Month: January 2010

Lutheran NGO party shut down in Kenyan refugee camp

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This incident happened in October of last year, but I’m just seeing it this morning for the first time.  Apparently, according to KANERE,* Kenyan police interrupted a party of humanitarian aid workers that frankly sounds pretty wild.   Here is the story about the incident at the Lutheran World Federation NGO compound at Kakuma Refugee Camp.

An unusual incident happened on Saturday night, the 10th of October, at the LWF compound when three policemen invaded a farewell party. The party was organized for German Technological Cooperation (GTZ) agency staff who were leaving the camp.

During the early hours of the evening, the group entertainment team engaged the audience with music and everyone was on their feet dancing to the beat of the music.

“It was very colorful and bright, with every beat matching the dancers; it was lively and fantastic,” said one partygoer of the experience.

At about 12:00 midnight, everyone in the hall was surprised when the loud music came to a dead stop. Unnoticed by revelers, several Kenyan police officers had arrived on the scene and ordered the DJ to stop playing the music.

“You must stop playing the music! This is heard beyond 30 yards and it’s against rules and regulation by the law,” one police officer reportedly said.

Without speaking to anyone, the police officer went directly to the main speaker, unplugged the cable, and halted the music. Then the other police officers claimed that the DJ was under arrest. The police officers went on to say that all the equipment used for the party was to be taken to the police station. However, the equipment was not owned by GTZ but instead belonged to Film Aid International, which had offered to assist the party with a music system.

Partiers got tense:

The DJ resisted and wanted to know the reasons for his arrest. He demanded that the police show him a warrant of arrest, which was not produced. The policemen claimed that they were not informed about the party ahead of time, and that the music was played at such a loud volume that it was disturbing the compound residents and people living around the area.

During the entire confrontation, GTZ staffs hosting the party remained seated, reportedly doing nothing to help the situation. Film Aid staff, on the other hand, engaged themselves in trying to stop the police. This caused them to argue with GTZ staff hosting the party.

The police caused a stir and created tension among the partygoers….

So tense they were drunk on the floor.  UNHCR security called.

The scene degenerated until LWF Compound Management was finally forced to call the UNHCR Head of Security Operations, Mr. Munuve, at 2:00 am. UNHCR security arrived approximately one and a half hours after the police had first invaded the party.

Mr. Munuve reached a dialogue by calling the LWF Compound Management, Film Aid Manager, and one of the police officers. They negotiated for some time until an agreement was reached at that odd hour of the night.

The police officers left the party without taking the DJ or the musical equipment. Partygoers clapped loudly in approval, while others were seen drunk on the floor and spent the night recuperating.

Those Lutherans sure do know how to have a good time!   By the way, did it occur to any of the partiers that devout Muslims in the camp that houses Somalis or even Muslims in the Kenyan police might have objected to loud western music and alcoholic beverages, both forbidden in Islam.

* Kakuma News Reflector says they are about “fair public debate on refugee affairs” and that is our goal too at RRW!

In exercising a refugee free press, we speak in respect of human rights and the rule of law in order to create a more open society in refugee camps and to develop a platform for fair public debate on refugee affairs.

No time now, but later I’ll check and see if any of your tax dollars go to this NGO.

Kansas City refugee agency overloaded, refugees suffer

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update January 7th:  Readers may wish to see the critical comments on this article at The Pitch today (click on ‘show comments’ at the top).

This a jaw-dropping article by reporter Carolyn Szczepanski for The Pitch and is perhaps one of the most revealing and shocking stories of how the US State Department’s refugee resettlement program is imploding.   

I know some of our readers will have little patience for refugees’ complaints, but the predicament they find themselves in is out of their control.  They expected that at minimum they would not go hungry in America.  They have no money for return airfare as much as some would like to go back to their home country or even a camp.   As you read this, focus your anger at the resettlement agencies (local and national) and at a federal bureaucracy that seems to be in complete disarray and lacks the political will to admit the program is a wreck and in need of reform from top to bottom.

Please read the entire stunning expose by Ms. Szczepanski.

