Seeking safety from their native states, most of them people from Africa, they escape their countries in search for freedom, and end up being kidnapped, beaten, raped, tortured, starved, and sold for ransom, and after that they end up being prisoners of other states in the Middle East and Europe. They are the invisible victims of some of the most horrific humanitarian and the unreported disasters.
Rights groups: Hundreds of refugees held hostage in Sinai ‘torture camps’: http://slaverytoday.org/horrific-accounts-of-torture-rape-and-organ-theft-continue-to-emerge-from-egypt%E2%80%99s-sinai-desert/
They are called refugee or asylum seekers, like some paper could make a human less or more human. They are yet another victims of racism, and of abusive state policies that place more value on some border or some „market” than on human life, while allowing human traffickers enrich themselves from such crimes.
Trigger Warning – the testimonies that are following are graphic, but please try read them to understand why the war on refugees must be stopped.
This week, people who are called asylum seekers started a 3-day heartbreaking March for Freedom from the “open jail” at the Negev to Jerusalem demanding freedom. All they got was more prison. Most of them have already been jailed for 18 to 24 months without trial. They are jailed just for having no papers.
www.activestills.org
„I don’t like prison! I need freedom! I need freedom! I need freedom!”, says this man minutes before being arrested:
The second March For Freedom of the African people ended with all of them being beaten and arrested. ”We didn’t commit any crime,” said Abdul Hamid, one of the refugees during the demonstration, short time before the violent detentions started. Immigration inspectors began to surround the marchers and beat them, drag them to the ground and pulled them with force, onto the buses. Refugees stood battered and bruised, weeping and calling: “Freedom, freedom!” Half of them began to flee into the desert, without water, without food, and without any real chance. Short time later they were captured and detained violently.
“We will go to Be’er Sheva, Tel Aviv, anywhere, to tell the world that we’re in prison for two years and we are still suffering. We ask for help and we want human rights. If you do not want us here pass us over to the UN or any other organization to take care of us. We are refugees, not criminals”, said one person. More here:
To get to Israel, most of these people had to endure the horrors of the Sinai torture camps: “These Africans, mainly Eritrean refugees, were kidnapped by the Rashaida tribe from Sudan, purchased by Egyptians, and resold to Bedouins in the northern Sinai. Shackled and continuously tortured in dozens of makeshift torture camps, they are forced to call their relatives to raise funds for Hamas arms smugglers. Those who are unable to come up with the ransom money are murdered. To date, the Egyptian government chooses to do nothing to stop these atrocities.”
Victim of the Sinai torture camp: „At that point, actually, we really wanted to die. We thought dying would be much simpler. It would actually be an act of mercy.”
Sister Aziza, in PHR-I open clinic, collected the testimonies of Sinai victims to help make their voices heard.
A 22 year old male from Eritrea has been a kept a hostage in Sinai for 240 days, paid $25.000 to the smugglers for his release, and arrived to Israel in February 2012. His is testimony #1062: „The whole day we were obliged to stand, the smugglers did not allow us to sit. We suffered hunger, but the worst is thirst because they did not give us water at all. We could not even speak. We were drinking our own urine. Sometimes we fainted. Even those who died, they were still asking money for them. We were informing the people that they should not send money for their brothers because they already died. I witnessed the death of six people. The six people that died, some of them were beaten until they died. The other two were beaten, they suffered for two days and they died. We suffered from diarrhea, the smell of it brought big problems. Even when someone felt very sick we all who were chained together (4) had to go to the toilet to do the diarrhea. They beat you so bad in a very bad place, even if you fall on a dead body they beat you more and more they do not care. There were old people and young people. I heard children, but I never saw them. For eight months I was not allowed to shower. How could I take shower, we did not even have enough to dip our fingers.”
http://www.dw.de/anguish-for-eritrean-refugee-over-daughters-sinai-fate/a-16870454
A woman from Eritrea was still in chains when she gave birth to her baby, just hours after being tortured by her captors. They gave her a rusty piece of metal to cut the umbilical cord, then continued to beat her daily, demanding $35,000 in ransom from her family.
A 21 year old woman also from Eritrea arrived in Israel in January 2012, after being held hostage in Sinai for 153 days, until her family paid $40.000 to the smugglers to release her. Her testimony is # 933: „I was sold to a trafficker called Abu Abdalla, after I already paid 15.000 Dollar to another trafficker. I was beaten, chained and blindfolded and the traffickers didn’t allow us to sit, to lie down or to sleep. We had to stand all the time. I was hanged from the ceiling to threaten to kill me and you can still see the scar on my neck. Also, I received electrical shocks; a scar remained on the other side of my neck. The traffickers obliged us to smoke Hashish. They did this only to the girls. When I took the drug I fainted and I didn’t realize what happened around me. Everything became black. Once, they forced us to take the drugs three days in a row, afterwards it was only every now and then. I was scared that I was sexually abused while I was unconscious but I did tests when I arrived in Israel and it seems ok. In my group there were nine girls with me. All of us were beaten. While my group was crossing to Israel, there was shooting at the border and two girls of the group were caught by the Egyptians. I don’t know what happened to one of them, she disappeared. The other one went back to Eritrea. Three girls of the group are still with the traffickers. I heard that they were sold again. Only two other girls of my group managed to enter Israel. While I was in Sinai six people died because of the beatings. All of them were boys. At the beginning there were 50 refugees in my group. We received a piece of bread every 24 hours. We were asked to be naked in front of everybody. Something like this happened a lot, most of the time we had to take of our clothes.”
