How Bedouins are kidnapping and ransoming African refugees in Egypt's lawless hinterland
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| Migrants from Eritrea rest outside a building used to house people waiting to be smuggled into Israel |
Memories of torture still haunt 17 year-old Ksamet five weeks after
she was released from a small, underground room where Bedouins held her
captive for two months in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. She was
repeatedly raped, beaten, and burned as family and friends abroad raised
money for her $25,000
ransom. "They tortured us almost every day," Ksamet, from Eritrea,
said through an interpreter. "And every week, if we didn't pay, they'd
torture us even
more."
The young woman is one of hundreds of Africans who have been held
against their will in the lawless region that borders Israel, often
severely abused and
largely ignored by the international community. Bedouin are holding
over 1,000 people, and Egyptian police are detaining 500 more, according
to Meron
Estefanos, a Sweden-based Eritrean activist and radio presenter who
has spoken to hundreds of Eritreans held hostage in the Sinai.
The steady flow of people north through the Sinai has taken place
since 2006 and initially consisted mainly of Sudanese migrants paying to
be smuggled to economic opportunities in Israel. In 2008, many
Eritreans seeking asylum in Israel started to come, too. The vast
majority were trying to
escape poverty and conscription under an oppressive dictatorship
where indefinite national service is mandatory for most -- frequently
into their 40s and
50s. Legally leaving the country is nearly impossible.
While many Eritreans taken hostage in the Sinai had paid smugglers
to take them to Israel, more and more of those held hostage over the
past three years
never even had a desire to go there. Many have been kidnapped in or
around refugee camps in Sudan and Ethiopia or on Sudan's borders -- or
sold by rogue
smugglers or corrupt Sudanese border guards -- and brought to Sinai
where Bedouin extort them for cash. "I had no intention of going to
Israel," said
Ksamet, who left behind two sick parents after the military drafted
her. "I wanted to go to Khartoum."
Instead, her and her fiancé, who was also fleeing military service,
made it just across the border to Kassala, a city in eastern Sudan only a
dozen miles
from Eritrea. But after four days there, her smugglers -- whom she
had paid about $3,300 -- sold her to members of the Rashaida tribe of
Eritrea and Sudan,
notorious for trafficking people and weapons up the Red Sea coast.
Ksamet's fiancé ran free before they could get ahold of him. "I still
don't know where
he is," she said.
Hostages report being subjected to electrocution, burned with molten
plastic, beaten with chains and rods, hung by their hair, and
threatened with organ
harvesting, among other torture methods, according to refugee-aid
groups and activists. Sexual abuse ranges from rape and the burning of
genitalia to
sodomy with heated objects -- even to children.
Eritrean villages sometimes sell off homes, livestock, and jewelry
to free relatives from the kidnappers; ransoms can reach $50,000. The
Bedouin put their
captives on the phone with family in the diaspora, beating them so
their relatives hear them scream as they plead for help.
The Bedouin hold them for months on average, and many people do not
survive. Dumped corpses litter the desert, with 4,000 dead over past
five years,
according to a September report Estefanos co-authored through
Tilburg University, in the Netherlands, and Europe External Policy
Advisors, a research
center in Brussels. "The treatment has gotten to a level where they
would rather die than live," said an employee at a refugee-aid
organization in Cairo.
Those raising money often pool funds to free women and children
first. Ksamet was one of three women in a group of 14 that also included
children. "I was
the only woman left" after the other two paid their ransom, Ksamet
said. "So they prioritized me." Often even when the ransom is met,
activists say, the
Bedouin merely collect the money and sell their human haul on to the
next group of kidnappers, ensuring more rounds of beatings and begging.
Though over 84 percent of Eritreans seeking refugee status around
the world in 2011 received it (or humanitarian protection), Egypt and
Israel have denied
many of them the opportunity to even apply. Egypt generally views
the sub-Saharan Africans as economic migrants, and the Israeli
government labels them
"infiltrators."
