MAHAMA: More than a dozen schoolgirls broke down in tears as one told Malala Yousafzai about the rapes they experienced and witnessed while fleeing to Rwanda in 2015 to escape fighting in Burundi.
The 19-year-old Pakistani education activist was visibly moved by the sobbing Burundian refugees.
“It’s extremely shocking,” the world’s youngest Nobel laureate, who survived a near-fatal attack by the Taliban, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in Rwanda’s Mahama refugee camp. “It’s very tragic their stories, very moving and emotional.”
Burundi has been mired in a year-long crisis that has killed more than 450 people and forced 270,000 to flee since President Pierre Nkurunziza pursued and won a third term. Opponents said his move violated the constitution and a deal that ended a civil war in 2005.
Ange-Mireille Ndikumwenayo was on a bus heading to Rwanda in May 2015 when she saw two girls being gang raped by the roadside.
“They tried to run and asked for help but no one could help them because they had guns,” said the 20-year-old, referring to the Imbonerakure, the ruling party’s youth wing which rights groups say has attacked and tortured government opponents, charges it denies.
“It broke my heart.”
Malala’s father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, compared the girls to his daughter, recalling how she had cried when she heard on the radio in 2009 that the Taliban in Pakistan had issued an edict banning girls from attending school.
“She cried as you cry,” he said during a visit to the camp on Thursday. “But you know, first you cry, then you scream and then you shout and raise your voice for your rights... When there is night, there is a dawn.”
The majority of the 50,000 Burundian refugees living in Mahama camp in southeastern Rwanda are children.
There are about 12 new arrivals each day, said the United Nations refugee agency’s (UNHCR) Paul Kenya, head of Kirehe field office, often children traveling alone.
“Some are being asked now to join the political party and the militia and they are refusing and then they are forced to flee,” he said.
People whose families are known to have fled to Rwanda often fall under suspicion and have to leave as well, he said.
Almost 65 percent of Mahama’s refugees come from Burundi’s border province of Kirundo as roadblocks make it difficult for people living further south to leave the country, he said. “They were being beaten to explain why they were fleeing,” he said. “They were accused of being spies.”
Relations between Rwanda and Burundi are tense following a report to the UN Security Council that accused Rwanda of training and financing Burundian rebels, charges Rwanda denies.
The Burundi crisis has sparked concerns it could spiral into an ethnic conflict in a region where memories of neighboring Rwanda’s 1994 genocide are fresh.
The report said the rebels, including six children, said they had been recruited in Mahama camp, an issue that Yousafzai raised on Wednesday with Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
“It is their age to get education... not (to be) sent back as fighters to their country,” she said.
UNHCR’s Rwanda representative, Azam Saber, said his staff had received reports of forced recruitment among refugees, although they had not witnessed it themselves.
“In order to be a safer site, we need to keep children and adolescents busy either in school or outside school,” he said, adding that he has asked the International Olympic Committee to provide the children with football and basketball pitches.
Ange-Mireille Ndikumwenayo, who witnessed the roadside gang rape, told Yousafzai how girls who gave birth after being raped felt they could not step back inside a classroom.
“It’s shameful to speak up and say that you have been raped,” she said, dressed in a blue shirt and black skirt like her classmates seated on a wooden bench behind her.
“When you are not married and you give birth, you think life is over.”
Ndikumwenayo became a mother three years ago but returned to school with the dream of becoming a journalist to draw attention to violence against women and girls.
She is now in her final year at Paysannat School, on a hill just outside the camp.
Eight out of ten of the school’s 12,000 students are refugees, who study together with local Rwandan children.
“To learn with these Rwandan children can alleviate the stress of life that they can have,” said Rwanda’s minister for refugee affairs, Seraphine Mukantabana, herself a former refugee.
“They think that life can continue even if they are in exile.”
The world’s first university in a refugee camp opened in Kiziba camp in western Rwanda in 2015, home to 17,000 Congolese refugees, some of whom have been in exile for 20 years.
The students study online and with visiting professors from the Rwandan capital, Kigali.
“We will be establishing the second ever university in a refugee camp in Mahama very soon,” the UNHCR’s Saber told Yousafzai.
