Post by Onyango Oloo on Nov 22, 2015 16:45:57 GMT 3
More than a year ago, on this very online discussion blog, we posted the following:
SENT TO UNHCR, POLICE, KITUO, AMNESTY & OTHERS:
THERE WAS NO RESPONSE FROM THE UNHCR.
On October 27, 2015 she sent out the following email:
From: Riak Chagai <xxxxxx>
Date: Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 4:47 PM
Subject: Renewed Threats Against Riak Chagai
To: Catherine Hamon Sharpe <xxxxxx, Eva Camps <xxxxxx>, Mark Nzano xxxxx, Ronnie Akedi <xxxxx>, Onyango Oloo <xxxxx, "L. Muthoni Wanyeki" xxxx xxxxx xxxx@urgentactionfund-africa.or.ke, fareen@urgentactionfund-africa.or.ke
Dear All:
This is Riak Chagai. Last year you all assisted me in my hour of need. Just to refresh your memories. I am a 35 year old South Sudanese mother of three who has been a refugee protected by the UNHCR ever since my arrival at the Kakuma refugee camp in 1992.
In 2014, members of my family at the direct instigation of my father- General Chagai Atem of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) abducted me from Nairobi and drove me to a secret residential location in Eldoret where some men (also family members) physically assaulted me and attempted to forcefully drive me over the Kenyan border to South Sudan on the direct orders of my father who disapproved of my relationship with a Kenyan man. Fortunately, I managed to escape and made my way back to Nairobi. Upon arrival I immediately made contact with the UNCHR office in Westlands where I explained my plight.
Fortunately by this time, I had already informed the police and other relevant authorities.
Urgent Action Fund immediately responded to my distress and quickly arranged safe, alternative accommodation and support which was able to protect me for three months. During this period UAF was able to document my story and offer me much needed psychological support.
Since I have an elderly, ailing mother that I am very close to, I was able to eventuallyto go back to her house together with my three children. My siblings, both in South Sudan as well as those relocated abroad as refugees in Australia, Canada and the United States were able to use family channels to reconcile me both to my eldest sister who lives in Nakuru and my polygamist father who lives with his many wives here in Nairobi.
Or so I thought.
On Friday October 23, 2015 I received a call from my father. At this point in time he is largely confined to his bed and needs considerable assistance to even perform his normal bodily functions including visiting the bathroom- part of the side effects of a severe stroke suffered in 2010 which saw him admitted at the Nairobi Hospital. Despite what he did to me, I am actually still quite fond of my dad. He was devastated by the recent death of his younger (and surviving) brother in South Sudan about a month ago. My father requested me to go and visit him at one of his homes in Donholm the next day. I consulted with my mother (the senior wife) who advised me to see my father adding that an old man in his condition deserved respect.
So on Saturday, October 24, 2015, accompanied by my paternal cousin Biar (who is about 17 years old) left our home in Kasarani and traveled by matatu to my father's place in Donholm. Upon arrival, I was a bit surprised not to find any of my half brothers and half sisters from my step mother's household. I was informed that they had all departed for another family function in Nakuru. Instead I found some four heavily built men who introduced themselves as members of my extended family from my father's side.
My father told me that the reason he had summoned me was because he wanted me to accompany him to the Nairobi Hospital where he has been undergoing treatment-since none of his children were at home. Not suspecting a thing, I immediately agreed. My father than rang up a taxi driver who always runs errands for him., The taxi driver, a Kenyan, soon arrived. In the meantime, one of the four men grabbed my phone from me.
We soon left my father's residence, on our way I thought to the Nairobi Hospital.
But I quickly noticed that we were actually headed to the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. I anxiously asked my father what on earth was going on. It was then he struck me on the elbow with his walking stick roaring to me that he was taking me back forever to South Sudan because I had brought him and his family name " so much shame and humiliation by defying him and prostituting myself to a foreigner and Kenyan." I reminded him I was under the protection of the UNHCR and the Kenyan government and should he attempt to force me to go to Juba where there is an ongoing civil war, I would scream at the airport and alert every one. My father just smiled and remarked that he was GENERAL Chagai Atem, first cousin of John Garang and all the senior Kenyan police knew him and would not dare say no to him.
