Displaced of Murnei camp in West Darfur arrested

The residents of the Murnei camp for the displaced in Kereinik locality, West Darfur, have witnessed arrests and harassments by security forces and militiamen within the past two days (Thursday and Friday), after they rejected the authorities’ re-planning of the camp. The head of the sheikhs in Murnei camp told Radio Dabanga that the 127,000 internally displaced people living in the camp were subjected to raids and searches by forces in uniform such as the police, army, and the Central Reserve Forces known as Abu Tira, in Land Cruisers mounted with Dushka machine guns. Camp residents Teirab Mohamed Arbab (40) and Ismail Arbab, known as Douka (35), were arrested inside their homes, handcuffed, and taken to the Sudanese army site. The Department of Urban Planning’s project of restructuring Murnei camp, which all sheikhs denounce, is meant to “break up the camp”, the sheik’s leader said. The camp elders convened an emergency meeting about the developments of this project on Thursday, and warned the Department and its “adherents inside the camp who threaten the camp residents to agree with their plans”. Finally, the camp sheikh demanded from the United Nations and humanitarian organisations working in the area to discuss the situation with those who commit these violations and to support the displaced and the refugees, and provide them with security, food, drinking water, medicines, and education. Sirba camps In the beginning of this month in West Darfur, the Sudanese government’s Humanitarian Affairs Commission (HAC) of the Sirba locality told the sheikhs of the Sirba camps that the locality does not recognise the camps any longer. “The camps have become quasi-towns, while the residents are all farmers,” the commission told the sheikhs. File photo Related: ‘Sirba camps for the displaced are now quasi-towns’: West Darfur HAC officials (8 January 2014)