Trafficking and torturing Eritrean refugees

By Graham Peebles
May 20, 2014

Eritrean activists overseas protest against the increasingly repressive regime of President Isaias Afwerki (Photo: Meskerem.net)

Life
in Eritrea is brutal and shrouded in secrecy. The world is
indifferent. The regime trusts nobody – even the United
Nation’s special rapporteur on Eritrea, Sheila Keetharuth,
has been denied a visa.

Poverty, repression and
injustice
Last year Keetharuth said: “Basic tenets
of the rule of law are not respected.” Following this, the
UN Security Council “strongly condemned” Eritrea’s
“continued widespread and systematic violations of human
rights and fundamental freedoms.” Violations include
forced and child labour, “arbitrary detention, and severe
restrictions on freedoms of expression, association and
religion” as well as violence against women, gender
inequality, gender-based violence, female genital mutilation
and economic discrimination.

Eritrea is beset by
fundamental problems, yet President Isaias Afwerki blindly
rejects all foreign intervention, including urgent food aid.
Eritrea was ranked 77th (out of 78) in the 2013
Global Hunger Index, and over 60 per cent of its population
is malnourished. In a report by risk analysis firm Maplecroft, it was identified as the
country where child labour is most rampant. Children as
young as 15 are routinely conscripted into the military
where, according to Human Rights Watch, they are “subject
to violence and ill-treatment. Beatings, torture, and
prolonged incarcerations are common.”

Military service
is compulsory and, although it is officially 18 months long,
many men, women and children spend their entire working
lives in uniform, and are used as forced labour on
essentially civilian jobs. Women recruits are victims of
rape and sexual violence by officers. There is no
constitution, functioning legislature or independent
judiciary – thousands are arrested and detained without
trial, denied access to lawyers and their families, and have
no appeal against sweeping judgments. According toHuman Rights Watch, “Death
in captivity is not unusual. Many prisoners disappear, their
whereabouts and health unknown. Former prisoners describe
being confined in vastly overcrowded underground cells or
shipping containers, with no space to lie down, little or no
light, oppressive heat or cold, and vermin.”

In 2001 all
independent media outlets were closed and journalists
arrested. There is no free press, radio or television.
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are banned,
telecommunications and the internet are monitored and
restricted, and parliamentary/presidential elections remain
a dream. All power is concentrated in the hands of Afwerki
who with the help of the military has held office since
independence from Ethiopia in 1991. As the Guardian
newspaper says, all “promises of democracy, the
foundation stone of the independence struggle, went out of
the window… a gap was quickly created between ex-fighters
and civilians, the diaspora were systematically prohibited
from returning, and draconian measures were taken against
the educated and those who voiced complaints”.

The
economy is in tatters – GDP per capita is around USD 560,
the state has destroyed the private sector and poured funds
into military mobilization. Eritrea has fought two border
wars with Ethiopia, with whom relations remain hostile
following Ethiopia’s failure to abide by the findings of an international boundary
commission. Since independence, militarized politics has
fashioned foreign policy and, despite nationwide poverty,
the junta has found the means to engage in armed conflict
with Yemen and Djibouti and has enmeshed itself in military
mayhem in eastern Sudan, Darfur and Somalia.

Seeking
sanctuary
Grinding poverty and the regime’s
widespread violations of human rights are forcing tens of
thousands of Eritreans – mostly young, poorly educated
women – to flee the country annually. According to the UN
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), over 305,000 (more
than 5 per cent of the six million population) left during
the past decade. Last year every month 3,000 people headed
for Egypt, Israel and the Gulf States, via Sudan and the
Sinai Peninsula. To facilitate passage, many turn to criminal smugglers who
charge extortionate “fees of between USD 1,000 and 5,000
USD“, and large numbers fall victim to traffickers
operating in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan and
Egypt.

Exploitation of the vulnerable is the name of the
trafficking game. The Eritrean militaryexploit citizens’
desperation to escape conscription and forced labour by
charging high fees to smuggle them out of the country;
corrupt officials in Egypt and Sudan – specifically
security personnel stationed on the border checkpoints –
facilitate refugees’ passage in exchange for bribes. A
small number of asylum seekers end up in Ethiopia, but the
vast majority find themselves in one of the overcrowded
Shagarab refugee camps (covering three sites) in east Sudan.
The UNHCR estimates there are approximately 89,000 refugees
in east Sudan most of whom are Eritrean. Approximately
30,000 live in Shagarab. It says it is “seeing rising incidents of
abductions and disappearances of mainly Eritrean refugees,
allegedly involving border tribes, in eastern Sudan. This is
occurring in and around refugee camps.”…

Sinai,
Israel and xenophobia
After the 1978 Camp David peace
accords between Israel and Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula was
returned to Egypt. It is a lawless wilderness that has for
years served as a transit route for people escaping
persecution, political turmoil, hunger and poverty from the
Horn of Africa. As Amnesty International reports, refugees and asylum seekers are
transported through the desert region in overcrowded
“trucks and other vehicles, often with poor
ventilation”. They receive little or no food and water,
and some die en-route.

