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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) agency has said that thousands of Angolans that were recently expelled from the Democratic Republic of Congo are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. The agency said that the Angolans are living in sites around the town of Mbanza Congo in northern Angola.

A UNHCR assessment team visited Mbanza Congo in northern Angola over the weekend. It reported that close to 30,000 people are living in and around three overcrowded reception centres near the Congolese border.

The UNHCR said that a “significant number” of Angolan refugees that had been “forcibly returned” to their country were among those in the reception centres.

“You have the compounding factors of not having latrines and people drinking possibly contaminated water and with the rain coming, this is a recipe for disaster,” said a UNHCR protection officer, Yolande Ditewig. She told the Agence France-Presse news agency that “there is a lack of everything you can imagine, especially food and many people say they’ve not eaten for days.”

UN refugee agency spokesman Andrej Mahecic said that initial assessments found that people at those centres are in critical need of shelter, food, medicine and sanitation facilities.

The supply of clean water is insufficient, according to Mahecic, and some of the Angolans were drinking from nearby contaminated rivers. As a consequence, many of the expelled families are reporting cases of diarrhea and vomiting.

“There are significant numbers of Angolan refugees among the forcibly returned. And, this is for us the most worrying aspect of this situation. Some of them say they had been rounded up and taken to the border despite the fact they carried documents certifying their refugee status. Others said they were forced back without having had a chance to take their identification documents or any of their belongings. Most of them were deported from the Bas Congo Province in southern DRC,” Mahecic said.

He added that these forced returns are in response to the expulsion of large numbers of Congolese from Angola since December 2008. He says an official agreement between the DRC and Angola may finally end these tit-for-tat expulsions.

This, however, does not mean that the exodus will end in the near term. According to Mahetic, Angolan authorities expect further large scale returns of their nationals who no longer feel welcome in the DRC. At the request of the Angolan government, he said the UNHCR will provide assistance to those who have been expelled and are waiting to go home.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Five activists have installed themselves on the rooftop of Vestas Wind System‘s Venture Quays factory in Cowes, Isle of Wight, England, in support of the Vestas employees.

The five — four of whom are members of the Climate Camp which has set up in the Isle of Wight — scaled the Cowes plant, which is located about five miles (8 kilometres) north of Vestas’s main Isle of Wight plant in Newport, on August 4 and have been camping on the rooftop ever since.

Martin Shaw, a self-described “environmental anarcho-syndicalist” on the roof of Vestas Venture Quays, spoke with Wikinews. He reports that while none of the five rooftop occupiers are Vestas employees, but instead consist of one RMT member and four Climate Camp members, factory employees “instigated this action” and had intended to occupy the roof themselves, but Shaw and the other four, as experienced climbers, had the technical ability and experience to accomplish the task.

While on the roof, the five are living in tents and washing in rainwater heated by the sun in black plastic bags. Food is sent up on ropes from members of the local community; unlike at Vestas Newport, the police and security are not restricting the bringing in of food and drink.

While Shaw notes that the stand of the anarcho-syndicalists on the best fate of Vestas does not exactly match that of the workers, who have called for nationalisation of the plant, “whatever their demands are are our demands”.

The central message of the rooftop protest, Shaw related, is opposition to NIMBYism. “I personally have got some sympathy with Vestas”, Shaw noted, accusing the Isle of Wight’s MP, Andrew Turner, of on the one hand saying he supported the Vestas workers but on the other hand campaigning against wind farms being built on the island. “Local opposition is stopping wind turbines being built in this country”, stated Shaw. The occupiers plan to unveil a banner tonight on the roof of the Vestas plant reading: “Save the environment, scuttle a NIMBY”.

The problem, he went on to say, is Europe-wide. The upcoming Copenhagen Climate Summit, Shaw accuses, will be a “business summit rather than an environmental summit”.

The Vestas Cowes occupiers plan to stay on the factory roof “until the workers want us to come down”. If the police come to remove them, as happened earlier today at Vestas’s Newport plant, the five occupiers say they will resist “determinedly and creatively” but offered no details. Shaw says that while they won’t use violence to resist the police, “we will defend ourselves”.