While President Barack Obama and his Defense and State Departments wrestle with the open and violent warfare in Libya, the Obama Administration is silent about the brutality and warfare in Somalia at the hands of Islamists, pirates and warlords, and the mistreatment of men, women and children seeking asylum in Kenya.
What troubles more and more observers is the fact that Obama and his wife First Lady Michelle Obama have affectionately mentioned Kenya as being the U.S. President’s ancestral home, yet they remain silent regarding Kenyan government’s cruel treatment of human beings fleeing what’s described as a "hell on earth" in Somalia.
In a statement released yesterday, officials with Human Rights Watch said Kenya should immediately stop deporting civilians fleeing the deadly armed conflict back to Somalia .
Kenya should allow humanitarian agencies to assist Somalis displaced by fighting and should not close makeshift camps without providing alternative sites and offering displaced people the opportunity to seek asylum, HRW officials stated.
An example of Kenya’s cruel and inhumane treatment of destitute Somalis occurred on March 17, 2011. Kenyan authorities forced the Kenya Red Cross to stop providing services at a temporary refugee camp in Mandera, in northeast Kenya, which was housing 13,000 people, many of them Somalis who had recently fled fighting across the border.
District authorities, who had given the Red Cross permission to establish the camp, abruptly changed course, ordering the Red Cross to stop providing services and close the camp. That evening, according to several organizations working in Mandera, government officials accompanied by armed Kenyan security forces intimidated camp residents, telling them to leave the camp and return to Somalia by noon the next day.
Kenya’s border with Somalia has been officially closed since January 2007, but civilians fleeing the upsurge in fighting between the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the al-Shabaab terrorist group — an affiliate of al-Qaeda — in south-central Somalia have been arriving in Kenya in rising numbers. Since 2007 the Kenyan government has sporadically tried to return asylum seekers to Somalia against the advice of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and in violation of international refugee law.
As usual, UN workers found themselves unable to enforce the international refugee law in Kenya.
The people in the Mandera camp were not given the opportunity to claim asylum, sources told Human Rights Watch. Some Somali refugees managed to stay with relatives in the town of Mandera, they said, but the majority returned to Somalia.
Human Rights Watch has also received reports from Kenyan journalists that Somalis who have crossed the border into Kenya near Liboi have been forcibly returned to the Somali town of Dobley in recent weeks, despite ongoing fighting there.
A provincial official told Human Rights Watch that these people had not been returned, but were in police custody in Liboi. Any Somalis crossing the border at Liboi should be given the opportunity to claim asylum, Human Rights Watch said.
The provincial official also denied that the Somalis in Mandera had been forcibly returned, saying they had returned voluntarily when fighting abated across the border. He acknowledged that the government did not want a refugee camp in Mandera, but said that if “genuine refugees” arrived during future bouts of fighting, they would be encouraged to apply for asylum and settled at Kakuma refugee camp in northwestern Kenya.
However, several aid agencies and other sources in Mandera told Human Rights Watch that while some individuals may have chosen to return to Somalia, the mass return of thousands of refugees was, overall, far from voluntary. Several sources had spoken with Somalis who had expressed their intention to seek asylum in Kenya.
In June and again in December 2010, Human Rights Watch reported that Kenyan authorities were regularly deporting Somali asylum seekers.
Somalia is in the throes of one of the worst upsurges in violence in recent years. Offensives by the transitional government in alliance with militias and Ethiopian forces have targeted al-Shabaab-controlled areas beyond Mogadishu, the capital, in south-central Somalia. With the heightened military confrontation, the human rights situation remains critical, Human Rights Watch said.
The majority of Somalis fleeing violence in Somalia are housed in Dadaab refugee camps in northeastern Kenya. Dadaab was originally built to house 90,000 refugees, but it now has about 330,000. The camp facilities are under huge strain, and UNHCR, donors, and the Kenyan government have been locked in negotiations for nearly two years over the need for more land to expand the camps.
In March, the Kenyan authorities halted the construction of Ifo 2, a planned annex to the existing Dadaab camps to which 80,000 refugees were to be relocated. This is a major blow to the efforts of humanitarian agencies to assist the tens of thousands of people coming over the border seeking refuge from the dire situation in Somalia.
Kenya is bound by the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the 1984 Convention against Torture, and the 1969 OAU Refugee Convention not to carry out refoulement, the forced return of refugees and asylum seekers to persecution, torture, and situations of generalized violence that seriously disturb public order.
In addition to international law and relevant regional treaties, Kenya’s Refugee Act of 2006 also provides that any non-Kenyan in Kenya has the right not to be returned to a place where his or her “life, physical integrity, or liberty would be threatened on account of external aggression, occupation, foreign domination, or events seriously disturbing public order,” and provides that such a person shall automatically be considered a refugee (“prima facie refugee”).
Although the Kenyan government may lawfully deny refugee status for people who are threats to its national security, it cannot close its borders to all asylum seekers from a particular country. The Kenyan government is obligated under international law to offer the opportunity to seek refugee status to all asylum seekers before determining whether to return them.
Somali refugees registering in Dadaab with UNHCR are automatically granted refugee status in Kenya on a prima facie basis. But failure to register within 30 days may lead to prosecution for unlawful presence in Kenya.
Jim Kouri, CPP, formerly Fifth Vice-President, is currently a Board Member of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, an editor for ConservativeBase.com, and he’s a columnist for Examiner.com. In addition, he’s a blogger for the Cheyenne, Wyoming Fox News Radio affiliate KGAB (www.kgab.com). Kouri also serves as political advisor for Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor Michael Moriarty.He’s former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed "Crack City" by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. He’s also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. Kouri writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He’s a news writer and columnist for AmericanDaily.Com, MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he’s syndicated by AXcessNews.Com. Kouri appears regularly as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Fox News Channel, Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, etc.
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