Malala shocked as crying Burundian girls recall rape fleeing war
Malala shocked as crying Burundian girls recall rape fleeing war
Proposals on immigration enforcement flood into state legislatures, heightened by Minnesota action
- Oregon Democrats plan to introduce a bill to allow residents to sue federal officers for violating their Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure
NASHVILLE, Tennessee: As Democrats across the country propose state law changes to restrict federal immigration officers after the shooting death of a protester in Minneapolis, Tennessee Republicans introduced a package of bills Thursday backed by the White House that would enlist the full force of the state to support President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Momentum in Democratic-led states for the measures, some of them proposed for years, is growing as legislatures return to work following the killing of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. But Republicans are pushing back, blaming protesters for impeding the enforcement of immigration laws.
Democratic bills seek to limit ICE
Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul wants New York to allow people to sue federal officers alleging violations of their constitutional rights. Another measure aims to keep immigration officers lacking judicial warrants out of schools, hospitals and houses of worship.
Oregon Democrats plan to introduce a bill to allow residents to sue federal officers for violating their Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure.
New Jersey’s Democrat-led Legislature passed three bills Monday that immigrant rights groups have long pushed for, including a measure prohibiting state law enforcement officers from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy has until his last day in office Tuesday to sign or veto them.
California lawmakers are proposing to ban local and state law enforcement from taking second jobs with the Department of Homeland Security and make it a violation of state law when ICE officers make “indiscriminate” arrests around court appearances. Other measures are pending.
“Where you have government actions with no accountability, that is not true democracy,” Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco said at a news conference.
Democrats also push bills in red states
Democrats in Georgia introduced four Senate bills designed to limit immigration enforcement — a package unlikely to become law because Georgia’s conservative upper chamber is led by Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a close Trump ally. Democrats said it is still important to take a stand.
“Donald Trump has unleashed brutal aggression on our families and our communities across our country,” said state Sen. Sheikh Rahman, an immigrant from Bangladesh whose district in suburban Atlanta’s Gwinnett County is home to many immigrants.
Democrats in New Hampshire have proposed numerous measures seeking to limit federal immigration enforcement, but the state’s Republican majorities passed a new law taking effect this month that bans “sanctuary cities.”
Tennessee GOP works with White House on a response
The bills Tennessee Republicans are introducing appear to require government agencies to check the legal status of all residents before they can obtain public benefits; secure licenses for teaching, nursing and other professions; and get driver’s licenses or register their cars.
They also would include verifying K-12 students’ legal status, which appears to conflict with a US Supreme Court precedent. And they propose criminalizing illegal entry as a misdemeanor, a measure similar to several other states’ requirements, some of which are blocked in court.
“We’re going to do what we can to make sure that if you’re here illegally, we will have the data, we’ll have the transparency, and we’re not spending taxpayer dollars on you unless you’re in jail,” House Speaker Cameron Sexton said at a news conference Thursday.
Trump administration sues to stop laws
The Trump administration has opposed any effort to blunt ICE, including suing local governments whose “sanctuary” policies limit police interactions with federal officers.
States have broad power to regulate within their borders unless the US Constitution bars it, but many of these laws raise novel issues that courts will have to sort out, said Harrison Stark, senior counsel with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
“There’s not a super clear, concrete legal answer to a lot of these questions,” he said. “It’s almost guaranteed there will be federal litigation over a lot of these policies.”
That is already happening.
California in September was the first to ban most law enforcement officers, including federal immigration officers, from covering their faces on duty. The Justice Department said its officers won’t comply and sued California, arguing that the laws threaten the safety of officers who are facing “unprecedented” harassment, doxing and violence.
The Justice Department also sued Illinois last month, challenging a law that bars federal civil arrests near courthouses, protects medical records and regulates how universities and day care centers manage information about immigration status. The Justice Department claims the law is unconstitutional and threatens federal officers’ safety.
Targeted states push back
Minnesota and Illinois, joined by their largest cities, sued the Trump administration this week. Minneapolis and Minnesota accuse the Republican administration of violating free speech rights by punishing a progressive state that favors Democrats and welcomes immigrants. Illinois and Chicago claim “Operation Midway Blitz” made residents afraid to leave their homes.
Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin accused Minnesota officials of ignoring public safety and called the Illinois lawsuit “baseless.”
