Tense migrants face expulsion countdown

Jonah Fisher
BBC, Djibouti

Tension is running high in Djibouti ahead of the Monday midnight deadline for illegal immigrants to leave the country.

Anxious mothers wait with their babies at a Djibouti camp

The illegal immigrants are scared to return home because of continuing conflict in Somalia and fears of repression and persecution in Ethiopia.

Zem Zem Mohammed is one of them.

Five years ago she fled to Djibouti after being suspected of sympathising with rebels in the Oromo region of Ethiopia, where there has been a low-level civil war against the Ethiopian Government.

Since then, Zem Zem has been living on the streets of Djibouti town, working as a maid for less than $70 a month.

A government crackdown on immigrants landed her in the Aour Aoussa transit camp in the desert, where she has been living for two weeks.

Zem Zem fears that the Ethiopian "government might kill me or... put me in jail " if she returns home.

But she has a sliver of hope - Zem Zem is on a waiting list to have her application for refugee status considered.

Half of the 6,000 people in this camp are not even on that list.

'I am waiting for death'

One man, who asked not be named, is one of those unlucky ones. But he says he will resist any measures to send him back to Ethiopia.

"I will fight them until I die because if I go there I am waiting for death," he said.

Tens of thousands of migrants are thought to still be in hiding across Djibouti.

The big question is what happens to them when the deadline expires on Monday.

Until the latest decision immigrants were thought to make up 15% of Djibouti's population.

Most of them are Ethiopians and Somalis happy to be paid better wages than at home. They usually worked as servants or labourers - jobs that better paid Djiboutians do not want to do.

The government here says they want more jobs for local people.

The illegal immigrants await an uncertain future

A spokesman from the Ministry of the Interior said the expulsions are a necessary step.

He said "80% of the violence, thefts and rapes" in Djibouti were "perpetrated by illegal immigrants".

He is determined to send all the illegal immigrants home.

"We will make sure that they go back to their country," he said.

Americans angry

Warnings by the United States of possible attacks on Western interests in Djibouti are thought to have led to the clampdown. But Washington denies this.

The United States Government has played no role in the formulation of this policy US embassy spokesman

The US has based its Horn of Africa counter terrorism operations in this small north east African country.

The Americans here are angry that they have been drawn into the controversy.

"The United States Government has played no role in the formulation of this policy," US embassy spokesman Chase Beamer said.

"This US Government is concerned about the potential human rights implications of this policy but it respects the sovereign right of the country of Djibouti to control its frontiers and implement immigration policy," Mr Beamer said.