You may join people who want to stop this and help spread this petition: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Egypt_Sinai_Stop_torture_camps/?pv=56
„This is an urgent appeal to the Permanent Representative of Egypt and Israel to the United Nations to stop criminal gangs in Egypt’s Sinai Desert near the Israel border kidnapping, trafficking and brutally torturing refugees and asylum seekers, primarily from Eritrea. We urge you to tackle the impunity of aggressors to stop the violence. Our petition is to ask for immediate action to identify and apprehend traffickers, and to assist and protect victims of trafficking.”
UN: The human trafficking in Sinai is one of the most unreported humanitarian crises in the world!
„The Sinai Peninsula is best known for being a holiday destination — but for thousands of vulnerable refugees it has become a torture trap. Egypt and Israel can put an end to the Sinai Death Camps, but they need to hear from us now.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/inside-sinais-torture-camps/265204/
Lured from refugee camps with false promises or kidnapped by criminal gangs, the victims — who are mostly from Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan — are used to extort money from relatives. Tortured every day through rape, being hung upside down for hours, and burning with electric cables their screams are relayed to relatives over the phone, along with demands for money.
Four thousand are thought to have died already. In July, Israel allowed Egypt to deploy more forces to the area in an effort to address the lawlessness. But with the spotlight on Egypt’s domestic problems, any progress is quickly evaporating.
The Egyptian government and army, the international MFO forces at the UN base, the Israel army all know about the torture camps, but there’s no political will to intervene.
In April, Amnesty International reported that “many people held captive in Sinai have been subjected to extreme violence and brutality while waiting for ransoms to be paid by families. Including beatings with metal chains, sticks and whips; burning with cigarette butts or heated rubber and metal objects; suspension from the ceiling; pouring gasoline over the body and setting it on fire…being urinated on and having finger nails pulled out. Rape of men and women, and other forms of sexual violence have been frequently reported.”
The New York Times estimates that 7,000 refugees have been abused in this way over the last four years, and that 4,000 of them may have died. These figures are drawn from data provided by aid organizations in Israel, Europe and the United States.
The power in the Sinai region besides the local tribes has the Egyptian Army. But because of an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979 the number of Egyptian forces that can be deployed in the Sinai is limited. In July in acknowledgment of the grave situation in Sinai, Israel permitted the Egyptian army to deploy two more infantry battalions to the peninsula. But without international pressure most likely no intervention against the human trafficking will happen through the key players.
We have to act now! The unsecure political situation in Egypt gives even more room for lawlessness in the Sinai region. Let’s get 7’000 voices before these meetings: ONE voice for every abused and tortured refugee!
Eritrean refugees in Tel Aviv, many of whom have endured the horrors of the Sinai torture camps, ask why no one – not Israel, Egypt, the US nor the EU – will intervene to stop the brutal trade in human lives. Let’s give them a strong voice!”
There is no such thing as a legal/illegal human being.
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Egypt_Sinai_Stop_torture_camps/?pv=56
More Information on the Sinai torture camps for refugees:
THE WASHINGTON TIMES (21.July 2013):http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/21/in-sinai-i-saw-hell-refugees-are-easy-prey-for-bru/?page=1
Süddeutsche Zeitung (24.July 2013) in German: http://sz-magazin.sueddeutsche.de/texte/anzeigen/40203/Im-Reich-des-Todes
BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22575182
CNN (the freedom project): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcxGwRIn-2w
SPIEGEL online: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/human-trafficking-thrives-on-sinai-peninsula-a-891585.html
GUARDIAN: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/17/eritrea-people-trafficking-arms-sinai
Stop Sinai Torture: http://www.stopsinaitorture.org/
SOS Sinai: http://sossinai.org/
Amnesty Report: Egypt/Sudan: Refugees and Asylum-Seekers Face Brutal Treatment, Kidnapping for Ransom and Human Trafficking: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AFR04/001/2013/en/9fdcde38-b88b-43a0-b076-ee4b7a3b8c06/afr040012013en.pdf
Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration: Caught in the Borderlands: Torture Experienced, Expressed, and Remembered by Eritrean Asylum Seekers in Israel: http://oxmofm.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Caught-in-the-Borderlands1.pdf
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