Leaders want refugee camps closed down

Leaders from north eastern counties, from left, governors Ahmed Abdullahi Mohamad (Wajir), and Nadhif Jama (Garissa), Garissa Township MP Aden Duale and Mandera Governor Ali Roba address journalists at the Boma Hotel in Nairobi on April 6, 2015. PHOTO | PAUL WAWERU |  NATION MEDIA GROUP

In Summary

• Terrorists train and plan attacks at the centres, they say.
• Officials to give Sh15 million to victims of terrorist attack.

By AGGREY MUTAMBO
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Leaders from north eastern Kenya have called for the closure of refugee camps in the region and moving of their occupants to Somalia.

The leaders from three counties on Monday said the Dadaab camp should be shut down because it is where Al-Shabaab terrorists plan attacks.

Garissa Township MP Aden Duale and more than 20 leaders from the region, who made a 12-point pledge to help fight terrorism, also promised to donate Sh15 million to survivors of the Garissa University College terrorist attack and families of those killed.

The attack left 148 people dead, including 142 students. Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for it. It is the worst since the August 1998 US embassy bombing in Nairobi, in which 213 people were killed.

'DO NOT REPRESENT US'

The group comprising politicians and senior civil servants, who addressed journalists at the Boma Hotel in Nairobi, condemned the terrorists, saying they were soiling the name of Islam.

“They are not Muslims and they do not represent us,” they said in a statement read by Mr Duale. “We will do everything in our power to expose and eliminate them from our midst.”

The leaders, who included Governors Nadhif Jama (Garissa), Ahmed Abdullahi (Wajir) and Ali Roba (Mandera) argued that the region had borne the brunt of attacks because Kenya has hosted refugees from Somalia for too long.

“The camps have been — and the intelligence provides so — centres where the training, coordination, the assembly of terror networks is.

“They (refugees) have been with us for the last 20 years. I think time has come when the national security of our people becomes (more) paramount than the international obligations that we have,” said Mr Duale.

He argued that the refugees could still be taken care of by the UNHCR while in their country.

The demand could stir human rights defenders, who have continuously argued for a voluntary repatriation. Kenya, Somalia and the UN refugee agency signed an agreement in 2013 to allow for voluntary return of refugees.

The agreement expires in 2016, although only 2,000 of the more than 350,000 refugees at Dadaab have returned to Somalia.