Ethiopians flee to Kenya
2004-04-29 09:29
Nairobi - About 615 Ethiopian youths from the Oromo ethnic group have arrived in Kenya since last week to escape an alleged government campaign of intimidation, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Wednesday.
"Around 615 youths, most of them aged between 15 and 25, started arriving in the Kenyan border town of Moyale on April 19 and were camped at a police station, where they were receiving help from Kenyan officials," UNHCR spokesman Emmanuel Nyabera said, revising the earlier figure of 516.
"On April 19, the first arrivals there were 28; now as we are speaking, there are about 615," Nyabera said.
"A team of UNHCR officials left Nairobi for the border town of Moyale this morning to assess the situation. The priority now is to try to find a way for the students to go back home safely and with dignity," Nyabera said, adding: "Currently there are talks between UNHCR, and governments of Ethiopia and Kenya."
A Kenyan government official, who asked not to be named, said the number of refugees would increase sharply if the situation is not addressed rapidly. Very fragile
"The situation is very fragile," the official added.
In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's Information Minister Bereket Simon accused the rebel Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) of luring the youngsters into Kenya with promises of money and scholarships.
"False promises of good fortune, scholarships and money circulated by OLF agents among the youngsters is the main reason for abandoning their families and studies," Bereket told AFP.
"Any time they wish to continue with their studies they are free to do so. The government has no grudge against any peaceful youngster or anyone else," he added.
The fleeing students, most of them from a secondary school in a town called Moiyale on the Ethiopian side of the border, told UNHCR officials last week that a number of their peers had been arrested.
In recent years, the Horn of Africa nation has experienced unrest at some of its academic institutions, including universities, often involving members of the Oromo tribe.
The Ethiopian government is fighting the OLF, a separatist rebel group active in the south of the country.
The OLF was part of Ethiopia's transition government from 1991 to 1995, after the fall of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam's Marxist regime.
After numerous disputes, it left the coalition and demanded the creation of an independent state to be called Oromia, located near Ethiopia's southern border with Kenya and Somalia.