The People From Nowhere

Forced To Live Nowhere
(part of Footsteps In The Dark series)

(Eritrea's Human Rights Record Turns Out Thousands Of Refugees)

Slavery...

Abuse...

Rape...

The list of what an Eritrean refugee has to look forward to is tragic at best. Many of these victims of government indifference have no way of seeking justice. They often find themselves trapped between fences (literally) as the world argues about who should help them. All the while they did not choose to be there. This was not their way of taking the easy way out of an already hellish situation back home. For many Eritrean refugees their story begins with human trafficking, kidnapping, and/or a handful of other methods of exploitation. 

On the Sinai peninsula between Africa and the Middle East the story of the Eritrean refugee plays out every day. Bedouin criminal gangs traffic Eritrean hostages across the Sinai in hopes of extorting cash payments from impoverished families back in Eritrea. When the families obviously cannot pay the extortion the rate asked does not come down. Instead the victims are tortured, some to the point of death. Those who survive are sold to other Bedouins to be used as slaves. Other survivors are at times told to run... to head toward Israel and get out of the Bedouins' sight. 

For the runners the wretched fate that has been handed to them has only just begun. A life that many could never imagine has just gotten worse. And yet for these refugees the journey to a better life in their eyes has just begun. 

At the border with Israel the Eritrean refugees are greeted with barbed wire, landmines, and border guards on either side of the fence. If the hot sand and lack of water don't kill them the possibility always lingers just beneath their feet and in the hands of the guards both in front and behind them. This long stretch of wire is the Eritrean refugees' version of limbo. 

For these refugees their part in an over forty year history of Eritrean refugees has only just begun. For the Eritrean refugees who aren't taken to the Sinai and never have the hope of entering Israel there is another version of limbo. 

In camps just over the border in the Sudan the Eritrean refugees attempt to hide from human traffickers who would send them north into Egypt. At Kilo 26 Camp some 12,500 Eritrean refugees wait till the day they can return home. These refugees are among the 130,000+ Eritrean refugees in camps all across the border with Sudan. All of them are subjected to over the border raids, kidnapping, and human trafficking. And yet around 22,000 Eritrean refugees have crossed the border since November of 2003.

Life in camps in Sudan is difficult, if not impossible at times, for the Eritrean refugees. They are reliant upon UN and other foreign aid in a country where human rights abuses are already common. When they attempt to make themselves more self reliant in the Sudan they open themselves up to new threats of exploitation and attack. For most the dream of returning home is the only thing they have keeping them alive. And yet for over a decade now they have been living as the people from nowhere with nowhere to go. 

So for us in the West the question should have already arisen as to why and how this many refugees could be fleeing a tiny country such as Eritrea in the first place.

The protracted hostilities between Ethiopia and Eritrea have created running battles in which innocent civilians are made intentional "collateral damage". Fighting between the two sides often ends up becoming so bitterly entrenched that any member of the opposite state is considered fair game for war weary soldiers. Battlefields spill over into villages and urban areas. Rape and summary executions were all to common when open hostilities existed. Now the uneasy peace still sees militant acts between factions of the two sides. War is never to far from reality along the border between the two states. 

Then when you add the horrific human rights record of the Eritrean state itself to the matter the reality of becoming a refugee is almost all the Eritrean people have left. Eritrean men and boys often "disappear" never to be heard from or seen alive again. Women and girls are subject to rape by government forces and police. This is then complicated by unjust taxation and extortion by government officials. 

For the Eritrean refugees clinging to the wire along the border with Israel there is only the hope of life beyond the oppression they have come to know back home. This longing for freedom is so embedded in human nature that the Eritrean people would risk death to just get a peek at it. And yet if caught staring upon its beauty, these Eritrean people face prison in Egypt and Israel alike. 

These are the people from nowhere...

These are the people with nowhere left to run.

Source Documents

(Note note all sources are listed)

IBT

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/455019/20130409/eritrean-sinai-refugees-egypt-sudan.htm

Amnesty International 

http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/egypt-sudan-kidnap-and-trafficking-refugees-and-asylum-seekers-must-be-stop

UNHCR 

http://www.unhcr.org/46cc4a974.html

The Abyss

And No Way Out

Amnesty International finally showed up to the theater of war in Syria only to simply throw their hat into the ring. We should appreciate their calling of Bashar Assad's actions as "crimes against humanity". But we can not accept that this is all we are going to get out of the world as Syria burns. This can not be all we are willing to do as innocence is snuffed out by the evil we can clearly see before us.

Even worse is the call by Amnesty International to impose a full arms embargo upon Syria. Of course we should support an embargo when it comes to Bashar Assad and his goons. And yes we need to stop the flow of Russian weapons into the Syrian Army's arsenal. But we can not accept the same results we saw in Bosnia when we allowed the Serbs dominance by disarming the Bosnian peoples. We must start arming the Serbian Free Army if we are not going to intervene with a military force large enough and willing enough to stop the fighting.

Unlike in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur we can not rely upon unarmed blue helmets standing around. It didn't work in Rwanda, in fact it only took ten dead blue hats before the Hutu controlled everything. No amount of tin stars could stop the militias in Rwanda when they weren't even armed upon arriving in country. In Bosnia our soldiers were able to stand and watch the killings happening right under their noses. This strategy is broken and has never worked.

If the United Nations is allowed to take on this task they will have to be willing to accept casualties. Brave men will have to die so that others may live. It is really just that simple. But sadly the United Nations has never had a stomach to take on a rouge state that is willing to kill indiscriminately. And they are definitely never going to be willing to accept casualties on their side of the intervention.

Last night we watched as the Syrian Army and its Shabiha ran through al-Haffeh. This was just one of the "rebel enclaves" that Syria added to its latest offensive. And yet the world's media refuses to admit what happened last night after the Syrian Army claimed control. We all know that the Shabiha went through the town trying to drudge up any "rebels" who weren't quick enough in fleeing. And we all know that innocent people were rounded up and killed. But the world remains silent.

Valiant "rebels" in the Syrian Free Army however report that they fought long enough and brave enough to hold off the Syrian tanks so that as many innocent civilians could flee. The world press reports that these "rebels take crazy risk" and "fight fanatically" in the face of much larger forces. We have even seen comparisons of David and Goliath. But nobody wants to admit that these so called rebels had never resorted to the AK 47 till after Assad chose to start bombing their homes.

If they are in fact crazy enough to stand in the face of a mad man like Assad and his "Ghost" soldiers... why not arm them?

Uncle Barry in the White House was willing to arm the Libyan rebels. He was even willing to use our military to bomb the Libyan military to help "level the playing field". Yet when it comes to Syria this coward king we call president chooses to wait on the sidelines to see how things will play out. And if all truth be told, Barack is afraid to stage what he sees as a proxy war against Russia.

And yet if Russia wants to fund genocide than we do need to stage a war against the Kremlin. We need a president that is willing to stiffen up his spine and pull his chin up. We need a president that is willing to tell Putin that we the free people of the world will not remain silent in the face of evil like him and Assad. This is Genocide. And it must be stopped.


As I write this Assad's forces are pillaging  the Latakia region in Syria. They are going door to door looking for targets of opportunity. Any innocent women and children that the Shabiha decide to kill are open game for Assad's blood lust. And all we can do is keep the pressure on our leaders to do something... if anything... to stop this genocide.

Separate and Not Equal

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Segregation of Roma Children In European Schools
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Amnesty International on YouTube
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A more in depth article will be following this post soon. Thank you for watching and thank you to Amnesty International for posting this video on YouTube.