Pretoria: More than 100 asylum seekers who had been camped out in front of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees offices in Pretoria for more than three years have been evicted by South African police.

After a wave of xenophobic violence in 2019, a large number of asylum seekers started living in temporary tents outside the UNHCR offices and requesting to be relocated to other nations. Last week, the Pretoria Municipality obtained a high court order to have them removed.

The Lindela Repatriation Centre is a temporary holding facility for undocumented migrants who are scheduled for deportation to their home countries or origins. According to court documents, the refugees will be evicted and transported there.

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With the assistance of immigration and other officers, a large number of police officers under the direction of the sheriff's department carried out the eviction.

State attorney Kobus Meijer used a loudspeaker to warn the migrants that if they resisted being taken away, they "will be arrested" and "detained." While some families left on their own volition, others protested. One refugee yelled, "I am not going in Lindela! It's better for me to die here!"

The obviously distressed woman is from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a dressing gown is wrapped around her waist. According to Laura Padoan, a spokeswoman for UNHCR, "they are asking that we transport them to a refugee camp in another country, but this is outside of our mandate."

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Those in charge of evicting families were urged by the UNHCR to do so "peacefully and that families are treated humanely, with dignity and respect," according to Padoan. Foreigners are permitted to apply for refugee status and work under South Africa's progressive asylum laws.

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But according to rights organisations, the system for processing applications is flawed and backlogged, leaving many asylum seekers in limbo for years. South Africa's economy, which is the most developed on the continent, attracts economic migrants, which has fueled sporadic acts of xenophobic violence and inflamed resentment among the country's unemployed residents.