At this point the driver (who is known to me) noticed the commotion and asked me in Kiswahili what was going on. Fortunately, my dad does not speak or understand this language. I told him that my father was abducting me to South Sudan. He asked me: "Why don't you simply jump out of the car?" I told him I had no money. He quickly slipped me 200 shillings and told to get out now. By this time we had reached just outside the airport at the point where everybody is asked to get out of the vehicle for a security check by the police. I was almost run over by another vehicle.
I noticed that the four men who had remained in my father's house still retained my phone which is a life line to me. I was determined to get my phone so I took a vehicle back to the compound. To protect myself I approached a bunch of Maasai men who act as security and who also know me as my father's daughter to accompany me to the house to retrieve my phone. As soon as I knocked on the door one of the men assaulted me by aiming a hard swift kick at my ribs. I was lucky because the Maasai men told my male relatives that if they did not immediately give me back the phone, they would call the police. The men with my phone gave it back.
Feeling traumatized, I made my way back to my home where I related my ordeal to my mother. She immediately advised me to go and seek shelter with a family friend. The next day one of my step sisters informed me that my that my father had vowed not to back to South Sudan without me. He had boasted that "his boys" many of them former soldiers from SPLA were looking for me all over Kasarani and Nairobi.
I am in great fear. I don't know what will happen to me.
I first reported my father's violent threats to the UNHCR in Westlands in 2009 and have repeated these fears over the years. Last year the UNHCR assured me that they would do something about my plight immediately after the attempted abduction in Eldoret. I was assured that the UNHCR was doing something about it. What has followed has been more than a year of dead silence. Does the UNHCR want me to die in Kenya or see me forced to return to South Sudan which is engulfed in a conflict which has seen thousands die?
Is it because I am just another helpless poor mother of three?
Please I need a permanent solution to this. Please take me as far away from my father and my many relatives in Kenya. I am afraid the next time you hear of Riak Chagai Atem will be when one of you comes to the mortuary to identify my dead body.
My phone number is 07xx xxx xxxx.
Sincerely,
Riak Chagai
Nairobi
Tuesday, October 27, 2015.
[/b]
ONCE AGAIN SILENCE.
We just got her latest message, dated Sunday, November 22, 2015:
Riak Chagai <xxxxxx>
4:29 PM (13 minutes ago)
to Catherine, Eva, Mark, Ronnie, Onyango, Muthoni, goss, mustafa, elizabeth.asha., dkngugi
Almost a month today since I last reported the series of threats against my life, the following incident took place:
At approximately 10 am on Saturday. November 21, 2015 I left my mother's home in Kasarani to to a neighbouring kiosk to purchase sukuma wiki and other provisions for lunch. Just outside the gate I was confronted by four Dinka speaking men who ordered me into a vehicle which could have been a taxi. They drove to Eastliegh and took me to a room at the Garissa Lodge. They punched me and physically assaulted me. When I asked them who they were, they responded by flashing a photo of me taken at the Kakuma Refugee Camp before stating that they had been looking for me. I did not recognize any of them. Having locked me inside, they went and soon returned with beer and cigarettes. They drank the alcohol and continued talking among themselves. I had no idea what their plans were. After a drinking spree which lasted towards six o'clock in the evening. I took advantage of their apparent drunkeness and took the key and let myself out of the room at Garissa Lodge. I called an Ethiopian friend who has a shop at the nearby Exhibition stalls who escorted me to town from where I took a Kasarani bound matatu and simply came home.
On Sunday I went to the Kasarani Police Station and filed a report recorded as OB: 45/22/1/2015 at 1246 hours. I was interviewed by the Deputy Commander of Station Mr. Munyoki who gave me his personal mobile number 0722 965 782 to contact him immediately in case of any recurrence.
This not the first, second or third time that I am reporting this type of incident.
