Kigoma, TANZANIA
Tanzania intends to deport up to 200,000 Burundian refugees
by year's end. Burundi is going along with the plan, but the UN's refugee
agency has objected, demanding voluntary, not forced returns.
Nearly 600 Burundian refugees
were sent home from Tanzania on Thursday. They make up the first large group to
be repatriated as part of a mass deportation operation that began this week.
Nestor Bimenyimana, Burundi's
general manager for repatriation, said the refugees are returning voluntarily
because the country's security and political conditions have improved
dramatically, less than a year before the country's May 2020 presidential
election.
Conflict erupted in Burundi in
2015 over a third term for President Pierre Nkurunziza (pictured). The human
rights abuses and persecution of political opponents that
followed caused hundreds of thousands of Burundians to flee to neighboring
Tanzania.
In March 2018, the UN refugee
agency UNHCR, Tanzania and Burundi signed a trilateral treaty making it easier
for refugees to return home voluntarily. This August, Tanzania and Burundi
signed a bilateral deal agreeing to return 200,000 Burundian refugees home by
year's end. But the UNHCR is calling on Tanzania's government to refrain from
deporting Burundian refugees against their will, saying their lives may be in
danger when they get home.
Babar Baloch, global spokesman
for the UNHCR, is hoping Tanzania and Burundi will see his organization's
point. "Everyone signed the document, both governments agree that a refugee
can only be returned when he or she thinks it is time for them to
return," said Baloch. "For us, one principle is very important:
Let the refugees decide for themselves if it is time for them to return to
their country of origin."
"Some people who have
been arriving from Burundi still talk about human rights violations and acts of
persecution displacing people," Baloch added. "Currently, conditions
are not right for mass returns."
According to Kate Pond, the
UNHCR's spokeswoman in Tanzania, at least 175,000 Burundian refugees have
voluntarily left Tanzania since 2017. Those who left cited poor living
conditions in refugee camps and pressure being applied to the Burundian
diaspora by the Tanzanian government.
In one example of the latter,
Tanzanian Home Affairs Minister Alphaxard Kangi Lugola announced in late
September that 163,000 Burundian refugees who were granted Tanzanian
citizenship in 2007 would not be allowed to vote in local elections. Many of
those people have lived in the country since 1972. Their exclusion from the
vote is apparently connected to a government plan to relocate them to a
different part of the country, something that many in the diaspora are
vehemently opposed to.
On the whole,
new refugees are suffering. "Life is difficult for us in Tanzania,"
one refugee told DW. Burundians suffer abuse at every turn, he said: "They
destroy our markets, rob us, beat us like animals and jail us. The prison in
Kigoma is full of Burundians. More than half the inmates are from Burundi. They
work like dogs, day and night.
The man is also not convinced
by Burundian Vice President Gaston Sindimwo's guarantee that all exiled
Burundians can return home safely. "He himself is part of the reason
people are getting killed there," the man said. "They are always
recovering bodies from rivers or from the hills. I don't think he has ever
spoken the truth and he never will. If there was a good solution there wouldn't
be any Burundians living abroad, because we love our country."
Serious human rights
violations and crimes against humanity continue unabated in Burundi. That was
the opinion in a report published last month by the UN's International Commission
of Inquiry on Burundi. That is also why the UNHCR refuses to support forced
deportations, explained Pond.
"UNHCR
will not support the forced return of refugees," she said. "We have
called upon both governments to ensure the voluntariness of repatriation and
that it must take place in safety and dignity. We have also urged them to
respect the Tripartite Agreement signed by the governments of Tanzania, Burundi
and the UNHCR in 2017 to ensure that returns meet international standards."
In an attempt to wipe away any
confusion, a speaker for the Burundian Ministry of Public Security explained
that only those Burundians denied asylum would be repatriated. His assistant
said that some 15,000 such people are currently residing in Tanzania despite
not having UNHCR refugee status: "Tanzania asked for the repatriation, and
ministers from both countries agreed to register those individuals and
repatriate them to Burundi. These are not Burundian refugees in Tanzania, but
simply Burundians. They never had UNHCR refugee status, and they will be
returned to Burundi."
Yet, the UNHCR refutes the
Burundian government's assessment, saying that all Burundians in Tanzania have
refugee status. Therefore, says the UNHCR, there is no justification for
deportation.
According to Prosper Kwigize,
a DW associate in Tanzania, the real reasons are different altogether.
"Tanzania has given three reasons for sending back Burundian
refugees," he said. "First, they say Burundi is safe once again.
Second, they say Burundians are involved in illegal criminal activity in
Tanzania. And third, they say citizens feel unsafe and are fearful to the point
of being unable to travel in some parts of the country, like Kigoma."
Kwigize said that hunger,
poverty and the hope of being sent to a third country such as Belgium or Canada
has kept many Burundians from returning home. But those who choose to return
face completely different problems when they get there.
The big question of financing
remains unanswered, however, said the UNHCR's Baloch. "Globally we don’t
get enough resources for refugees, so if they step forward and voluntarily want
to return back home we would need to have the resources in place," he
explained. "And that is when we go to the international community and
donor organizations to make sure those who return voluntarily are supported and
well looked after in their country of origin." - DW
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