Kenyan authorities are threatening to repatriate hundreds of Ethiopian and Somali refugees rounded up in a police sweep in Nairobi on May 30, 2002. If returned, many could face arbitrary arrest, torture, and other serious abuses in their countries of origin.
The Kenyan government must not return people to the hands of their abusers," said Alison Parker, refugee policy fellow at Human Rights Watch. "International refugee law prohibits sending people back without a proper hearing to determine whether they will face persecution on their return," Parker said.
The Somalis and Ethiopians are likely to face torture and persecution if they are returned. During an investigation in Nairobi in April 2002, Human Rights Watch interviewed twenty-three Ethiopians who said they had fled the country after being tortured in detention. The Somalis risk return to civil conflict - even in the past week, Somali refugees have fled renewed fighting in the Mandera region of Somalia.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has not been granted free access to the group, who are being held at the Kasarani police station in Nairobi, to ascertain whether any of them are refugees.
This is not the first time that the Kenyan government is flouting its obligations under international refugee law. In its April 2002 investigation, Human Rights Watch documented numerous instances in which refugees or asylum seekers living in Nairobi were forcibly repatriated after being arrested by the police.
As a result of the sweeps, the Kenyan government is also detaining one hundred and forty-five documented refugees, the majority of whom are from the Ethiopian Oromo ethnic group and one-third of whom are children, at the Gigiri police station near Nairobi. The government is planning to relocate these refugees to camps in the remote northeast of the country. Human Rights Watch is concerned that the relocation may separate the children, many of whom are detained without their parents, from their families. It could also deny torture victims and others specialized medical care available only in Nairobi.
The one hundred and forty-five refugees have been charged with failing to register with the government of Kenya, a statutory violation that is being enforced for the first time. But no refugee is able to comply with the statute because there has been no governmental registration service for the refugees since 1991. Prior to 1991, the Kenyan government was conducting its own refugee status determination and registration. However, with the arrival of large numbers of refugees from Somalia and Sudan in 1991, the government handed the processing of refugees over to UNHCR.
Foreigners, including refugees, are often blamed for crime and insecurity and targeted for arbitrary arrest and detention in Kenya. Similar round-ups occurred in September 1998, when refugees had to surrender their "protection letters" from UNHCR, without being given replacement identity documents. More recently, group arrests of thirty to one hundred foreigners occurred in October 2001 and twice during February 2002. Individual non-nationals are harassed and arrested on a daily basis in large cities, particularly in Nairobi.
Human Rights Watch called on the Kenyan government to properly assess the status of the detainees before repatriation, to put into place immigration policies that accord with international human rights, refugee law and Kenyan law, and to end police harassment of refugees and asylum-seekers.