This is how the story opens, and below I’ve pulled out a few things I want to comment on in the lengthy report.

When Foibe Nibitanga got a ticket to a new life in the United States, she didn’t expect the fear and hunger of the refugee camp to follow her to Kansas City.

[…..]

On October 20, with their belongings crammed into plastic-mesh bags, her family arrived in Kansas City. It was after 11 p.m. when their caseworker from Jewish Vocational Service, the local nonprofit on Baltimore Avenue that contracts with the federal government to resettle refugees in Kansas City, Missouri, dropped them off at the shabby brick house on Prospect.

The large apartment had three bedrooms, each with thin blankets covering sturdy cots. Other provisions were few. The only food in the house, Nibitanga says, was bread — a starch that her children couldn’t eat. According to the Burundian mother, the family’s caseworker from JVS didn’t return for several days. By then, they had already showed their bare refrigerator to their landlord and told him with hand gestures that they were hungry. They had also appealed to others in Kansas City’s small Burundi community for food because they had no money to purchase it.

The story goes on and gets worse.  Readers should know that the State Department contract, that the resettlement agency signs, requires certain basic items and care required by each refugee family.  It is called Operational guidance and how these agencies continue to receive refugees when they don’t follow their contractual obligations is beyond me.

The article goes on to tell us one case after another where refugees are left in a lurch and as one refugee said, when complaints are made, “There is total darkness at JVS.”

JVS employees claim they do follow their contractual obligations, and claim problems are a result of not enough money.

Weitkamp and Foster insist that JVS has followed the letter of its federal contract, providing all necessary services. But both acknowledge that the organization is struggling to keep up. In 2009, JVS accepted 492 refugees, up from 400 in 2008. The $1.3 million it received from Washington, D.C., they say, isn’t nearly enough to cover even basic necessities such as rent and utilities.

The State Department counters that this was supposed to be a Public-Private partnership and the agency needs to also come up with private donations to help meet the refugees’ needs.   All over the country they aren’t doing that!  Many agencies leave refugees in the lurch and then claim the taxpayers aren’t supplying enough money.  I wonder are they helping bring about a “crisis” so that the Obama White House will just conclude they need more money rather than revamping the whole program.

Wills, the State Department spokeswoman, says federal funds aren’t supposed to be the sole source of support and explains that refugee resettlement is a public-private partnership. “We figure they will also use that [money] for fundraising. At least that’s traditionally been the case. But what’s happened recently, with the recession, is that the flaws in the system have really been highlighted. We recognize that a lot of refugees are having a lot of trouble.”

So does the White House.  Last summer, the National Security Council appointed an interagency task force to come up with recommendations, due in February, on how to revamp the resettlement system.

Employees resigned or were fired after complaining the agency was accepting more refugees than it could adequately care for!  (We first heard this story last June, here)

Karen Janas thinks that JVS — and Foster — could do better. After nearly 30 years with the organization, Janas resigned her position as director of the refugee program in April. Janas says the hardships that have been passed on to the refugees could have been avoided with more aggressive planning. “Twenty thousand dollars would be nothing to raise. In the Jewish community, it could be done like that,” she says, pausing to snap her fingers, “if it had been a goal.” She says she left because of Foster’s management style and what she calls a hostile work environment at JVS.

She wasn’t the only one. Another longtime employee, Ralph Levy, resigned his position as director of the sheltered workshop and IT in March. Levy summed up his concerns in a letter to the organization’s board of directors in June. He suggested that whistle-blowers face retaliation. “Most recently,” he wrote, “three employees who had presented information to the executive concerning inadequate housing for refugees were terminated after a newspaper article pointed out these very deficiencies.” Levy cited concerns that the organization was “accepting excessive numbers of refugees that the organization was unable to support.

Hitting the nail on the head!  Reverberating consequences!

