‘People catch us, sell us like goats’ – People
traffickers stalk Eritreans in Sudan desert
14 January, 2012 | Kuwait Times
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
blown collection of shelters inside the Sudanese border, he accused
the local Rashaida tribe of involvement in the people trade, which the
United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) is hoping to counter
through a $2-million effort to support local police and improve camp
security.
“These groups that are involved in this are heavily armed. We hear of
firefights between government forces and these armed groups,” said
Felix Ross, the UNHCR’s senior protection officer in Sudan’s eastern
region. He told AFP the problem has emerged over the past two or
three years, with the UNHCR hearing of at least 20 kidnapping cases
a month. “But we believe that the number itself is much higher,” Ross
said. On a visit to the Shagarab camp on Thursday, the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said a global criminal
network of smugglers and kidnappers is “taking profit of the
desperate situation of many Eritreans.”
Shagarab camp receives about 2,000 asylum-seekers monthly, largely
from neighboring Eritrea where many have fled compulsory military
service. The UN estimates that 80 percent of the new arrivals leave
the camp within two months for Khartoum, Egypt, Israel or further
afield, in search of better economic opportunities. “Due to the
limitation on the freedom of movement of refugees in Sudan, refugees
and asylum-seekers resort to smugglers to transport them into,
through and out of Sudan,” a UNHCR briefing paper said.
But some simply end up being kidnapped for ransoms which the
UNHCR said can reach $10,000. “Here there is not security. There is
many person kidnapped,” an Eritrean who has spent four months at
Shagarab said, speaking in English. He and other Eritreans
interviewed during a UN-organised visit cannot be named, for their
own protection. One 23-year-old woman-who like the men said she
had fled military service-said smugglers took her in 2010 from Eritrea
to Egypt, “and when we arrived there they asked my family for more
money,” which they did not have.
She was arrested and jailed before being deported and then making
her way this time without involving traffickers-to the Sudanese camp.
An Eritrean man, aged 27, said camp residents face a risk of being
snatched if they walk out to the toilet area at night. Others are
“kidnapped by Rashaida” on their way in from the border, he said at
the one-room cement block he shares with 25 other men. Their
belongings hang from the wall beside a picture of Christ.
“They ask them for ransom money… some of the people said it’s
about 50,000 pounds ($12,000),” he said through a translator. “Most
of the time they cannot pay, so they are tortured.” UNHCR chief
Guterres said some refugees who ended up in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula
were “killed for the traffic of organs.”
The Rashaida are a camel-raising tribe whose buildings near the state
capital Kassala are painted bright pastel pink and blue. The area
around their roadside market, a row of corrugated metal shacks, is
believed to be a smuggling hotbed for everything including people,
Ross said. Human traffickers are “making a lot of money in a region
where it’s difficult to earn money,” he said. “We know that in the
refugee community there are people working with these criminal
groups.”
Between Kassala and the camps 120 kilometers (75 miles) away, the
Eritrean border lies beyond trees barely visible in the distance across
the barren brown earth-the smugglers’ turf. “If you were to travel here
by night you would see a lot of lights crossing through the desert,”
Ross said. Sudan’s refugee commission recognizes almost all of the
new asylum-seekers as refugees, but if they stay in the camps they
could wait years for resettlement, and have little in common with older
refugees or the local population.
The Eritreans arriving since 2005 are mostly Christian and not Arabic
speakers, in contrast with an older group of mostly Muslim Eritreans
who began fleeing to Muslim-majority Sudan four decades ago during
their country’s independence war with Ethiopia, the UN says. “How
about us, the newcomers?” an Eritrean who has spent eight months at
the camp asked AFP. “Nobody cares about us.” — AFP
Courtesy
traffickers stalk Eritreans in Sudan desert
14 January, 2012 | Kuwait Times
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- SHAGARAB REFUGEE
CAMP: Moving at night
through the cold, flat desert,
armed people smugglers are
exploiting, abducting and
sometimes killing Eritreans
fleeing their authoritarian
homeland, the UN and
refugees say. “People catch
us, sell us like goats,” one
Eritrean asylum-seeker said
blown collection of shelters inside the Sudanese border, he accused
the local Rashaida tribe of involvement in the people trade, which the
United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) is hoping to counter
through a $2-million effort to support local police and improve camp
security.
“These groups that are involved in this are heavily armed. We hear of
firefights between government forces and these armed groups,” said
Felix Ross, the UNHCR’s senior protection officer in Sudan’s eastern
region. He told AFP the problem has emerged over the past two or
three years, with the UNHCR hearing of at least 20 kidnapping cases
a month. “But we believe that the number itself is much higher,” Ross
said. On a visit to the Shagarab camp on Thursday, the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said a global criminal
network of smugglers and kidnappers is “taking profit of the
desperate situation of many Eritreans.”
Shagarab camp receives about 2,000 asylum-seekers monthly, largely
from neighboring Eritrea where many have fled compulsory military
service. The UN estimates that 80 percent of the new arrivals leave
the camp within two months for Khartoum, Egypt, Israel or further
afield, in search of better economic opportunities. “Due to the
limitation on the freedom of movement of refugees in Sudan, refugees
and asylum-seekers resort to smugglers to transport them into,
through and out of Sudan,” a UNHCR briefing paper said.
But some simply end up being kidnapped for ransoms which the
UNHCR said can reach $10,000. “Here there is not security. There is
many person kidnapped,” an Eritrean who has spent four months at
Shagarab said, speaking in English. He and other Eritreans
interviewed during a UN-organised visit cannot be named, for their
own protection. One 23-year-old woman-who like the men said she
had fled military service-said smugglers took her in 2010 from Eritrea
to Egypt, “and when we arrived there they asked my family for more
money,” which they did not have.
She was arrested and jailed before being deported and then making
her way this time without involving traffickers-to the Sudanese camp.
An Eritrean man, aged 27, said camp residents face a risk of being
snatched if they walk out to the toilet area at night. Others are
“kidnapped by Rashaida” on their way in from the border, he said at
the one-room cement block he shares with 25 other men. Their
belongings hang from the wall beside a picture of Christ.
“They ask them for ransom money… some of the people said it’s
about 50,000 pounds ($12,000),” he said through a translator. “Most
of the time they cannot pay, so they are tortured.” UNHCR chief
Guterres said some refugees who ended up in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula
were “killed for the traffic of organs.”
The Rashaida are a camel-raising tribe whose buildings near the state
capital Kassala are painted bright pastel pink and blue. The area
around their roadside market, a row of corrugated metal shacks, is
believed to be a smuggling hotbed for everything including people,
Ross said. Human traffickers are “making a lot of money in a region
where it’s difficult to earn money,” he said. “We know that in the
refugee community there are people working with these criminal
groups.”
Between Kassala and the camps 120 kilometers (75 miles) away, the
Eritrean border lies beyond trees barely visible in the distance across
the barren brown earth-the smugglers’ turf. “If you were to travel here
by night you would see a lot of lights crossing through the desert,”
Ross said. Sudan’s refugee commission recognizes almost all of the
new asylum-seekers as refugees, but if they stay in the camps they
could wait years for resettlement, and have little in common with older
refugees or the local population.
The Eritreans arriving since 2005 are mostly Christian and not Arabic
speakers, in contrast with an older group of mostly Muslim Eritreans
who began fleeing to Muslim-majority Sudan four decades ago during
their country’s independence war with Ethiopia, the UN says. “How
about us, the newcomers?” an Eritrean who has spent eight months at
the camp asked AFP. “Nobody cares about us.” — AFP
Courtesy
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