http://ascenteq.com/project/epdp

EPDP Information Office

In an urgent Christmas-day message to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the Eritrean People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) regretted the continued failure of UNHCR to protect refugees and condemned the mayhem carried out by the Sudanese security forces at the Shagarab camp on 24 and 25 December 2014

The memorandum stated that following the drowning of about 28 out of 30 Eritrean refugees in the Setit-Atbara River on Christmas Eve of 2014, misunderstandings flared up between the locals and the refugees.

By taking this excuse to intervene, the Sudanese security forces have invaded the Shagarab camp and committed untold atrocities. They mindlessly beat camp residents, burned their improvised shacks, and looted property. The security forces also loaded to army vehicles nearly 1,000 young people under duress and reportedly took them to the Ghirba region. They are currently threatening to send them to Eritrea

UNHCR’s Antonio Guterres while on visit to Shagarab camp on 12 January 2012

The EPDP message also informed UN High Commissioner Antonio Guterres that well over 50 camp residents, many of them with seriously broken hands and legs, are reportedly in hospital. Many refugees who fled from the camp are also scattered around the region and are under the fear of being taken hostage by the Rashaida human traffickers in east Sudan.

The memo further expressed anger and frustration with Sudan’s and UNHCR’s  continued failure to protect the residents of the reception camp at Shararab which has been under the constant threat of human traffickers and their accomplices in the Sudanese security forces.

The EPDP memo recalled the High Commissioner’s visit to the camp in January 2012 and his promise to boost protection to the residents from all abusers in the region. Unfortunately, what followed in January 2013 was the tragic incident of January 2013 in which 8 camp residents were taken hostage from inside the camp only a year after that visit, the memo added.

This memorandum underlined the inescapable responsibility of the Sudand and the  UNHCR for what is going on at Shagarab now, and that they should have done all what it needed to protect the affected Eritrean refugees.

The EPDP memo, which was copied to the government of the Sudan, concerned EU offices,  and the UN Permanent Missions to regional Europe office in Geneva,  also called on the international community to make pressure bear on the Sudan not to forcibly hand  over the Eritrean refugees to the criminal regime in Eritrea.