So why in the face of all this evidence in many cities that too many refugees are being resettled, comes the answer I’ve been reporting all along.  Reading between the lines, it is about money.  It is about fueling an international bureaucracy. It is about keeping taxpayer dollars flowing to resettlement agencies.  It is about fueling a national bureaucracy—offices and salaries.   And, until this past year, problems have been hidden from public scrutiny because of that old ‘presumption of good intentions’ on the part of resettlement agencies and Washington bureaucrats.

Every year, Foster explains, USCRI — the Virginia nonprofit that acts as the conduit between JVS and the State Department — tells its affiliates how many refugees it plans to send in the coming fiscal year.

“In June, we originally projected 420, and then USCRI* asked us if we would raise that to 450,” Foster says. “They have a network number that they project and they try to work that out among their affiliates.”

If Kansas City cuts back, Weitkamp says, other affiliates across the country will have to pick up the slack — or the national program will be scaled back or eliminated. “It’s not as though we couldn’t send an SOS — that’s it, no more — but it would have reverberating consequences,” he says.

* USCRI!  That is the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, the federal contractor (one of the Top Ten) that subcontracts JVS.  We have written about them on many previous occasions as the State Department has shut down their affiliates in other cities.  Most recently they are the agency under fire in Bowling Green, KY. 

What no one tells you is that their former Vice President (and he was VP when all this was going down with JVS!) is now head of the entire federal Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Dept. of  Health and Human Services that is the major conduit of taxpayer money to the resettlement agencies.  Yes, the State Department admits the refugees to the US and gives the initial start-up funding, but the real money from Washington flows from Health and Human Services.  So, what do you think the chances are that the program will be investigated and reformed with a man in charge who couldn’t even keep one resettlement agency properly managed?  It is increasingly apparent to me that maintaining the bureaucracy is more important than meaningful reform or obviously the well-being of the refugees themselves.

Iraq’s internally displaced persons — why so many?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

There’s been far less news about Iraqi refugees since President Obama took office, now that the media here and abroad find it less productive to beat on George W. Bush about the problem. But the problem persists. Ann has posted many times recently about Iraqi refugees in America and elsewhere, and on November 15 posted a good overview of the problem.  Before the Age of Obama we frequently posted on the problem within Iraq and the surrounding countries; see our Iraqi refugee category for 445 previous posts. 

The internally displaced persons (IDPs) within Iraq are a different problem from the refugees who left Iraq during the fighting. The resettlement agencies don’t deal with them, and no one has suggested they be resettled anywhere else but their own country, so probably the reporting tends to be less politically freighted. In August we posted a report on a visit to the IDPs from the admirable Angelina Jolie, who said their numbers hadn’t been reduced by much. Reuters at that time reported:

An estimated 1.6 million Iraqis remain uprooted within the country, while another 300,000 have returned to their homes amid a general improvement in security in the past year, UNHCR said.

Today in a UN publication comes a report from Baghdad on the state of the IDPs and what the government is doing for them. The funding is insufficient and some members of Parliament are trying to increase the amount.

Abdul-Khaliq Zankana, head of parliament’s committee on displacement and migration, said 200 billion Iraqi dinars (US$169.5 million) is to be allocated in the currently proposed 2010 budget for the Displacement and Migration Ministry.

“Although it is more than what was allocated in 2009, it still won’t alleviate all the suffering of IDPs and returnees and [significantly] improve their living conditions,” Zankana told IRIN.

“We consider the displacement crisis a long-term one – its file can’t be closed in one or two years, as some say. And we believe that increasing the amount [of money for them] will help alleviate a big portion of this segment’s suffering.”

The Iraqi government cut the funding in 2009, apparently because oil prices were down and it relies on oil revenues for much of its income.  Here’s something to note:

His [Zankana’s] calls are supported by prominent Iraqi activist Basil Abdul-Wahab al-Azawi, head of the Baghdad-based Commission of Society Enterprises, an umbrella group of more than 1,000 NGOs inside and outside Iraq. Al-Azawi has suggested that a joint committee with representatives from the Displacement Ministry and local and international NGOs should be set up to evaluate the needs of IDPs.

He also called on the government to shoulder all the costs relating to IDPs and returnees (without reliance on outside agencies), and have international NGOs focus on assisting refugees in neighbouring countries.