Over 57,000 people have made it across the Sinai to Israel and
currently reside there as of June 2012, the vast majority from Eritrea
and Sudan, according
to Israeli government figures. Most arrived in Israel in the last
four years. To stem the influx of Africans, Israel has been building a
fence along its
border this year and enacted legislation allowing authorities to
detain border-crossers for up to three years without a trial. The
numbers have dropped
significantly since.
Twenty to 30 percent of Eritrean asylum seekers who entered Israel
before June were tortured in Sinai, according to Shahar Shoham, the
director of the
migrants and status-less persons department at Physicians for Human
Rights-Israel, citing data from her organization (which provides medical
services to
the asylum seekers) and another Israeli non-governmental group, the
Hotline for Migrant Workers. Since June, the Israeli military has only
let through
those who exhibit signs of torture, she said.
According to human-rights groups, Israel has broken international
law by not letting many asylum seekers petition for refugee status. In
recent months,
activists say, Israel has turned back Africans at the border,
sending them to Egyptian troops who shoot those approaching the border
and inhumanely
imprison others for months. This risk, coupled with Israel's recent
crackdown, has caused more and more hostages to insist that the Bedouin
bring them to
Cairo, not the Israeli border, upon their release.
One refugee-aid organization in Cairo reports an uptick in former
African hostages seeking its services since March -- more than 75, with
all Eritrean but
one. They sometimes arrive in large groups rather than the one or
two who would come together previously. In the same time period, 113
people -- including
40 unaccompanied children -- have approached the Egypt offices of
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) after escaping
the traffickers.
* * *
The Egyptian government has struggled to control the Sinai region,
where militants killed 16 soldiers in August, and traffickers ferry not
just humans, but
guns, ammunition, and other goods destined for the Gaza Strip. The
military launched a massive security operation in the peninsula after
the August attack,
but central authority remains weak there. Stopping the traffickers
and freeing the Eritreans continues to be a low priority for
authorities, one part of
the complex Sinai puzzle.
Without some degree of complicity from local authorities in the
Sinai and high-level officials at the source, the trade could not
persist, activists said.
"The Egyptian security forces' track record on conducting law
enforcement is pretty horrific from a human-rights perspective," Heba
Morayef, a Cairo-based
researcher for Human Rights Watch, said. A lack of domestic
attention in Egypt, the government's reluctance to recognize the
hostages as asylum seekers
rather than economic migrants, and racism toward black Africans --
plus a host of other pressing issues -- have kept the Sinai torture
camps open, even
though activists said police could probably shut them down in just a
few days.
UNHCR has sought access to sub-Saharan Africans arrested by Egyptian
police on their way into the Sinai, but the government limits the
agency's access,
according to Mohamed Dayri, the UNHCR's regional representative for
Egypt and the Arab League. Dayri insists that no Eritreans have been
repatriated, but
activists cite numerous cases where Eritreans were sent home despite
risk of punishment for unlawfully leaving their country.
Many who make it to Cairo escaped from their Bedouin captors and
completed their journey to the Egyptian capital with the help of a man
in northern Sinai,
known as Sheikh Mohamed, who has opposed human trafficking and
provides support to Africans who escape, according to groups that work
with refugees in
Cairo. But while more torture survivors are reaching Cairo with
Sheikh Mohamed's support, human-rights activists said there is no
evidence the level of
trafficking has decreased. "One of the problems of researching this
issue is the lack of information," Nicholas Piachaud, a North Africa
campaigner for
Amnesty International, said. "Gaining access to smugglers camps is
impossible."
Ksamet is now staying with an Eritrean man in Cairo helping her
recover. She has received some medical treatment from a non-governmental
organization, and
has an appointment with UNHCR. She would be happy to move anywhere
but Eritrea -- and cannot picture staying in Egypt, where she views
passersby with
suspicion. "I'm always afraid because I think everyone is like them
-- like the people who tortured us," Ksamet said. "Every Egyptian in the
street --
regular people and the police. I imagine them taking me and
torturing me."
1.MERON Amanuel of team UCI CONTINENTAL CENTER won the second phase of the tour and was awarded the EWSA red jersey.
