ROME, 5th May 2009 - Asmara, Cairo, Tripoli, Asmara. Father Austin glances through a dozen white envelopes. He checks the addresses written in pen. There are no stamps. These are the letters of Eritrean prisoners of Burg el Arab. We are in Egypt. The parish of Saint Yousuf, on the Nile island of Zamalek in the centre of Cairo, is a reference point for about 200 Eritreans living in the neighbourhood. The day before a delegation of the parish visited the prison in Burg el Arab, in the north, near Alexandria. They met 15 detainees, who gave them these letters to send to their relatives. Just in Burg el Arab, there are around 170 Eritreans detainees. And not only there. During the last two years, half of the Egyptian prisons have been filled with Eritreans and Sudanese refugees. Once arrested in the Sinai Peninsula, they are brought to Qanater, in Cairo, el-Arish and Rafah, near the Gaza Strip, and in the south in Hurghada, Shallal, Aswan.
It's the new route of the Sudanese and Eritrean diaspora. The final destination is Israel. They enter in Egypt from Sudan, by land, or by plane, in Cairo, holding a tourist visa. From the capital, some intermediaries organize the transport to Isma’iliyah, in the north, often hidden in the trucks. From there, the exiles are brought to el-Arish and Rafah. Thanks to its proximity to the Gaza Strip, these cities have been living off any kind of smuggling for years. And it’s quite easy to find guides that can take you to the Israeli border, in the desert of Sinai. Passengers are then, often left to themselves along the barbed wire fence on the border. Down there the greatest danger is represented by the border police, which in these cases has the order to shoot on sight. In 2008 Amnesty International denounced the killing of 25 refugees, shot dead in the Sinai. Many of the victims were Eritreans. Like the two young men mortally wounded on 17th September 2007: Isequ Meles, 24 years old, and Yemane Eyasu, 30. Both had the blue card released by the High Commissioner for Refugees of the United Nations (UNHCR), which recognized them as political refugees.A year and half after their murder, I meet two of their friends. Their names are M. and I., they ask to speak under anonymity. We have dinner together in a Lebanese restaurant in Mohandesin, in Cairo.
I. was arrested in May of 2008. At that time he was in Isma'iliyah, directed to Israel. Police caught him while he was walking, alone, in the street. Up to 60 people were kept in cells of eight meters by five. They slept on the ground, one on top of the other, with only one bathroom, locked up 24 hours a day, eating just bread, cheese and tahina (a sesame sauce). There were Eritreans, Sudanese, but also Ivorians, Nigerians and Cameroonians, as the route is now practiced also by the Western Africans. Most of them were arrested while crossing the Sinai. There were also some Eritreans who came from Libya. Instead of risking their lives in the Mediterranean sea as well as in the Libyan prisons, they had preferred to try their fate with the Jewish State. I. remembers the pungent smell of those days. Many suffered dysentery. Others had bad dermatitis and scabies. I. will not forget the humiliation, the insults and the violence of the police, like when they were beaten after the ineffective hunger strike that lasted two days. I. was released after 24 days in jail. Thanks to his UNHCR blue card. All the others were deported.
From 11th to 20th June 2008, at least 810 Eritreans were repatriated from Egypt. While in Cairo Amnesty International launched cries of alarm, in Asmara, the State television Eri TV broadcasted the images of the repatriated, warmly greeting their return. A government spokesman announced that all of them would early go back to their families, and even receive a compensation of 500 Nafaa, about $50. But that was not the case. Their relatives who live in Cairo know it for sure. They are in permanent contact with their families in Eritrea. They say that only women with children were released. The others were brought back to the army they deserted, or in prison, as in the case of C..
C. was imprisoned with I. in the jail of Isma'iliyah. And he was deported in June 2008. After six months of silence, he called M., a friend of I., in January 2009. He phoned from Khartoum, in Sudan, where he is still living. He told they managed to escape from the prison of Weea, near Gelaelo, with three other political prisoners. The prison of Weea has a very bad reputation in Eritrea. It is located in a depression, one of the hottest areas of the country. Among the several tortures, prisoners are often exposed to the sun during the hottest hours of the day, when the temperatures can reach 120 degrees Fahrenheit . M. knows well Weea. He was part of the group of university students arrested and taken to this jail in August 2001 after their demonstrations against the authoritarian turning point of President Issaias. The protests culminated with the annulment of the elections, the arrest of 11 important personalities of the Government and political parties, the expulsion of the Italian Ambassador and the banning of the independent press. Two of the arrested students in 2001, died. Anyway not all the repatriated were brought to Weea, for sure. According to our information, the deserters would have been brought back to their army units. While those who had not yet started the military service would have been sent to Klima’s military training camp, near Aseb. Then others would have simply disappeared: their families have no ideas of what happened to them since their return.Despite the collective deportations, however, the departures towards Israel continue. Until the point that the Israeli parliament has recently voted in first reading, a draft infiltration law which provides up to seven years of jail for illegal entry into its territory. But when did this new route open? And why Israel instead of Europe? To understand it we have to do a step back.
It was 1983, when the third war in South Sudan started. A war which killed two million of people during 20 years of fighting between the army and the rebels of the SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army), causing hundreds of thousands of displaced people inside and outside the country. Egypt in the north was one of the natural ways out. The first refugees arrived in Cairo in 1985. They were assisted by Abbasiyah's Combonian Fathers of the Church of the Holy Heart.