My question to the UNHCR office in Nairobi and South Sudanese Embassy is this:
Do you take me seriously?
Do you think my life is in danger?
Do feel any responsibility in protecting me?
Why have you NOT responded to my earlier communications?
Sincerely.
Riak Chagai
Mobile : xxx xxxx xxxx
Riak Chagai Being Returned to War Torn South Sudan
By Onyango Oloo, Human Rights Activist, Nairobi
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Please I implore your office to intervene in this matter on an urgent basis. My name is Onyango Oloo. My number is 07xx xxx xxx I am a very close friend of Riak Chagai Atem (07xx xxx xxx). Riak is a refugee under the protection of the UNHCR. She is currently locked up in a room in Eldoret. I have been speaking to her since yesterday. She has been kidnapped from Kasarani, Nairobi with her 3 year old son and separated from her two other children. This is at the instigation of her father who has mobilized six men-some of them Ms. Riak’s relatives- to forcibly take her to South Sudan-a country she has not seen she was five years old. Her crime: getting into a relationship with a Kenyan man.
A South Sudanese who has been residing in Kenya for more than 22 years has been abducted in Nairobi and is being trafficked against her will on the firm instructions of her father who is a senior SPLA military officer based in Nairobi.
Riak Chagai Atem, a 34 year old single mother of three was lured by a family member from the Kasarani home where she helps take of her aging and ailing mother. On reaching Nakuru where her first born sister lives, she was forcibly frogmarched to the country bus station where she bundled into a Kakuma bus en route to Juba, South Sudan. That was on Saturday, September 27, 2014. Earlier the six burly male relatives beat her up accusing her of disobeying her father and bringing shame to the family.
Her only crime appears to be stubbornly refusing to give up a romantic relationship with a Kenyan man she fell in love with in December 2013. Her abduction is the culmination of a litany of beatings, psychological harassment, confinement and isolation she has endured at the hands of her father who is a General in the South Sudanese army and wields considereable clout within the higher echelons of Juba government circles by virtues of the fact that he is one of the venerated “ old historicals” who is credited as part of the nucleus that formed the SPLM and unleashed the first rebel attack on the then Nimeiri regime.
A very conservative disciplinarian, General Chagai Atem is a polygamist with seven different spouses. He abandoned Riak’s mother close to two decades ago but insists on controlling his brood of close to forty offspring. If he had his way he would marry off her daughter to another scion of South Sudanese society. He is quite incensed that her daughter has persisted in seeing her Kenyan lover. Three months ago after another round of beatings he warned Riak darkly that he had the means of shipping his daugher back to Sudan.
This is not an idle boast. In December Riak had to flee the airport when her father drove her there, ticket in tow, determined to accompany his daughter to Juba.
Riak Chagai Atem contacted this writer-who has previously accompanied her to the offices of concerned human rights lawyers like Kituo & NCHRDD who had heard of her plight. She was quite frightened. She informed the writer of her beatings the previous night; how she had adamantly refused to board an earlier bus and how she first locked up in a guest house in Kitale before being tken to Eldoret she is being confined. She appeals urgently for an intervention. She explained that she had been whisked from Nairobi a couple days ago without getting a chance to carry any money. She is with her youngest son, Santos, 3 who is severely traumatized.
She is quite wary about approaching a family member for assistance because the few who are not in South Sudan or Kenya are stuck in Canada, USA and Australia and are all cowed by their strictures of the family patriarch, her father.
She is convinced that more harm may befall her, especially if her kidnappers manage to smuggle her across the border.
Riak Chagai Atem is a certified, bona fide refugee who is in Kenya under the aegis of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees ever since she arrived in Kakuma Camp in 1992 . She is therefore protected under Kenyan, African Union laws. It is illegal to abduct and traffic human beings. Physical assault, psychological anguish and mental torture violate many human rights canons and principles.
Her situation is likely to be aggravated if there are no urgent interventions from concerned individuals.
