The Skeptic الشكاك

646 The Eritreans

The AP reports that seven Eritrean asylum-seekers escaped as police transferred them from one prison to another, in preparation for sending them back home. Police recaptured five, but two are still on the run.

Amnesty International has been campaigning on the asylum-seekers’ behalf:

Egypt must stop fights to torture in Eritrea

The Egyptian authorities are preparing to forcibly return up to 1,200 asylum-seekers to Eritrea. This follows the deportation of 200 people on Thursday evening and 200 others on Wednesday 11 June. Amnesty International has said that the organization fears 180 more might be deported today, late in the evening.

Asylum-seekers returned to Eritrea are at risk of torture and other ill-treatment, particularly those who have fled from compulsory military service. Most are likely to be arbitrarily detained incommunicado in inhumane conditions for weeks, sometimes years.

Amnesty International has urged the Egyptian authorities to stop all forcible returns to Eritrea. The organization also asked that all Eritrean asylum-seekers be given immediate access to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Egypt to assess their asylum claims.

The 200 asylum-seekers deported yesterday evening were put on a special EgyptAir flight in Aswan International airport. Most of them had been detained for months in Nasr al Nuba police station near Aswan city, but were moved to Central Security Forces camp in Shallal, south of Aswan, before deportation. They include women and children.

When the asylum seekers learned they were to be deported back to Eritrea, they implored the security forces not to do so and some even threatened to kill themselves. They were then searched to make sure they did not carry any object they could use to harm themselves. The asylum-seekers didn’t physically resist being put on the airplane but continued to cry and beg.

The 200 asylum-seekers deported the day before, on Wednesday, had been detained in a Central security forces camp in Shallal in Aswan city. They were told they would be transported to the UNHCR office in Cairo.

Their lawyers tried to reach them the same evening to offer medication and food, but could not get to them. The Eritreans were in fact taken to Aswan International airport and put on a special EgyptAir flight to Eritrea.

Of the further 1,200 Eritrean asylum-seekers facing deportation, hundreds are detained in several police stations near Aswan city. Dozens are detained in Al-Qanater prison near the capital, Cairo.

Around 700 are held near the Red Sea cities of Hurghada and Marsa Alam. Lawyers representing the asylum-seekers held in Aswan believe that 200 of those held in Hurghada are being transported to Aswan, in preparation for forcible return.

Since the end of February, flows of Eritrean asylum-seekers have reached Egypt either via its southern border with Sudan or by sea, south of the city of Hurghada. Others are recognized as refugees by the UNHCR in Sudan, and are fleeing Sudan to avoid being forcibly returned to Eritrea by the Sudanese authorities.

Hundreds of the Eritrean asylum-seekers in Aswan were charged with illegal entry in Egypt and were sentenced to a suspended one-month prison term. They were, however, kept in administrative detention by orders of the Ministry of Interior, as granted under the Emergency law in Egypt.

The UNHCR issued guidelines to all governments opposing the return to Eritrea of rejected Eritrean asylum-seekers on the grounds of the record of serious human rights violations in Eritrea. These guidelines are still in force.

Two asylum-seekers returned to Eritrea by the German authorities on 14 May are believed to have been arrested on arrival and have not been seen since. Another asylum-seeker returned from the UK in November 2007 was detained in inhumane conditions and ill-treated before being released.

Thousands are detained in Eritrea, in secret and indefinitely, without charge or trial. They have been arrested for suspected opposition to the government, practicing their religious beliefs as members of banned evangelical or other churches, evading military conscription or trying to flee the country.

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