Mauritania refugees return home after 20 long years exiled in Senegal.
CHAN:
Mauritanian refugees have begun returning home from exile in Senegal, nearly two decades after they fled their homeland due to ethnic purges.
STORY:
The first of thousands of black Mauritanian refugees returned home from exile in Senegal on Tuesday. In 1989 they were forced to flee bloody ethnic purges by the regime of former dictator Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya.
Hundreds of people were killed and some 80,000 expelled when Taya's government drove them out.
Mauritanian President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, who took office in April, pledged to improve human rights in the Islamic republic.
The refugees crossed the Senegal River by ferry to the Mauritanian side of the border town of Rosso. Their goods and livestock packed on white trucks of the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.
[Aw Abou Bakrin, Rosso Resident]:
"We are so happy for the arrival of these people today because it is an event we have waited 20 years for...It's a celebration for everybody, it is the joy for all Mauritania."
Roughly half of the Mauritanian refugees remaining in Senegal have already registered to return.
[Mamadou Keita,Refugee]:
"We will do our best to join our country again but we need to be shown at least the minimum of respect and that the things that have passed don't happen anymore."
There remain concerns over lingering racism in the Islamic state and unanswered calls for compensation and the trial of those responsible for the purges.
Tags: Mauritania refugees Senegal exile ntdtv Mauritanian dictator Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya war
