Eritrean refugees trapped by security fence at Israeli-Egyptian border Civil rights group condemns Israel's refusal to allow entry to group 'begging for their lives'

Israeli soldiers are refusing to allow entry to a group of about 20 Eritrean refugees trapped for six days between Egyptian land and a high steel fence that Israel has erected along its southern border. Despite high temperatures and lack of shade, the soldiers have been instructed to provide only limited quantities of water.
The Israeli interior minister, Eli Yishai, said Israel "must act with a heavy hand". The country had "a very clear policy and a border fence", he told Army Radio. "We cannot let them enter."

Protesters in front of a refugee detention centre Israeli is constructing in the Negev.
  It will be capable of holding 11,000 people. Photograph: Carlos van As/Demotix

The group, which includes two women and a child, are refusing to return to Egypt. Technically, they are on Israeli territory but the recently erected fence prevents them advancing.
According to Israeli media reports, one of the women was visibly pregnant, but migrants told the soldiers watching the group she had miscarried.
The refugees have not been offered food since arriving at the spot in the northern stretch of the Israel-Egypt border last Thursday. Temperatures in the desert area are expected to peak at about 33C on Wednesday.
In a statement, the Israeli Defence Forces said: "The area under question has a long expanse of fence that was recently built in order to prevent unauthorised infiltration into Israeli territory. On the western side of the fence, on Egypt's side, is a group of foreigners whose entrance into Israel has been prevented thanks to this fence. For humanitarian reasons, [Israeli] forces have been providing the foreigners with water."
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel condemned the refusal to allow the refugees entry. "Israel has the right to build a fence, but a fence does not relieve Israel from its obligations," said Oded Feller. "When people are standing at the fence and begging for their lives, we must make sure they are not in danger, and if they are, they must be let in."

Israel’s Interior Minister : Eli Yishai

Yishai told Army Radio: "Every day there are people stuck there. If there were no fence, and if we weren't steadfast, there would be a million people here."
He conceded that it was hard to see the pictures, but added: "I am the one who has to make the difficult decision, and if I have to choose between the good of the state, its civilians and its security, [and the good of the families] I will choose that there be a fence, that they won't enter and instead return to their country."
Last month, another group of refugees were trapped in similar circumstances for several days before they were admitted to Israel for humanitarian reasons, and taken to a detention centre.
Israel began building the fence along its 150-mile southern border last summer and it is due to be completed by the end of this year. According to the Population and Immigration Authority, the number of migrants entering Israel from Egypt fell to 200 in August, compared with 2,000 a year earlier.
The presence of migrants from sub-Sahara Africa in Israel has become a volatile political and social issue over recent months. A number of buildings housing African migrants have been firebombed, and some politicians have stoked anti-migrant sentiment. One described migrants from Sudan as "a cancer in our body". The prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said the "flood" of migrants "threatens our existence as a Jewish and democratic state".
About 62,000 African migrants had entered Israel by May this year, according to the immigration authority. Israel's population is 7.8 million.
Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday that hundreds of migrants trying to reach Israel were being held by traffickers in the Sinai; it said they were tortured, raped and sexually assaulted in an attempt to extort ransom payments from their families.
The organisation had "received numerous reports in recent years of organised criminal groups detaining asylum seekers and migrants in Sinai for extortion before allowing them to complete the journey to Israel", it said.
"The sums traffickers demanded from the migrants have increased from about $2,500 [£1,580] in 2009 to as much as $30,000 [£19,000]. The traffickers torture the migrants and beat them while they plead with relatives abroad by phone for money to meet their captors' demands. Victims include children as young as 14."

20 Eritreans stuck on Israeli-Egyptian border for six days

A group of 20 Eritrean migrants has been stuck between two fences on the Egyptian-Israeli border for six days, without food or water — save for a small number of beverages they have been given by Israeli soldiers — after being refused entry to the country.

Unable to enter Israel, and too scared to return to the Sinai Peninsula, the group has been stuck between the two security barriers that Israel is erecting along its 240-km. (150-mile) border with Egypt. A 14-year-old boy and a woman, who is believed to be pregnant, were among the group waiting at the border, Haaretz reported.

Eritrean migrants stuck at the Israeli-Egyptian border after Israel refused them entry six days ago

The news comes in the wake of a recent government announcement to the effect that the fence and other measures had successfully stemmed the flow of migrants entering Israel through the Sinai.

Last month, a group of migrants was transferred to a detention facility after being stuck between Israel and Egypt for four days.

Meanwhile, Israel is believed to be considering a forced repatriation of Eritrean asylum-seekers back to their home country — a move that has been criticized by human rights groups but is nonetheless acceptable under international law because Israel and Eritrea have diplomatic ties. (Israel would not be allowed to deport migrants to Sudan, for example, because Israel does not have ties with that conflict-ridden country.)

Pirate transmission silences sole independent news outlet for three weeks

Radio Erena (Our Eritrea), a Paris-based radio station that broadcasts to Eritrea, one of the world’s most closed countries, and to the Eritrean diaspora, has been the victim of sabotage that prevented it from being carried by the Arabsat radio and TV satellite service for three weeks.

The sabotage took the form of a pirate transmission from within Eritrea that jammed Radio Erena’s signal. The station was unable to resume broadcasting until around 6 p.m. yesterday.

