KENYA-POPULATION: Refugees Flee to Zanzibar

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Sep 15 1997 (IPS) - Unrest that has plagued Kenya’s Coastal Province for a month now has forced some 100 Kenyans to flee to the Tanzanian archipelago of Zanzibar, reports here say.

The refugees arrived in Pemba — one of the islands that make up the archipelago — in canoes and boats. They are to be relocated to Tanga, a town on the Tanzanian border with Kenya, which has enough facilities to accomodate the destitute, according to a Zanzibari government official.

Salim Nasur, who is the top administrator in Pemba North region, was quoted by the latest edition of Tanzania’s ‘The Express’ weekly as saying that the authorities in Zanzibar planned to carry out a door-to-door census of the refugees soon.

It appears that the refugees chose Pemba as their place of refuge on account of the special bonds that exist between the coastal region of Kenya and Zanzibar, which merged with mainland Tanganyika in 1964 to form the Republic of Tanzania. The two territories are linked by a common language, Kiswahili, and a common religion, Islam.

Historically, parts of the troubled coastal region of Kenya — a major tourist destination — fell under the Sultanates of Oman and Zanzibar.

The region, which became part of Kenya at independence from Britain in 1963, is the original home of Kiswahili — now spoken in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Comoro Islands, Zambia, Mozambique, Somalia and Sudan

The unrest that has driven the refugees from Mombasa, some 500 kilometres southeast of here, has so far killed 65 people, local media reported here on Monday.

The violence erupted on Aug. 13 when a gang of marauders –said to be demanding a federal system of government that would give them a greater say in running their region — attacked the main police station at Likoni, a suburb of Mombasa, and the nearby Likoni ferry Tourist Police Unit, stealing 30 automatic guns and 5,000 rounds of ammunition.

Unconfirmed reports say up to 100,000 persons have been displaced by the violence which, according to unconfirmed sources, is aimed at non-indigenous coastal residents.

The news of the arrival of the refugees in Tanzania came less than a week after the London-based human rights organisation “Amnesty International” warned here that unless the Kenyan government handled the situation with tact, the violence could cause people to flee to neighbouring countries.

“What happens in Kenya affects all of us in this region. We have an influx of refugees from Rwanda and Burundi in Tanzania. We don’t want more from Kenya,” said Evarist Mbuya, chairperson of Amnesty International’s Tanzania section, during a press conference here on Aug. 10.

A group of Kenyan Muslim leaders have also criticised the government’s handling of the crisis.

“There is no doubt that since the insecurity in the coast has entered its second month, the government has failed to stop the escalating massacres of citizens and destruction of property, restore security and peace and bring life back to normal,” they said in a two-page statement made available to IPS on Monday.

The statement was signed by five leaders, including the head of the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims, Salahud Deen. It said that an “over twenty-kilometre stretch which was initially inhabited lies desolate – abandoned by fleeing terrified residents in the wake of senseless killings and destruction of property whose end is nowhere in sight.”

They urged the government to declare the troubled region a disaster area, adding: “We call upon international and national agencies and humanitarian organisations to rapidly move in and come to the aid of the helpless and hapless victims.”

Not only Kenyan refugees but also “a number of tourists” have fled Mombasa for Pemba. Hoteliers there have been quoted as saying that bed occupancy in the Indian Ocean island has gone up from 50 to 70 percent since the unrest broke out.

Nervous hoteliers and travel agencies in Mombasa say hotel bookings in the Coastal Province have fallen by 50 percent. Najib Balala, chairman of the Mombasa and Coast Tourist Association, was quoted by the independent Sunday Nation newspaper as saying there were mass cancellation of bookings by tourists, and that there were no new bookings for the new season due to the unrest.

The disturbances in Mombasa followed two bloody demonstrations, on Jul. 7 and on Aug. 8, organised by opposition political parties demanding constitutional reforms.

The unrest, which later spread to most parts of the coast, came at a time when Kenya’s tourism industry was recovering from years of depression.

The industry, Kenya’s second foreign currency earner after agriculture, last year registered a 2.4-percent increase in earnings over 1995, when earnings and arrivals declined by 20 percent, the sharpest fall in the industry in almost a decade, according to the 1996 Kenya Economic Survey report.