A PLANNED mission by the Namibian Government, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Botswana government to the Dukwe refugee camp has been cancelled.
The mission was supposed to visit the camp on Monday and Tuesday as part of a campaign to get more Namibians from the Caprivi Region, who fled to Botswana during and after the 1998 uprising, to agree to return home.
Namibia’s High Commissioner to Botswana, Hadino Hishongwa, said this week that the governments of Namibia and Botswana were not in a position to explain why the trip was cancelled.
‘We are not responsible for it. This is a project run by the UNHCR. I know the decision has been taken by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They are the ones who support them and know their movement. Ask them in a polite manner and they will tell you,’ Hishongwa said.
There are currently 931 Namibian refugees at Dukwe. They all rejected the Namibian Government’s appeal to return to their homeland.
Around 2 000 others returned voluntarily.
The National Society for Human Rights claimed recently that it had information about a planned forced repatriation of the refugees.
However, Namibia’s Commissioner for Refugees in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Nkrumah Mushelenga, dismissed the NSHR claims.
‘That’s untrue and it’s coming from a desperate person (Phil ya Nangoloh). These are the same people who are enjoying the suffering of refugees. They don’t want them to come home and enjoy the fruits of Independence with us,’ Mushelenga said.
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