A thousand NGOs! Probably most are small. It seems to be a suggestion that bespeaks some pride and a wish to become less dependent on outside forces, a good sign. Zankana said that much of the money supposed to be paid to the IDPs, and money due to those who returned to their areas of origin, was not paid.

The numbers are very shaky. The UN said in August that there were 1.6 million IDPs. This article says:

According to recent government figures, there are nearly 2.6 million IDPs in Iraq and about two million Iraqi refugees in neighbouring countries, mainly Syria and Jordan.

That’s a pretty big difference. Whatever the correct figure, only 45,000 families were reported to have returned to their own areas. That’s hard to believe. Surely some of these families have relatives remaining in their home areas, and other incentives to find a way to return. Iraq has a functioning economy. Wikipedia reports GDP growth of 6.6 percent in 2008, and per capita income of $4,000 in that year, which is not bad when you consider most people live in families with several people. Why is the IDP problem persisting so? Is there perhaps a lot of fraud, as there tends to be when money is being given out? Or maybe there’s some reason I don’t understand.

Al-Amriki, American Al-Shabaab, says they have big plans for the world

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update January 30th, 2010:  The NYT has a lengthy story on Al-Amriki reported here at Jihad Watch. 

The Toronto Star has a lengthy detailed article yesterday about Omar Hammami – known to followers as Abu Mansour “Al-Amriki” (the American) — whose fluent English and flamboyant style may be responsible for some recruitment of Somali refugees living in the West to join the Jihadists in Somalia.

Born and raised in Alabama he spent a year in Canada learning Somali ways and marrying a Somali girl before joining Al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa.  We have reported on him previously when he mocked Obama’s Cairo speech on Islam, here.*

Read the whole article, it is very interesting.  The one part I wanted to point out today is this section of the news feature—for those of you thinking this is just an issue for far away Africa, Al-Amriki makes it clear that their Jihad is about creating a worldwide caliphate!

Al-Shabab’s stated goals are to take power from the fragile government backed by African Union troops and turn Somalia into an Islamic state friendly to Al Qaeda. Ultimately, its leaders say, the aim is to establish a global Islamic state.

“We are striving to establish the Islaamic Khilaafah from East to West,” Hammami writes in an Internet posting of Jan. 8, 2008, “after removing the occupier and killing the apostates.”

That last part means you—unless you are a devout Muslim, you are the occupiers and the apostates.  And, by the way, the stealth Jihad can be accomplished through the political process more easily than with guns.  In Africa it might be guns, in America and Canada it is the political process (while you sleep!).

* For more information use our search function for ‘Al-Amriki.’

Australia update: Diversity in Victoria fueling violent crime?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Maybe some of our Australian readers can enlighten us further about why the crime in the Victoria region of Australia involves crimes with racial motivations.   Here is a story from the Sydney Morning Herald that tells of the murder of an Indian immigrant, but completely dances around the subject of who is committing the crimes against Indians who, according to this report, are just working hard and going to school.

Apparently the targeting of Indian immigrants has further strained relations between Australia and India.

The brutal killing in Melbourne of Nitin Garg, a young Indian man with permanent residence in Australia, has put added stress on what is a difficult relationship between political leaders in New Delhi and Canberra.

Who are the vocal minorities?  What other ethnic groups?  That is what I want to know!

Obviously, the Federal Government is not responsible for street crime in Victoria. But the state’s premier, John Brumby, heads a Labor Government that gives the impression of being unduly sensitive to upsetting some vocal minorities.

The NSW police force has an organised crime directorate that includes both an Asian Crime Squad and a Middle East Organised Crime Squad. The NSW Government makes no apologies for targeting suspected criminals in response to perceived need. Victoria Police has no equivalent units. There have been suggestions that young Indians in Melbourne are being targeted by other ethnic groups. The Victorian Government has been silent on this matter.

The immediate response of Victoria Police to any suggestion that attacks on Indians are racially motivated is to throw the switch to denial, or at least to avoidance.