Unlike Ethiopian Refugees...

Unlike Ethiopian refuges
Elephants, Giraffes
And other animals
Are protected
From random killers
By Kenyan laws
Funded by Europeans

Unlike Ethiopian refuges
These animals are free
To room all over
Cross boarders
Any where
Among African countries

How is it
Kenyans chose
To gun dawn
Ethiopian children on daylight
Who have no where to go
But be temporary guests
Don’t the refuges
Merit equal right
To those animals
In the eye of Kenyans

** Lemlem Tsegaw, November 7, 2007, Dedicated to all “Ethiopian … killed and wounded in Kenya” per EthioMedia, November 5, 2007

Click here to read the poem in Amharic

The Detention of Atanaw Wasie...

On 27 September, the Sudanese authorities forcibly returned 15 recognized refugees to Ethiopia, handing them over at the Ethiopia-Sudan border. Their whereabouts are now unknown and Amnesty International believes they are at risk of enforced disappearance, arbitrary and incommunicado detention, torture and unfair trials.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced on 11 October that the 15 had been part of a group of more than 30 Ethiopian refugees arrested in early July 2007 by Sudanese intelligence officers in Khartoum and Blue Nile state.

Among the 15 was Atanaw Wasie, who has chronic asthma for which he needs medical treatment. He was a leader of the Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU) political party, which opposed the Dergue government thatwas overthrown in 1991, but is no longer active. He was arrested on 7July 2007 in the eastern town of Gedaref and held incommunicado.

Others who were returned and detained are reported to be alleged members of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which is fighting the Ethiopian security forces in the Oromia Region. Several thousand members of the Oromo ethnic group have been arbitrarily detained and tortured in Ethiopia in recent years. Read more here...

Also see:
SUDAN: Forcible return/Fear of torture/Arbitrary detention of several hundred Ethiopian and Eritrean nationals

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