Sudan 'removes refugees from camp'
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- "Sudanese forces" have removed several thousand people from a refugee camp in the Darfur region, despite assurances they would not, U.N. officials said Tuesday.
"As far as I'm concerned it has to stop ... and people will also have to be brought back, said Jan Pronk, the U.N. envoy to Sudan, who said the situation there is deteriorating. "Stop it and reverse what has happened."
Pronk said "a couple of thousand" refugees had been moved from El-Geer on the outskirts of Nyala in South Darfur to Sherif, just north of Nyala.
He said the government had misrepresented the facts in the case.
"The government has told these IDPS (internally displaced persons) that this was happening in close consultation with the United Nations and in consultation with nongovernmental organizations, which is not the case," he said.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said preliminary reports indicated that between 3 a.m. and 9 a.m. (midnight to 6 a.m. GMT), 15 trucks were used to relocate "a proportion of the population" north of the Nyala camp.
The rest of the population was dispersed into surrounding town of Nyala.
Eckhard said the United Nations had been in contact with the Sudanese government, which "has been reminded of its obligation to ensure only the voluntary movements of displaced persons."
In Geneva, Switzerland, Christiane Berthiaume, spokeswoman for the World Food Program (WFP), a U.N. food agency, said the Sudanese army and police also surrounded the Otash refugee camp, denying access to groups providing humanitarian aid.
Army officials explained the move by saying they were relocating the refugees to a larger camp, Berthiaume said.
But WFP is concerned the refugees will be sent back to their villages, where there is less protection from government-backed Arab militias known as the Janjaweed.
"It's not the first time they have been threatening to relocate people," she said.
"These people are really scared. They're afraid they'll be attacked."
Pronk said the overall situation for the population in Darfur had become worse and he blamed the rebels for "increasingly" blocking humanitarian assistance to the population.
He also cited the closing of roads and the laying of land mines by rebels.
Pronk said he would report to the U.N. Security Council Thursday with further detail on the situation.
It was not always clear if local actions were directed by the central Sudanese government, Pronk said, and he did not rule out the possibility that the government had not directed the forced displacement.
One U.N. official said the goal was to empty the camp in Nyala and not simply move refugees.
"They weren't all moved -- a lot of them were just dispersed, because they were afraid," the official said. "The real purpose was to empty that place and not move them all."
Pronk called on the government to stop forced displacement in other parts of Darfur as well.
"I'm very concerned that situations like these might explode," he said.
Refugees in the camps fear the action could be retaliation for the kidnapping of 18 Sudanese of Arab origin last week on a bus between Zaleinge and Nertetie.
Those people remained hostages, Berthiaume said.
She said that because of insecurity in the region, the WFP could not reach by road some 160,000 displaced persons and local residents relying on food aid in the Zaleinge, Nertetie and Golu areas.
The agency Monday evacuated more than 85 employees from the areas, as well as staffers from other organizations. Three WFP staffers remain.
Conflict in the strife-torn Darfur region began last year, when black Sudanese rebels attacked government property, accusing the government of neglecting the area in favor of the Sudanese Arab population.
The government then put forward the Janjaweed to put down the rebellion.
Earlier this year, warring factions agreed to a cease-fire but violence between them has continued.
Fighting has displaced some 1.8 million people, and an estimated 70,000 people have died from disease and malnutrition since April.
Tens of thousands more have died in violence that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has called genocide.
