 election.

Human Rights Watch in June documented grave patterns of abuse, including arbitrary arrests, beatings, enforced disappearances, and killings, mostly by Imbonerakure members and local authorities against suspected members of the opposition party National Congress for Freedom (Congrès National pour la Liberté).

UNHCR stated in August that conditions in Burundi were not safe or stable enough for it to encourage refugees to return, and that it would only facilitate voluntary returns.

The 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1969 African Refugee Convention prohibit refoulement, the return of refugees in any manner whatsoever to places where their lives or freedom would be threatened.

UNHCR says that refoulement occurs not only when a government directly rejects or expels a refugee, but also when indirect pressure is so intense that it leads people to believe they have no option but to return to a country where they face a serious risk of harm.

UNHCR’s Handbook on Voluntary Repatriation says that “registration for repatriation should not be viewed as a merely clerical task” and that staff who have received “comprehensive training” should “interview…the potential repatriants to obtain the relevant information, counselling them on issues of concern, answering questions on repatriation related issues [and] assessing vulnerability.”

UNHCR’s handbook also says that “registration for voluntary repatriation should not be directly linked to any other registration or verification (such as care and maintenance assistance),” that “linking the two may create confusion for the refugees by giving the impression that one needs to register for voluntary repatriation in order to be entitled to assistance in the country of asylum,” and that “this may seriously jeopardize voluntariness.”