ggggj COLLEGIAN 100 YEARS April 1887-April 1987 ■ >,!3«<ig. ’ ‘■' , ;;«r> •.■ -.* ";r 1 y 4 ~ ' * *, Police officers carry an injured man Saturday night after tear gas was used Juneteenth Festival in Denver. It was the second consecutive night of to disperse a bottle- and rock-throwing crowd of more than 200 people at the violence at the festival in celebration of black emancipation in Texas. Denver celebration erupts DENVER (AP) Extra police remained on duty yesterday for the end of the Juneteenth black emancipation celebration, after one officer was shot and a bottle-throwing crowd of more than 200 was scattered by tear gas and police dogs in a second night of violence. Juneteenth celebrates the day Texas slaves learned of their freedom in 1865. The observance began in black communities of the South, and Blacks carried the tradition with them when they moved north and west. Denver’s celebration is held annually in the city’s mostly black Five Points area. This year’s five-day festival, marred by street riots Friday and Saturday nights, ended yesterday with a gospel-singing concert. A 19-year-old Denver man was being held Alarming death rate at refugee camp blamed on Somali government policy By-MICHELLE FAUL Associated Press Writer TUG WAJALE, Somalia International relief officials say that Ethiopian refugees who arrive healthy at this border transit camp are dying at an alarming rate of malnutrition and diseases which the officials blame in part on Somali government policy. Early this year the East African country plugged movement out of the camp even as refugees kept pouring in. The 1.2-square-mile facility, designed only to hold 2,000 people on a temporary basis before they are moved to longterm camps, now is crammed with more than 40,000 people. Officials of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which provides supplies to the camp for distribution by Somali officials, say more than 10 refugees are dying in Tug Wajale each day. They want the facility moved to a roomier site with better sanitation and on-site water supply. The Somali government has refused, say ing it doesn’t want to spread diseases from the camp, notably cholera, to another area of the country. Foreign reporters asked Information Min ister Omar Jess if the government’s policy could be contributing to deaths at the camp. “It’s not meant maliciously, but we hope that when the refugees see that the situation is unbearable, then they might return back, and this would encourage other people to not come across when they see that the refu gees are not being assisted well,” Jess said. He spoke in Somali with an official interpret ing his statements. His government denies allegations that it has stopped moving people out of the camp to more permanent housing because most of the new refugees are members of the Oromo tribe. The estimated 700,000 Ethiopian refugees already settled at longterm Somali refugee camps are ethnic Somalis, who share a com mon language and customs with the 5 million residents of Somalia. They began coming mainly for political reasons after Somalia the daily yesterday as a suspect in the shooting of the police officer. The violence did not result from racial tension, but “individuals acting in an unorganized man ner,” said police Sgt. Ed Connors. “The crowd is real mixed, but it seems like most of the problems have come from the young er element of it,” Connors said. “It’s just like Friday night the crowd is not the problem, it’s the individuals who are causing trouble, using the cover of the crowd.” “Basically, it’s just too big of crowd and too much alcohol,” said Connors. In Friday night’s melee, three men were ar rested and at least 20 people were injured by fighting and bottle-throwing, and police fired tear gas to break up a crowd of about 700 people. and Ethiopia went to war in 1978 over Soma lia’s attempt to annex the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. Beginning early this year, however, most refugees have been Oromos fleeing the na tionalization policies of Ethiopia’s Marxist government. Oromos speak a different lan guage from the Somalis and are sedentary farmers, while Somalis are semi-nomadic. The halt on movement from Tug Wajale coincided with the influx of Oromos. “There are only 5 million Somalis, and they are all basically from the same group. You can see that they would be concerned about 40,000 Oromos a totally different group of people being stuck in a chunk of Somalia,” said a diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Marion Roche, the U.N. commission’s field officer at the camp, said, “The death rate is unacceptably high, and the alarming thing is that in the last two weeks 66 percent of deaths were children under 5 years.” She and David Jamieson, the commission’s emergency coordinator for the northwest region, said an average of 10 refugees were dying each day. Overcrowding is not Tug Wajale’s only problem. Disputes between the Somali gov ernment and the U.N. High Commission over the number of refugees and the rate of exchange for donated dollars have prompted the U.N. body to cut the amount of food it supplies to refugee camps in Somalia. The commission says the cut has affected only the longterm refugee camps, not Tug Wajale. But Dorothy Delaney, a midwife at Tug Wajale with the League of Red Cross Socie ties, said, “The food basket is already too low, and it’s my understanding that it’s being thinned out. No new food is coming in, so the allocation is being spread between every body.” . Roche said Tug Wajale’s food ration had been reduced, but because two food ship ments arrived late. She said, however, that malnutrition at the camp had increased, citing a May survey at the camp that found 32 U,/ «-M.<U '■**. * V**.