This is an urgent appeal to the concerned authorities in Kenya and South Sudan as well as human rights groups, the UNHCR, lawyers and faith groups to step in and rescue Riak Chagai Atem from this anguish.
By Onyango Oloo, Human Rights Activist, Nairobi
Sunday, September 28, 2014
Please I implore your office to intervene in this matter on an urgent basis. My name is Onyango Oloo. My number is 07xx xxx xxx I am a very close friend of Riak Chagai Atem (07xx xxx xxx). Riak is a refugee under the protection of the UNHCR. She is currently locked up in a room in Eldoret. I have been speaking to her since yesterday. She has been kidnapped from Kasarani, Nairobi with her 3 year old son and separated from her two other children. This is at the instigation of her father who has mobilized six men-some of them Ms. Riak’s relatives- to forcibly take her to South Sudan-a country she has not seen she was five years old. Her crime: getting into a relationship with a Kenyan man.
A South Sudanese who has been residing in Kenya for more than 22 years has been abducted in Nairobi and is being trafficked against her will on the firm instructions of her father who is a senior SPLA military officer based in Nairobi.
Riak Chagai Atem, a 34 year old single mother of three was lured by a family member from the Kasarani home where she helps take of her aging and ailing mother. On reaching Nakuru where her first born sister lives, she was forcibly frogmarched to the country bus station where she bundled into a Kakuma bus en route to Juba, South Sudan. That was on Saturday, September 27, 2014. Earlier the six burly male relatives beat her up accusing her of disobeying her father and bringing shame to the family.
Her only crime appears to be stubbornly refusing to give up a romantic relationship with a Kenyan man she fell in love with in December 2013. Her abduction is the culmination of a litany of beatings, psychological harassment, confinement and isolation she has endured at the hands of her father who is a General in the South Sudanese army and wields considereable clout within the higher echelons of Juba government circles by virtues of the fact that he is one of the venerated “ old historicals” who is credited as part of the nucleus that formed the SPLM and unleashed the first rebel attack on the then Nimeiri regime.
A very conservative disciplinarian, General Chagai Atem is a polygamist with seven different spouses. He abandoned Riak’s mother close to two decades ago but insists on controlling his brood of close to forty offspring. If he had his way he would marry off her daughter to another scion of South Sudanese society. He is quite incensed that her daughter has persisted in seeing her Kenyan lover. Three months ago after another round of beatings he warned Riak darkly that he had the means of shipping his daugher back to Sudan.
This is not an idle boast. In December Riak had to flee the airport when her father drove her there, ticket in tow, determined to accompany his daughter to Juba.
Riak Chagai Atem contacted this writer-who has previously accompanied her to the offices of concerned human rights lawyers like Kituo & NCHRDD who had heard of her plight. She was quite frightened. She informed the writer of her beatings the previous night; how she had adamantly refused to board an earlier bus and how she first locked up in a guest house in Kitale before being tken to Eldoret she is being confined. She appeals urgently for an intervention. She explained that she had been whisked from Nairobi a couple days ago without getting a chance to carry any money. She is with her youngest son, Santos, 3 who is severely traumatized.
She is quite wary about approaching a family member for assistance because the few who are not in South Sudan or Kenya are stuck in Canada, USA and Australia and are all cowed by their strictures of the family patriarch, her father.
She is convinced that more harm may befall her, especially if her kidnappers manage to smuggle her across the border.
Riak Chagai Atem is a certified, bona fide refugee who is in Kenya under the aegis of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees ever since she arrived in Kakuma Camp in 1992 . She is therefore protected under Kenyan, African Union laws. It is illegal to abduct and traffic human beings. Physical assault, psychological anguish and mental torture violate many human rights canons and principles.
Her situation is likely to be aggravated if there are no urgent interventions from concerned individuals.
This is an urgent appeal to the concerned authorities in Kenya and South Sudan as well as human rights groups, the UNHCR, lawyers and faith groups to step in and rescue Riak Chagai Atem from this anguish.
THERE WAS NO RESPONSE FROM THE UNHCR.
