A grim update to: “Darfur’s Displaced Persons and the Question of Returns: A Catastrophe is Impending”
Eric Reeves | April 27, 2018
South Darfur governor El Faki is set to close Kalma camp (with a population of perhaps 150,000 displaced people) within “one or two weeks”—and all camps and humanitarian operations in Darfur by the end of the year. Utter catastrophe looms. My April 25 analysis of the past year, leading to this deadliest moment in Darfur genocide, can be found at | https://wp.me/p45rOG-2eO/.
Radio Dabanga reports today:
South Darfur Wali determined to dismantle Kalma Camp | Radio Dabanga, April 26, 2018 | NYALA
The Wali of South Darfur Adam El Faki has announced his determination to dismantle Kalma Camp for displaced people, one of the largest camps in Darfur and evacuate the displaced within two weeks as part of Al Bashir’s voluntary return plan and end the camps in the province so that there would be no displaced camp by the end of the year. The governor said in a speech to a group of returnees to a village in South Darfur, said we are going to dismantle camp Kalma within one or two weeks. He added: “people have better leave the camp which we will stage within a week since voluntary return project is the president’s plan.
[This extraordinary time-frame—the dismantling of Kalma camp within one or two weeks—is obviously a preposterous and unachievable goal: what will happen to the people of Kalma after this time? To discuss the fate of these people in the context of “voluntary returns,” given the widespread and intense insecurity, is emblematic of Khartoum’s supremely cruel and callous ambitions to end its “Darfur problem.”
He pointed out that the residents of Kass had been expelled from schools after giving them a period of one month after which they were forcibly removed within the expiration of the deadline. He confirmed that by the end of the year 2018 there will be no displaced camp, food, relief, money or organisations.
[This represents a future of unfathomable barbarism and human destruction—ER]
Governor El Faki ordered the arrest of seven of the leaders of the displaced people at camp Kalma headed by Yagoub Furi, the general coordinator of camps for displaced persons and refugees, this as well as ordering the arrest of every person, even a minister or native administration leader objecting to the voluntary return to be transferred to Swakin in the Red Sea State for objecting to the President’s project.
The governor ordered the arrest of the seven people of camp Kalma standing against voluntary repatriation including Furi, Sheikh Osman Tarlin, youth leader Idris Darbanja and others. He described the displaced peoples’ complaint to UNAMID about lack of security, compensations and attacks said that the government gave as useless.
[One of the true statements Governor El Faki has made—ER]
El Faki said we had prepared 300 seats in Swakin prison to receive the detainees from South Darfur, with a plane waiting at the airport for everyone standing against voluntary return. He instructed the commissioners and Omdas to provide lists of persons wanted for opposing voluntary return to be detained.
Regarding the complaints of the returnees to their areas about loss of security, attacks and occupation of their lands by new settlers, the governor refused to receive any complaints or delegations from the returnees, except in the case of the killing of at least 10 people. El Faki said return has a price, as the government cannot protect any person driving cart to collect firewood.
[It would be impossible to render the callousness represented by Faki’s threshold for a notable violent event: “at least ten people” killed. He ignores rapes, kidnappings, village burnings, the killing of as many as nine people, and much else—these, he would have us believe, are the equivalent of an assault on a “person driving a cart to collect firewood”—this is the face of governance in Darfur—ER]