Document 4
One person was killed and six others were injured during a food riot inside a camp that houses Chadian refugees in the Sudanese region of Darfur, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports.
The agency said the incident occurred on Tuesday morning at the camp in Um Shalaya, about 70 kilometres southeast of El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state.
Hundreds of stick-bearing women demonstrated noisily against a temporary reduction in the availability of sorghum,* which is widely consumed in both Chad and Sudan, because of logistical problems. Continued insecurity has made it difficult to safely transport food from El Geneina to the camp at Um Shalaya.
UNHCR reports that some members of the crowd took on local police and assaulted one of them, despite efforts by aid workers at the scene to calm the refugees. The police fired warning shots in the air and, in the confusion, a 26-year-old male refugee was hit in the chest and later died....
“The incident is very regrettable and first and foremost we express our sympathies to the persons and families of both the refugee community and the police who were injured,” said Chrysantus Ache, UNHCR’s representative in Sudan.
“We urge calm and restraint by all parties,” Mr. Ache said. “We are currently conducting a proper investigation into the incident with the Government and we hope that, together with the refugees, we can quickly reach an understanding on how to avoid such incidents in the camp in the future.”
About 6,600 refugees live in Um Shalaya, with new asylum-seekers arriving each month as they flee violence in their home areas of eastern Chad, where rebels have been fighting Government forces for months....
This week’s food riot has occurred amid mounting UN concern about repeated attacks against humanitarian convoys throughout Darfur, a vast and impoverished region on Sudan’s western flank....
Source: “Food riot at refugee camp in Darfur kills one, injures six others – UN,” UN News online, September 4, 2008
* sorghum is a cereal grain eaten by humans and livestock in sub-Saharan Africa