Benedict Moran: Back home in Northern Ethiopia, Tewodros Tefara is a doctor in one of his country’s largest
hospitals.
Here
in Humdayat, on the tense border between Sudan and
Ethiopia, he's still a doctor but also a refugee, caring for other refugees.
His entire clinic fits
into a small room without electricity or running water. He has a laboratory,
pharmacy...
Dr. Tewodros Tefara: And here is where I do some
procedures, some wound dressing
and wound care.
Benedict Moran: Tefara is one of the estimated 50,000 people who
fled violence in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, dodging Ethiopian
government soldiers and swimming across fast-flowing waters to seek safety in
this remote part of Eastern Sudan.
Refugees arrive with
everything from common infections to gunshot wounds.
Dr. Tewodros Tefara: Last week we saw 920 patients in seven days.
Benedict Moran: Not everyone can make it to safety in Sudan.
Compared to the flood
of refugees that arrived last November, today,
only a trickle of arrivals cross into the country every week.
Benedict
Moran, Special Correspondent, Humdayat Border
Crossing: Just behind me here is
Ethiopia, and it’s an active conflict zone. Many of the refugees who recently
arrived here say they were hunted by militias who are trying to prevent them
from seeking safety in neighboring Sudan.
Doctor Tefara sees it regularly, he says: young men killed on
their way to safety.
Dr.
Tewodros Tefara: It was only last week that young men drowned
when they tried to cross in. They were running from the soldiers who were
following them to shoot. And then these young men were running and then they
drowned in the river and they died.
Benedict Moran: 42-year-old Shiwaye Hemayo arrived just days before we met him. The Ethiopian
army attacked his village in Western Ethiopia last November, he said. He fled, but was eventually caught. Suspected of being a rebel
fighter, he told us soldiers arrested him.
Shiwaye Hemayo,
Refugee: Without
any reason we had to stay for three months in Umura
prison because we are another tribe we didn’t have
rights in the prison. My friend had a chronic illness; he didn’t get medication so he died in the prison.
Benedict Moran: Hemayo eventually made it to Sudan.
Another friend, who he was traveling with, did not.
Shiwaye Hemayo:
We
traveled during the night with smugglers and they
almost found us. When we were crossing, one of our friends was shot and two
others fled back.
Benedict Moran: Hemayo no longer has to run
for his life. But his well-being is not yet guaranteed. Sudan’s refugee camps
do not yet provide safe haven.
100 miles further
inland, on a remote plain, more than 20,000 refugees were relocated here, to Tunaydbah Refugee Camp.
When refugees arrive,
they are given essential household items like blankets, sheets, and containers
for cooking.
There is regular
distribution of food including cooking oil and grains like sorghum. But the
camp’s living conditions are dire.
Benedict Moran: 32-year-old Solomon Gebrehenes
arrived here six months ago. Ten days before we visited him, a storm blew over
his tent. Videos taken by aid workers show wind and rain pounding the camp,
causing many shelters to collapse. Aid workers say nearly 70 percent of the
camp was destroyed.
Nearly
two weeks later, much of the camp is still in disrepair.
Since
the storm, Gebrehenes, his wife and four children
have slept in the muddy remains of his shelter, or out in the open.
Solomon Gebrehenes, Refugee: When the wind comes, it’s really strong. We fix it in the morning, but by night. It is
totally collapsed. There is nothing here. There’s no
jobs, there is nothing, from the morning to the night.
Benedict
Moran, Special Correspondent, Tunaydbah Refugee Camp: Aid workers workers
we’ve spoken to say the conditions in these camps are so bad that thousands of
refugees have left. Choosing to return home to the conflict zone in Ethiopia,
others north to Libya, hoping to reach the shores of Europe.
Benedict Moran: The rainy season will soon bring even more
extreme weather.
Aid
workers like Sergio Scor are bracing for the worst.
What
do you think is going to happen in the rainy season? You’ve seen the early
rains in May but the rains are going to get really bad
probably in the near future. What are you expecting?
Sergio Scor, Doctors without
Borders: I expect an exodus, to
be honest, of people. So more people, I think, are
going to leave the camp.
Solomon Gebrehenes, Refugee: Many of Sudan’s major donors
are also worried.
In a
letter to the UNHCR, the United Nations agency that set up the camps,
ambassadors from the U.S., EU, and six countries expressed, “serious concern
about the UNHCR’s leadership,” and requested urgent action to improve the
camps, writing: “The safety, security, and dignity of refugees is at severe
risk, and lives may be lost.”
The
Deputy Representative of UNHCR Sudan, Fatima Mohammed Cole, told PBS Newshour
that the agency is working to improve the camps.
But
she did not provide specifics.
Benedict
Moran: Were mistakes made by
the UNHCR?
Fatima Mohammed Cole, UNHCR Sudan: All I can say for now is that we're working against nature. We're working against
time. What they've highlighted in the letter is worrying for us,
particularly as a protection and a humanitarian agency. And these are issues
that we take seriously.
Benedict Moran: With ongoing fighting in Ethiopia, and even a potential famine
there, aid agencies in Sudan don’t expect an ebb
in new arrivals.
Back
at the Humdayat border crossing, Tewodros Tefara continues to work from dawn to dusk. His wife and
children remain in Ethiopia. Unsure when he’ll see them again, he finds
meaning in his daily work as a doctor.
Benedict Moran: How do you feel of being a refugee and also helping other refugees?
Dr. Tewodros Tefara: It’s very difficult to
describe really because we are in a very new environment. We practically
escaped for our lives, and we run out of our places with nothing in our hand. So we have to deal. We have to
sleep on the ground. We have to eat whatever we were supplied with and we have to drink whatever we get. I'm trying to
handle it in a way that I tell myself every time that it's OK. I'm trying to
help.
####
|
TIMECODE |
LOWER
THIRD |
1 |
1:13 |
HUMDAYAT BORDER CROSSING BENEDICT MORAN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT |
2 |
1:32 |
DR. TEWODROS TEFERA REFUGEE |
3 |
2:03 |
SHIEWAYE HEMAYO REFUGEE |
4 |
3:18 |
INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS |
5 |
3:41 |
SOLOMON GEBREHENES REFUGEE |
6 |
4:01 |
TUNAYDBAH REFUGEE CAMP BENEDICT MORAN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT |
7 |
4:32 |
SERGIO SCOR DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS |
8 |
5:26 |
FATIMA MOHAMMED COLE UNHCR SUDAN |