On October 27, 2015 she sent out the following email:
From: Riak Chagai <xxxxxx>
Date: Tue, Oct 27, 2015 at 4:47 PM
Subject: Renewed Threats Against Riak Chagai
To: Catherine Hamon Sharpe <xxxxxx, Eva Camps <xxxxxx>, Mark Nzano xxxxx, Ronnie Akedi <xxxxx>, Onyango Oloo <xxxxx, "L. Muthoni Wanyeki" xxxx xxxxx xxxx@urgentactionfund-africa.or.ke, fareen@urgentactionfund-africa.or.ke
Dear All:
This is Riak Chagai. Last year you all assisted me in my hour of need. Just to refresh your memories. I am a 35 year old South Sudanese mother of three who has been a refugee protected by the UNHCR ever since my arrival at the Kakuma refugee camp in 1992.
In 2014, members of my family at the direct instigation of my father- General Chagai Atem of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) abducted me from Nairobi and drove me to a secret residential location in Eldoret where some men (also family members) physically assaulted me and attempted to forcefully drive me over the Kenyan border to South Sudan on the direct orders of my father who disapproved of my relationship with a Kenyan man. Fortunately, I managed to escape and made my way back to Nairobi. Upon arrival I immediately made contact with the UNCHR office in Westlands where I explained my plight.
Fortunately by this time, I had already informed the police and other relevant authorities.
Urgent Action Fund immediately responded to my distress and quickly arranged safe, alternative accommodation and support which was able to protect me for three months. During this period UAF was able to document my story and offer me much needed psychological support.
Since I have an elderly, ailing mother that I am very close to, I was able to eventuallyto go back to her house together with my three children. My siblings, both in South Sudan as well as those relocated abroad as refugees in Australia, Canada and the United States were able to use family channels to reconcile me both to my eldest sister who lives in Nakuru and my polygamist father who lives with his many wives here in Nairobi.
Or so I thought.
On Friday October 23, 2015 I received a call from my father. At this point in time he is largely confined to his bed and needs considerable assistance to even perform his normal bodily functions including visiting the bathroom- part of the side effects of a severe stroke suffered in 2010 which saw him admitted at the Nairobi Hospital. Despite what he did to me, I am actually still quite fond of my dad. He was devastated by the recent death of his younger (and surviving) brother in South Sudan about a month ago. My father requested me to go and visit him at one of his homes in Donholm the next day. I consulted with my mother (the senior wife) who advised me to see my father adding that an old man in his condition deserved respect.
So on Saturday, October 24, 2015, accompanied by my paternal cousin Biar (who is about 17 years old) left our home in Kasarani and traveled by matatu to my father's place in Donholm. Upon arrival, I was a bit surprised not to find any of my half brothers and half sisters from my step mother's household. I was informed that they had all departed for another family function in Nakuru. Instead I found some four heavily built men who introduced themselves as members of my extended family from my father's side.
My father told me that the reason he had summoned me was because he wanted me to accompany him to the Nairobi Hospital where he has been undergoing treatment-since none of his children were at home. Not suspecting a thing, I immediately agreed. My father than rang up a taxi driver who always runs errands for him., The taxi driver, a Kenyan, soon arrived. In the meantime, one of the four men grabbed my phone from me.
We soon left my father's residence, on our way I thought to the Nairobi Hospital.
But I quickly noticed that we were actually headed to the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. I anxiously asked my father what on earth was going on. It was then he struck me on the elbow with his walking stick roaring to me that he was taking me back forever to South Sudan because I had brought him and his family name " so much shame and humiliation by defying him and prostituting myself to a foreigner and Kenyan." I reminded him I was under the protection of the UNHCR and the Kenyan government and should he attempt to force me to go to Juba where there is an ongoing civil war, I would scream at the airport and alert every one. My father just smiled and remarked that he was GENERAL Chagai Atem, first cousin of John Garang and all the senior Kenyan police knew him and would not dare say no to him.