Launched by Reporters Without Borders in 2009, Radio Erena is the only source of independent news in the local language for Eritreans inside Eritrea and, as such, has been the target of the government’s constant hostility. (Watch a presentation video about Radio Erena that was made in March 2010)

"The fact that Radio Erena was off the air for more than three weeks is no trivial matter," Reporters Without Borders said. "The station plays a key role by offering impartial and responsible news coverage to an entire people that is otherwise deprived of this. Open to all participants in Eritrean life, whether from the opposition, civil society or the government, Radio Erena is now paying a high price for its independence."

Arabsat, the owner of the BADR-6 satellite that normally carries Radio Erena’s signal, suspended the station on 14 August because of the pirate transmission that had just begun to interfere with its signal.

The interference began a day after Arabsat received an Eritrean government complaint claiming that, during an interview with Ethiopian information minister Bereket Simon, Radio Erena had "incited its listeners to acts of violence against Eritrean government representatives."

This was a complete lie, as Reporters Without Borders explained when it provided Arabsat with a transcript of the interview. Let it be noted in passing that Eritrea’s President Issaias Afeworki is one of the world’s worst "Predators of Press Freedom."

Baseless allegations

Broadcast in three parts, on 6, 8 and 10 August, the interview with the Ethiopian information minister covered several topics including relations between his government and the Eritrean opposition and the development of the Ethiopian economy. Although the minister expressed himself freely and directly about the Eritrean government, the radio station did not in any way call for an uprising or acts of violence.

The Eritrean journalists who operate Radio Erena were astonished to discover that station’s signal had been cut at around 4 p.m. on 14 August. From that moment onwards, reliable and balanced news reporting was no longer available to Eritreans in Eritrea. All they had was the political propaganda provided by state-owned Eri-TV and Radio Dimtsi Hafash and the government daily Hadas Eritrea.

Sabotage

Arabsat concluded from its tests and its investigation that the jamming came from a pirate transmission from within Eritrea. The pirate transmission blocked the entire BADR-6 satellite and forced Arabsat to suspend all of the services it normally offers. Once Radio Erena’s signal had been suspended, the pirate transmission blocking the entire service also disappeared, Arabsat said. In another surprising developement, Radio Erena’s website was brought down by a cyber-attack on 28 August.

The site was back online on 1 September, while satellite transmission of Radio Erena’s signal finally resumed the next day.

Eritrean journalist of radio erena

War of words

"Irritated by the interview with the Ethiopian information minister, the Eritrean government tried to silence the alternative voice that Radio Erena offers to Eritrea’s citizens," Reporters Without Borders said.

Relations between Asmara and Addis Ababa have been tense every since Eritrea won its independence from Ethiopia in May 1992. Reinforced by a war from 1998 to 2000, the mutual hostility between the two countries has shifted in part to the terrain of the media. Although not a party to the dispute, Radio Erena found itself being targeted.

Ranked last in the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index for the past five years, Eritrea is one vast open prison for the journalists. It is Africa’s biggest jail for journalists and the world’s fourth biggest, after China, Iran and Syria.

Held for years in various detention centres, many of them since the roundups of September 2001, Eritrea’s imprisoned journalist are dying one by one, forgotten by a largely indifferent world.

To prevent a new cyber-attack from depriving Eritreans of the Radio Erena website’s independent news coverage, Reporters Without Borders has created a mirror site. It invites Internet users to use this link http://erena.commentcontournerlacen... to access an exact copy of the Radio Erena site.

Eritrean

Eritrea

Four Eritrean journalists die in prison

Four journalists have died in prison in Eritrea after spending years behind bars, the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said on Thursday.
Eritrea is routinely labelled by watchdogs as one of the world's worst offenders against human rights, but the Horn of Africa country rejects the allegations and often accuses rights groups of working for foreign intelligence services to undermine its government.
"After several weeks of investigating reports from sources ... and from prison guards who fled the country, Reporters Without Borders has been able to confirm that three more journalists - Dawit Habtemichael, Mattewos Habteab and Wedi Itay - have died in the northeastern prison camp of Eiraeiro," the group said in a statement, adding that all had been held since late 2001.
"Another journalist arrested in February 2009, whose identity has not been established with certainty, has also reportedly died in detention - in his case, in Abi Abeito military prison, near the capital, Asmara."
The group's assertions could not be independently verified.
Lacking independent media and often accused of harassing journalists, Eritrea is consistently ranked among the world's top violators of press freedom.
The European Parliament urged the government last year to release another journalist, Swedish-Eritrean Davit Isaak, and all 11 former Eritrean officials who have been held incommunicado since a government crackdown in 2001.

Eritreans aboard call for rule of law in their homeland 

The officials were part of a group of 15 who criticised President Isaias Afewerki and asked for reform after Eritrea's 1998-2000 war with Ethiopia.
Those detained, and accused of conspiring with Ethiopia to topple Isaias, were Vice President Mahmoud Sherifo, Foreign Minister Haile Woldetensae, military chief-of-staff Ogbe Abraha and eight central committee members.
Mahmoud, Ogbe and four other former central committee members have died from illness and heat exhaustion, according to a guard who had worked at the Embatkala and Eiraeiro camps where the detainees were being held before fleeing to Ethiopia in 2010. The temperature in the camps can reach 50 Celsius (122 Fahrenheit).
Eritrea has said nothing about the detainees' condition or whereabouts. Last year it accused the rights group Amnesty International of plotting to incite an Arab Spring-style popular uprising, a claim the group immediately dismissed.