~ ~.x? ** * < i in violence On Saturday night, Officer Tim Pulford, a two year veteran, was wounded while watching the crowds from the roof of a two-story store. Fire fighters were pelted with rocks and bottles by a crowd of about 200 people when they went to Pulford’s assistance. Police used tear gas and dogs to clear the area during the next two hours, said Connors. Some residents accused police of misusing the tear gas. “They had to bust up those activities, but at the same time I think they did too much,” said Wendell Gerdine, who saw Friday night’s riot. “Everybody was running for shelter I don’t think the second time (that tear gas was used) was necessary.” percent of children under 5 were malnou rished compared to only 12 percent in March. “We must assume that that happened here, because the evidence is that they arrived healthy,” Roche said. The U.N. High Commission supplies food, water and tents to the camps, including Tug Wajale. But distribution of the supplies and administration is the responsibility of Somali officials of the government National Refugee Commission. “They don’t trust each other. . .and it’s not good for the health of the refugees,” said Delaney, of Westford, Vt. “It’s not the relief officials who suffer. It’s the refugees.” One source of conflict has been the govern ment’s official exchange rate for donated dollars 40 Somali shillings per dollar com pared with a commercial bank rate of 83 shillings to the dollar and an official free market rate of 155 shillings. Under a recent compromise, the govern ment gradually has increased the exchange rate for donors to about 68 shillings to the dollar this month. The commission and government also clash over how many refugees are at the camps. Relief officials say Somalia inflates the number to get more donated food. In 1984, the government claimed the pop ulation of Ethiopian refugees had reached 1.3 million. The U.N. Commission disputed the figure, and a compromise figure of 700,000 finally was settled on. Delaney said government-appointed camp officers who register the incoming refugees “are making it easy for local (Somali) people to take advantage of the confusion and be come registered refugees” in order to get free food and tents. But she added: “I still believe that the large majority of people here (at Tug Wa jale) are genuine refugees.” Relief workers also have charged that corruption at the camps, including Tug Wa jale, has siphoned off tents, food and supplies needed by the refugees. < « «<*' * Durban rocked by three bombs By MAUREEN JOHNSON Associated Press Writer JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Three bomb explosions rocked Dur ban within hours of each other, one starting an oil refinery blaze early yesterday and polluting an exclusive Indian Ocean yacht club and sur rounding sea. In the nominally independent tribal homeland of Bophuthatswana, assas sins shot dead a police commander whose men fired on anti-government demonstrators last March 26, killing 11 people, police said. Bophuthatswana police Brigadier Andrew Molope collapsed in a burst of bullets fired from a Soviet-made AK-47 assault rifles as he left a friend’s house Saturday night, said witnesses, who spoke on condition they were not identified. No casualties were reported in the Durban explosions one outside a downtown movie house, one at a chemical plant south of the city, and one at the nearby Durban oil refinery, starting a blaze which raged for two hours near giant fuel storage depots surrounding the complex. The blasts came a week after a car bomb outside a hotel on Durban’s Marine Parade beachfront boulevard killed three women, two whites and an Indian, and wounded 69 people. Firemen and conservation workers battled through the day spraying anti-pollution foam onto more than a half-mile slick of crude oil seeping from the blasted pipeline into the sea and the Bluff Hill Yacht Club. Extra supplies of detergent were flown to the port from Johannesburg, 375 miles away. No group claimed responsibility. But the bombings were in line with previous attacks by the outlawed African National Congress, the main guerrilla group fighting to oust the white-led government. Telexes sent yesterday to the black guerrilla group’s exile headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia, went un answered. Last week, ANC President Oliver Tambo said during a visit to Paris that his guerrillas may have planted the car bomb, but he was not sure. AP Laserphoto Communications are often sketchy between Lusaka and guerrilla groups operating clandestinely within South Africa. The guerrillas usually live and hide their weapons in one of the vast black townships ringing the ma jor cities. The state Bureau of Information described the blasts as minor. The bureau is the only source of official news since the government declared a nationwide state of emergency June weather This afternoon, more of the muggies.. .look for hazy sunshine and a high of 86. Tonight, very mild and humid. Low 64. Tomorrow morning, clouds followed by hazy sunshine and a chance of afternoon thundershowers. High 82 Heidi Sonen Monday, June 23,1986 Vol. 87, No. 7 12 pages University Park, Pa. 16802 Published by students of The Pennsylvania State University ©1986 Collegian Inc. 12, giving police and troops wide powers and imposing unprecedented curbs on the press. The regulations forbid reporting police or troop activity without offi cial permission. In its daily bulletin on anti-apart heid and other violence, the bureau reported one fatality in the 24 hours until early yesterday, a black man killed by a mob in Soweto. That brought to 55 the death toll since the emergency. The first of the three Durban blasts, shortly before Saturday midnight, was caused by a limpet mine hidden in a garbage can outside the movie theater, the Information Bureau said. The explosion broke windows in seven nearby shops, but few people were in the area. Police kept reporters from the ex plosion sites, but members at the Bluff Hill Yacht Club said several vessels were badly damaged. _ Molope was killed 10 days after lawyers walked out of a judicial com mission of inquiry into the March 26 slayings to protest the promotion of ' Molope and another officer who was in command and ordered police to fire on the demonstration. Molope, a colonel at the time of the shootings, was made a brigadier this month. The shootings occurred on one of the bloodiest days in South Africa, when police killed a total of 30 people. Police in Bophuthatswana said po lice fired when more than 5,000 Blacks who had gathered in a soccer stadium at the Winterveld squatter camp refused to disperse and stoned police. Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu, renewing protests about detentions of clergy and church workers among the more than 1,000 people jailed without trial under the emergency, said it was becoming dangerous to be a Christian. “The government of this country is scared of the church and it is going to be dangerous to be a Christian,” Tutu told a confirmation service in Lena sia, an Indian surburb of Johannes burg. ‘The government of this country is scared of the church and it is going to he dangerous to be a Christian.’ Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu
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