At this point the driver (who is known to me) noticed the commotion and asked me in Kiswahili what was going on. Fortunately, my dad does not speak or understand this language. I told him that my father was abducting me to South Sudan. He asked me: "Why don't you simply jump out of the car?" I told him I had no money. He quickly slipped me 200 shillings and told to get out now. By this time we had reached just outside the airport at the point where everybody is asked to get out of the vehicle for a security check by the police. I was almost run over by another vehicle.
I noticed that the four men who had remained in my father's house still retained my phone which is a life line to me. I was determined to get my phone so I took a vehicle back to the compound. To protect myself I approached a bunch of Maasai men who act as security and who also know me as my father's daughter to accompany me to the house to retrieve my phone. As soon as I knocked on the door one of the men assaulted me by aiming a hard swift kick at my ribs. I was lucky because the Maasai men told my male relatives that if they did not immediately give me back the phone, they would call the police. The men with my phone gave it back.
Feeling traumatized, I made my way back to my home where I related my ordeal to my mother. She immediately advised me to go and seek shelter with a family friend. The next day one of my step sisters informed me that my that my father had vowed not to back to South Sudan without me. He had boasted that "his boys" many of them former soldiers from SPLA were looking for me all over Kasarani and Nairobi.
I am in great fear. I don't know what will happen to me.
I first reported my father's violent threats to the UNHCR in Westlands in 2009 and have repeated these fears over the years. Last year the UNHCR assured me that they would do something about my plight immediately after the attempted abduction in Eldoret. I was assured that the UNHCR was doing something about it. What has followed has been more than a year of dead silence. Does the UNHCR want me to die in Kenya or see me forced to return to South Sudan which is engulfed in a conflict which has seen thousands die?
Is it because I am just another helpless poor mother of three?
Please I need a permanent solution to this. Please take me as far away from my father and my many relatives in Kenya. I am afraid the next time you hear of Riak Chagai Atem will be when one of you comes to the mortuary to identify my dead body.
My phone number is 07xx xxx xxxx.
Sincerely,
Riak Chagai
Nairobi
Tuesday, October 27, 2015.
[/b]
ONCE AGAIN SILENCE.
We just got her latest message, dated Sunday, November 22, 2015:
Riak Chagai <xxxxxx>
4:29 PM (13 minutes ago)
to Catherine, Eva, Mark, Ronnie, Onyango, Muthoni, goss, mustafa, elizabeth.asha., dkngugi
Almost a month today since I last reported the series of threats against my life, the following incident took place:
At approximately 10 am on Saturday. November 21, 2015 I left my mother's home in Kasarani to to a neighbouring kiosk to purchase sukuma wiki and other provisions for lunch. Just outside the gate I was confronted by four Dinka speaking men who ordered me into a vehicle which could have been a taxi. They drove to Eastliegh and took me to a room at the Garissa Lodge. They punched me and physically assaulted me. When I asked them who they were, they responded by flashing a photo of me taken at the Kakuma Refugee Camp before stating that they had been looking for me. I did not recognize any of them. Having locked me inside, they went and soon returned with beer and cigarettes. They drank the alcohol and continued talking among themselves. I had no idea what their plans were. After a drinking spree which lasted towards six o'clock in the evening. I took advantage of their apparent drunkeness and took the key and let myself out of the room at Garissa Lodge. I called an Ethiopian friend who has a shop at the nearby Exhibition stalls who escorted me to town from where I took a Kasarani bound matatu and simply came home.
On Sunday I went to the Kasarani Police Station and filed a report recorded as OB: 45/22/1/2015 at 1246 hours. I was interviewed by the Deputy Commander of Station Mr. Munyoki who gave me his personal mobile number 0722 965 782 to contact him immediately in case of any recurrence.
This not the first, second or third time that I am reporting this type of incident.
My question to the UNHCR office in Nairobi and South Sudanese Embassy is this:
Do you take me seriously?
Do you think my life is in danger?
Do feel any responsibility in protecting me?
Why have you NOT responded to my earlier communications?
Sincerely.
Riak Chagai
Mobile : xxx xxxx xxxx