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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Thu May 05 2011 - 21:51:29 EDT
http://www.economist.com/node/18652159?story_id=18652159&fsrc=rss
Libya's black refugees
Caught in the middle
The plight of black Africans trying to flee from Libya is dire—and worsening
May 5th 2011 | *SALLOUM* | from the print edition
COLD by night and blisteringly hot under the midday sun, the border crossing
between Libya and Egypt at Salloum has become a bleak stopping point for
Western journalists seeking a way to eastern Libya’s rebel stronghold of
Benghazi, six hours’ drive to the west. But for refugees going the other
way, Salloum is another even gloomier barrier on a long and often deadly
flight from war.
These migrants, almost all of them black Africans who found refuge from such
places as Chad, Eritrea and Sudan’s ravaged Darfur region in Colonel Muammar
Qaddafi’s Libya, say they are targets of rebels in the east, where they have
all too often been mistaken for mercenaries in the pay of the colonel.
Their journey to Libya’s border is perilous. Many say they have witnessed
massacres of other black Africans. Even the wounded are not welcome. Ahmed
Muhammad Zakaria, a 20-year-old Chadian living in Benghazi, was shot in the
leg by rebels, but says people in the local hospital, rather than treat him,
told him to go to Egypt. A ten-year-old boy infected with HIV from a blood
transfusion in Libya was told that he and his family were no longer welcome
in the rebel-held east. “Burn them all,” said one Benghazi native of the
blacks fleeing Libya.
When the refugees reach Salloum, their plight is grim. Many of the 400 or so
Darfuris there now have been living in makeshift tents. Egyptian police
recently removed them from the view of media convoys passing through. They
have been sleeping, dozens to a room, in a building on the edge of the
compound. Water is scarce.
The International Organization of Migration, which helps tend victims of
gunshot and other wounds, says tuberculosis is spreading. A nearby mosque is
bringing some relief. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) provides
food. But conditions may worsen. The misery in Misrata is pushing thousands
more refugees in the direction of Benghazi. From there to Salloum, each of
the 15 checkpoints manned by rebels with AK47s presents a real danger.
The UNHCR says it is flying many Eritreans and Chadians home. But the plight
of the Darfuris is worse. A delegation from Sudan’s embassy in Egypt is in
Salloum, seeking to repatriate them: an “awkward situation”, admits the
UNHCR. The embassy has already driven more than 11,600 of them to Wadi
Halfa, in northern Sudan, “free of charge”, says a representative.
But Dr Kamal Ali Ahmed, an elder among the Darfuris at Salloum, says that
the Sudanese delegation includes a warlord responsible for several massacres
in Darfur. “They want to take us back,” he says. “We will fight. Let them
kill some of us. We are willing to die. We are victims of African-Arab
conflict,” says Dr Ahmed. “We just want to leave the Arab world peacefully.”
from the print edition | Middle East & Africa
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