SA Migration International

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Eleventh-hour reprieve for refugee family

Source: Saturday Star, 20/08/2016

- Eleventh-hour reprieve for refugee family

Johannesburg - A refugee family from the DRC who spent months on a
Pretoria pavement before the parents were arrested and their children
placed in care, have received a reprieve just hours before they were
to be deported.

This followed a report by Independent Media`s foreign editor Shannon
Ebrahim on Friday on the "plight of the Biamungu* family, who are
Tutsis from the DRC.

They had been forced to flee their country and ended up in a Zimbabwe
refugee camp from which they also fled across the border at Musina,
after beatings and threats on their lives by Hutus in the camp.

However, once in this country, they found themselves in a legal morass
as they already had refugee status in Zimbabwe. They ended up being
chased off the pavement, where they had camped out with other refugees
until the beginning of June, and in the Kgosi Mampuru Prison, while
their five children were taken away by social welfare.

Efforts by the Department of Home Affairs on Thursday to take the
family to the embassy of the DRC and insist on their deportation flew
in the face of principles and international law guiding the treatment
of refugees, who should not be returned to a country they fled from to
avoid persecution and where their lives may be in danger.

On Friday, the imminent deportation was halted after Deputy Minister
of Home Affairs Fatima Chohan was alerted.

Given that South Africa cannot give the family refugee status, as they
already have such status in Zimbabwe, Chohan believed they had no
option but to deport them.

But the family`s lawyer, Nyaradzo Chiwa, who has taken on their case
pro bono, convinced Chohan that sending them to Zimbabwe could
endanger them.

On Friday, Chiwa was preparing to serve papers on the minister and
director-general of Home Affairs, as well as the minister of police
and director of deportations.

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