A day after TV images showed the South African police brutalising African refugees outside one of its offices, the United Nations on Thursday pledged to look into the demands of the protesting asylum seekers who want assistance to leave the country.
During the confrontation in Cape Town, the police used pepper spray, stun guns and water cannons to disperse the foreign protestors who are in their third week of a sit-in at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees building in downtown of the city.
Some 300 people from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Somalia, Burundi and Nigeria were removed, and several others arrested, following a court order obtained by the UNHCR office’s landlord, according to the police.
In a somewhat belated message, UN resident coordinator in South Africa, Nardos Bekele-Thomas, waited for the violence to take place to on the refugees’ demand for travel documents to leave the country to seek safety elsewhere away from the locals who are threatening to kill them if they return to their neighbourhoods.
Bekele-Thomas said the UN was now going to assist the desperate refugees.
“It’s universally accepted that children should not be separated from their parents, especially forcefully. We are emphasising the fact that they should not be separated in a forceful manner,” she said.
She said the UN had informed the refugees that if they wanted to be repatriated to their respective countries, the world body “will take all steps to make sure that they go back to their countries and get integrated.”
She however revealed that the protestors have previously rejected assistance to return to their homes of origin, preferring to be taken to a third country where they would not be allegedly persecuted.
“What they want is to go to another country. In this regard, you have to have a willing country to take them. And this takes time.”
NM/jn/APA