Sudanese refugees in Uganda riot to protest relocation

Khartoum- Sudan (PANA) -- Sudanese refugees housed in a makeshift camp in northern Uganda rioted on Thursday to protest a government move to relocate them to the north-west of the country, press reports said on Saturday.
"Refugees at Kiryandongo camp rioted and took captive their leaders as they showed opposition to the government's plan to move 10,000 of them to two camps in Yumbe and Arua districts," the reports quoted Ugandan police official Grace Turyagumanawe as saying.
She said the refugees assaulted a female leader and seized 19 others who were about to be taken on a trip to assess the proposed sites, which the refugees claimed were unsafe.
Some of the captives were reportedly stripped naked.
"The small police presence there meant that we had to call in the military to contain the situation," Turyagumanawe added.
The relocation has sparked a row between the Ugandan government and the Geneva-based UN High Commissioner for Refugees that culminated in Uganda's recent expulsion of the UNHCR representative in the country.
Last year some 24,000 refugees left northern Uganda's Pader District after an attack on their camp by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels and now live in squalid conditions at the congested Kiryandongo Refugee Camp, 200 km north of Kampala, the Ugandan capital.