http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/sister-of-city-woman-out-of-huge-refugee-camp-265162781.html
Sister of city woman out of huge refugee campSeized without son in Kenya
By: Carol Sanders
Posted: 06/30/2014 1:00 AM |
A mom who left her toddler with a neighbour while she ran an errand and was
shipped off to the world's largest refugee camp has escaped.
"I'm so happy but still I'm worried," said Tinbit Eyassu in Winnipeg, whose
sister, Gelila, was scooped up by Kenyan security forces in Nairobi in
early May and shipped off to a refugee camp in Dadaab near the Somali
border.
Her sister is back now with her little boy, but both are sick and virtually
prisoners in their Nairobi home.
Gelila Eyassu, who has family in Canada including a husband in Calgary
trying to sponsor her, had done nothing wrong and was living legally in
Nairobi. She was on her way to pay a bill when she was arrested and
interred at Dadaab under the Kenyan government's anti-terrorist crackdown
called Usalama Watch.
Usalama -- the word is Swahili for safety -- is targeting terrorists, but
security forces are scooping up refugees and many Africans in Nairobi who
don't look Kenyan, even if they have legal documents allowing them to be
there.
Kenya, a former British colony, has experienced a series of terrorist
attacks since 2011. Last year, the Somalia-based militant group Al-Shabaab
was responsible for the bloodbath at Westgate Mall in upscale Nairobi,
Kenya's capital. Al-Shabaab struck again last month, claiming
responsibility for killing at least 49 people in raids on hotels and a
police station.
Eritrean-born Eyassu is one of hundreds who've been sent to refugee camps
or, if they were Somali, back to Somalia.
When Kenyan security forces picked up Eyassu, she was not given a chance to
get her son or make arrangements for the little boy. She ended up a day's
drive away in the massive refugee camp in northeast Kenya 100 kilometres
from the Somali border. She was with a group of Congolese parishioners who
were taken from Sunday services in Nairobi -- including nursing mothers
whose babies were at home with older siblings. They were warned not to
openly hold Christian worship services in Dadaab because of the threat
posed by Al-Shabaab and extremist Muslim groups.
When a Free Press reporter spoke to Eyassu last month at the refugee
transit centre in Dadaab, Eyassu was desperate to be reunited with her
three-year-old boy, Amen, who she said was sick.
Her sister in Winnipeg said Eyassu escaped from Dadaab June 16. She
reportedly had a harrowing journey hiding in a truck back to Nairobi but
has not been able to talk about it.
"She's fine but sick," said Tinbit Eyassu. Her sister has breathing
problems after spending more than a month in the hot, windy desert refugee
camp. "She's happy but her son, too, is sick." The little boy has
tonsillitis, said his aunt in Winnipeg.
Her husband in Calgary has a lawyer who applied to the Minister of
Citizenship and Immigration to let Eyassu and Amen come to Canada on
humanitarian and compassionate grounds. Those applications can take more
than two years to complete. For now, Eyassu is ill and like a prisoner in
her own home in Nairobi, her sister said.
"She's scared to go to the hospital." Her sister is afraid of leaving the
house and getting shipped back to Dadaab again, she said.
"They took her picture and fingerprinted her" in Dadaab, her sister said.
"She's really scared."
carol.sanders_at_freepress.mb.ca
Received on Tue Jul 01 2014 - 10:02:38 EDT