Patrick Botha, a spokesman for Malawi’s home affairs ministry, said on Friday that authorities had relocated 920 refugees from various communities to a camp in a district bordering Lilongwe.
The operation began on May 17 in response to a government order requiring all refugees to return to the Dzaleka refugee camp by April 15.
According to the government, people are sneaking out of the overcrowded camp. The operation started in Lilongwe and has since spread to other towns.
Botha did not provide a timetable for the operation, which has been condemned by human rights groups.
“We can’t give a timeframe because this is a national security matter,” Botha said in an interview.
“We will continue until we are satisfied that all foreigners who have refugee status are returned to Dzaleka,” he said, referring to the Dowa district refugee camp, about 60 kilometers from Lilongwe.
Both the United Nations and local human rights organizations have condemned the drill.
Valentin Tapsoba, director of UNHCR’s Regional Bureau for Southern Africa, said in a statement released on Wednesday, “We strongly reiterate our call to the authorities to rescind their relocation decision.” The existing structures in Dzaleka refugee camp are already overcrowded and cannot accommodate any additional refugees in a dignified manner.
More than 50,600 refugees, mostly from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda, are currently housed in the camp, which was designed to house a maximum of 12,000.
Botha admitted that the camp was overcrowded, but he denied that Malawi was violating the refugees’ rights.
“We are conducting this exercise with dignity,” he said, adding that the exercise included checking the participants’ refugee and resident permit statuses.
Being a refugee is a temporary condition, not a way of life. “There is no longer active conflict in the countries of the vast majority of those we are rounding up,” he explained.
