エチオピア難民２万５０００人、受け入れに苦闘するスーダン

【ウム・ラクバ難民キャンプＡＦＰ＝時事】灼熱（しゃくねつ）の太陽で乾ききったスーダン東部の辺境の地。隣国エチオピア北部ティグレ州での激しい戦闘を逃れた2万5000人のために、難民キャンプの再建が進んでいる。（写真はスーダンの首都ハルツーム東部ガダーレフのウム・ラクバ難民キャンプに身を寄せたエチオピア人ら）
　エチオピアのアビー・アハメド首相は今月初旬、ティグレ州の与党「ティグレ人民解放戦線（ＴＰＬＦ）」が連邦政府軍の基地を攻撃したとして、軍に反撃を命じた。
　以降、エチオピア北部の同州一帯は、地上戦や空爆、ロケット弾攻撃、集中砲撃に見舞われ、紛争地と化している。疲労困憊（こんぱい）し、恐怖におののきながらも脱出した人々は、焼け付くような暑さや飢えと闘っている。
　エチオピア難民の大量流入に直面した最貧国の一つ、スーダンは、国境から８０キロに位置するウム・ラクバ難民キャンプを再開した。このキャンプは１９８３～８５年に１００万人以上が犠牲となったエチオピア大飢饉（ききん）の際、多くの難民を受け入れた。
　だが、数年前に閉鎖されたキャンプに現在も残っている建物は、屋根が無くなった古い校舎と荒れ果てた元診療所の二つだけだ。必死でたどり着いたエチオピア難民らは簡易テントを張ったり、援助機関から支給されたシートの上に横たわったりしている。
　最寄りの村まで約１０キロ。荒野の真ん中で孤立したキャンプで受けられる緊急援助は今のところ最小限で、スーダン難民委員会による支援の下、国連児童基金（ユニセフ）が飲料水を、世界食糧計画（ＷＦＰ）が糖みつとレンズ豆を配給し、赤新月社が野外診療所を運営している。

■今後も増える難民
　難民キャンプ所長のアブデル・バセット・アブデル・ガニ氏は今、最も緊急に必要としているのは仮設の住まいだとＡＦＰに語った。「計画では３区画を建設し、各８０００人を収容する。昔のキャンプの土地を使い、できれば隣接する土地にまで拡張する」
　ガニ氏は「自分がこのキャンプの設営に関わるのは２度目だ。１９８５年に初めてスーダン難民委員会に関わり、今また責任者として関わっている」「当時はエチオピアの飢餓難民を受け入れた。今は紛争から逃れてきた人々を受け入れている」と語った。
　１９８０年代初め、極度の干ばつに襲われたエチオピアは、メンギスツ・ハイレ・マリアム大統領が率いた強硬なマルクス主義政権と、メレス・ゼナウィ氏が率いたティグレ人反政府組織による戦闘の中、飢饉に陥った。１９９１年にメレス氏はメンギスツ政権を打倒。２０１２年に死去するまで、ティグレ人による政治的支配の上に基盤の狭い不安定な政権を率いた。
　今回の連邦政府軍とティグレ州政府との戦闘によって、現時点でエチオピア難民２０００人以上がスーダンのキャンプに収容されているが、スーダン政府と国連の難民機関は今後もその数が増えると予測している。
　国連は戦争犯罪に相当する可能性や、「民族や宗教に基づく民間人を標的にした攻撃」が行われていると警告しており、そうした事態を目撃した多くの人々が精神的ショックを受けているという。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2020/11/19-15:55）

In a sun-baked and dusty wasteland in remote eastern Sudan, crews are labouring to rebuild a refugee camp for the 25,000 people who have fled heavy fighting in neighbouring Ethiopia's Tigray region.
Exhausted and terrified men, women and children from the conflict zone have struggled against searing heat and hunger to escape ground fighting, air strikes, rocket fire and artillery barrages in northern Ethiopia.
Sudan -- one of the world's poorest countries, now faced with the massive influx -- has reopened its Um Raquba camp, 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the border. The camp once housed refugees who fled Ethiopia's 1983-85 famine that killed over a million people.
For now, though, desperate families are huddling in the shade of sparse trees because only two permanent buildings remain from the camp that closed years ago -- an old school house missing a roof and a dilapidated former clinic.
Others are erecting their own basic tents or lying on plastic sheets provided by aid agencies.
You see I am sitting on the ground with my three little girls, said one of the recent arrivals, 37-year-old Gabriel Hayli.
We thought the authorities would transfer us here because there are shelters -- but there is nothing, we have been told to wait.
So far, only basic emergency relief has been set up at the isolated camp, located amid abandoned fields some 10 kilometres from the nearest village.
The UN's children's fund, UNICEF, has provided drinking water and the World Food Programme is handing out sorghum and lentil rations, assisted by the Sudanese Refugee Commission. The Red Crescent is running a field clinic out of a tent.
- Bygone famine to war -
Several dozen Sudanese workers have started digging trenches in the rocky ground to lay water pipes and build the foundations of wooden shelters and administration offices.
Electricity has been installed today but it will take at least seven to 10 days of hard work to get everything in place, said Adam Mohammad, one of the workers.
Camp director Abdel Basset Abdel Ghani told AFP that the most urgent thing today is to build shelters.
Our plan is to create three sectors that can accommodate 8,000 people each. We are going to use the land of the old camp and, if we can, we will extend it to the adjacent land.
He said this is the second time I've been involved in the establishment of this camp. In 1985, I started at the Sudanese Refugee Commission and now I'm doing this job again as a leader.
At the time I received Ethiopians fleeing famine, and now I take them in because they are fleeing the war.
In the early 1980s, Ethiopia was hit by extreme drought, but that spiralled into famine as the hardline Marxist government of Mengistu Haile Mariam battled Tigrayan rebels led by Meles Zenawi, who toppled the regime in 1991.
Zenawi went on to lead the country until his death in 2012, presiding over a precarious and narrowly based stability, built on Tigrayan political dominance.
- Conflict could spread -
The latest unrest in Tigray started when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize, announced he had ordered military operations in the region in response to an alleged attack on a federal base.
On November 4, Abiy -- who in 2018 became the country's first premier of Oromo ethnicity, Ethiopia's largest group -- sent the federal army to attack Tigray.
His move followed months of growing tensions with the Tigray People's Liberation Front, which was the country's ruling party under Zenawi, but now only rules over its home region.
Tigrayan forces on Saturday fired rockets at the Eritrean capital Asmara, which they accuse of assisting the Ethiopian federal army -- an escalation that has sparked fears the conflict could destabilise the wider Horn of Africa region.
For now, more than 2,000 Ethiopian refugees are sheltering at the Sudanese camp, and both Khartoum and the UN refugee agency predict arrivals will multiply.
Many are traumatised after witnessing what the United Nations has warned are possible war crimes and targeted attacks against civilians based on their ethnicity or religion.
One of the refugees, Dahli Bourhane, 32, said he was both thankful and scared.
The Sudanese do a lot for us and I thank them, but we are too close to the border and the place is very isolated, he told AFP. It's very dangerous if the war spreads.