In Sinai “they are subjected to
torture, forced marriage, rape or bonded labour”, held
captive with the aim of extorting money from their relatives
or communities. According to the UNHCR, “Many former
victims have recounted horrific tales of being held for
months and repeatedly raped, of having plastic melted over
their back and legs, and of being electrocuted and burned.
Many have died at the hands of their tormentors.”Others
report being urinated on and having fingernails pulled out.
Rape of both men and women is apparently commonplace.
“Some have allegedly been murdered because their families
were unable to pay the ransom,” Amnesty International
says, and even if ransoms are paid to secure their release,
some still get sold on to other traffickers.

The fortunate
one show are released pass over the Egyptian border into
Israel, where, traumatized and in need of support, they are
unwelcome. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu described refugees and asylum-seekers as
“infiltrators” who “threaten the Jewish character of
Israel”. These victims of brutality and criminal torture
are treated like criminals and herded into detention
centres, albeit with a daytime open-door policy. They are
not regarded as refugees by the Israeli authorities but, as
Netanyahu puts it, as “people who are breaking the law and
whom we will deal with to the fullest extent of the law”.
Comments by Eli Yishai, Israel’s former interior minister,
reveal a pervasive xenophobic attitude. He urged the
government “to put every single one of the infiltrators in
detention facilities, take their work permits, put them on
aeroplanes and send them packing to their countries or a
third country”.

As a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention
Relating to the Status of Refugees, Israel is obliged to
investigate asylum applications on an individual basis, yet
it ignores such duties and, far from examining individual
claims, responds to all African refugees in the same
dismissive manner. Asylum seekers cannot legally be deported
if they face danger in their country of origin, so the
Israelis have set up a “monetary incentive system”
whereby asylum seekers from Africa are offered USD 3,500 to
leave. Most of those taking up the “incentive” are
Sudanese.

This January tens of thousands of Eritrean and
Sudanese asylum seekers demonstrated in Tel-Aviv, calling
for the Israeli government to grant them refugee status and
to change its policy of detaining them in the Holot
detention facility in the Negev. The UNHCR supports the
people’s legitimate demands, and their representative in
Israel, Walpurga Englbrecht, “has publicly stated that the process of indefinite
detention in Holot does not comply with the norms of
international human rights. ”Eritreans make up an
estimated 60 per cent of the 60,000 illegal African migrants
estimated to be in Israel, and yet to date only two
Eritreans have been granted refugee status with its benefits
of citizenship.

Abused and suppressed at home, the
vulnerable are exploited from the beginning of their journey
to the detained ignoble end in what the UNHCR says, is one of the most unreported
humanitarian crises in the world.

Pressure needs to be put
on Israel to act with compassion and in accordance with its
international obligations, and Egypt must act to root out
traffickers operating in Sinai. Human Rights Watch states
that when the Egyptian military were active there in
September-October last year, abductions dropped. Security
personnel withdrew and the ransom phones resumed ringing.
Despite overwhelming evidence of horrific abuses taking
place within their jurisdiction, Egyptian forces have
“taken no steps to end them”, says Human Rights Watch.

The siege
state
Life in Eritrea, though, is the poisonous root
of the refugees’ agonies, and all steps need to be taken
to prevent it from becoming yet another failed state. In a
positive sign last year, the UN agreed a four-year USD 188
million “cooperation framework”.

“The UN will
provide USD 50 million and attempt to raise the remaining
USD 138 million from donor countries for capacity building,
food security, environmental improvements and social
services.” However, without regime involvement, providing
assistance presents “acute coordination challenges”,
because of “access restrictions on international staff”
and the “absence of up-to-date information” from the
government,according to Human Rights
Watch.

Eritrea has become what the International Crisis
Group describes as “a siege state”, whose
“government is suspicious of its own population,
neighbours and the wider world”. Engagement by the
international community; assessment of need, cooperation,
dialogue and support is urgently needed; enforcement of the
border ruling between Eritrea and Ethiopia would go a long
way to building trust with foreign powers – an essential
requirement in assessing and delivering aid and establishing
relations.