<
http://www.afriquejet.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3437
:society-malawi-arrests-42-ethiopian-refugees-trying-to-flee-to-south-africa
&catid=2:news&Itemid=111> Society: Malawi arrests 42 Ethiopian refugees
trying to flee to South Africa
17/12/2012
Blantyre, Malawi - Police in the Malawi capital, Lilongwe, Sunday arrested
42 Ethiopians as they tried to flee to South Africa. Immigration Department
spokesman Elack Banda said the refugees had fled the UNHCR-Malawi
government-run Dzaleka Refugee Camp in the central district of Dowa.
'We got a tip from the public that a truck was carrying a lot of strange
people,' he said.
Banda said the truck was traced to the city's populous Kawale suburb and
upon inspection the truck was found to contain sacks of unprocessed Malawi
tobacco destined for South Africa with the Ethiopians hiding in between the
sacks.
'When we interrogated them, they claimed they were told there was some work
for them in South Africa,' he said.
Banda said the Malawian driver of the truck has also been arrested and that
the refugees will temporarily be kept at the Maula Prison 'for
safe-keeping'.
He said the Ethiopians are likely to be sent back to the Dzaleka refugee
camp.
'We have to process them; we can't deport them to Ethiopia because for them
to be found at the camp they must have been cleared,' he said.
The Dzaleka Refugee Camp, a former prison farm under the three-decade,
one-party dictatorship of founding president Hastings Kamuzu Banda that
ended in 1994, currently holds about 15,000 refugees and asylum seekers
mainly from the Great Lakes region and the Horn of Africa.
President Joyce Banda recently spoke about closing the camp since wars in
most countries ended over a decade ago.
Malawi is used by mainly Ethiopian economic refugees as a transit point on
their way to seek greener pastures in South Africa.
They take advantage of porous borders and corrupt police officers in Kenya,
Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique to use uncharted routes to reach their
destination.
But sometimes, apart from being arrested, their adventure ends in tragedy.
In July, nearly 50 Ethiopians drowned on Lake Malawi when a boat they were
travelling in capsized.
A further 42 Malawi-bound Ethiopians suffocated to death in a truck in
Tanzania.
Received on Mon Dec 17 2012 - 10:38:01 EST
