Wednesday 28 November 2012

Ethiopia Muslims protest, accuse government of religious meddling

Sunday 7 October 2012

Causes of Civil War: Micro Level Evidence from Côte d’Ivoire

A multiethnic country like Côte d’Ivoire, which was relatively stable until the late 1980s, has been mired in crisis in the last two decades and experienced large-scale violence. This paper undertakes a disaggregated analysis of the civil war at sub-national levels in Cote d’Ivoire for the period from 1998 to 2006 using: (1) nationally representative household survey data, and (2) the ACLED conflict database that contains information on the date and geographical location of conflicts. We use both the department and the sub-prefecture levels as units of analysis, and find robust evidence that ethnic diversity is significantly associated with conflicts. We also find strong empirical evidence that the share of Ivoirites population and the share of Muslim population is a significant determinant of civil war at the sub-prefecture level. Furthermore, more populous areas are at high risk of civil war, but the outcome is statistically significant only at the department level. However, we do not find significant evidence that income inequality and land inequality have determined the level of civil conflict. Overall the findings suggest ethnicity and religious identities are the significant determinants of civil war in Cote d’Ivoire. Read more

Armed Conflict and Children’s Health: Exploring New Directions: The Case of Kashmir

The exposure to violence in utero and early in life has adverse impacts on children's age-adjusted height (z-scores). Using the experience of the Kashmir insurgency, I find that children more affected by the insurgency are 0.9 to 1.4 standard deviations smaller compared with children less affected by the insurgency. The effect is stronger for children who were born during peaks in violence. A robust finding in the health literature is that shorter children perform worse in schools, in jobs, and are sicker throughout their life. Here, children already negatively affected by the insurgency in their height, are also more likely to be sick in the two weeks prior to the survey. SOURCE: Households in Conflict Network // Institute of Development Studies // University of Sussex Read more

Services, Return, and Security in Four Counties in Southern Sudan

BICC was commissioned to undertake a study on issues relating to Return and Reintegration (RR) of actors displaced by the fighting in Sudan and to provide action-oriented data on issues relating to RR as a basis for suggestions to improve the RR program in Southern Sudan.

Data from the study was collected by a mix of desk surveys and two weeks of intensive fieldwork in four counties in Southern Sudan: Yei River, West Juba, Maridi and Mundri. The field study was preceded by a four-day training course for enumerators, twenty four of whom participated in the survey in four teams. A preparatory day was also dedicated to presenting the study of nongovernmental organization (NGO) partners in Equatoria, and to incorporating their suggestions into the study questionnaires.Read more

China and South Sudan

China’s growing role in Africa has received substantial attention, not least in Sudan and South Sudan, where decades of conflict and instability have made it an especially contentious context. China’s traditional foreign policy has been tested while contradictions in its non-interference policy, military relations and economic engagement have been exposed. On the whole, Beijing has adopted pragmatic responses to the realities of a complex situation, especially with regards to the Republic of South Sudan’s independence from Sudan in July 2011. Aside from the Chinese Government, there are many other Chinese actors who are involved in South Sudan, including a variety of state-owned banks, corporations and private companies. Read more

The Nuba of Sudan: From Ethnic War to Insurgent Civil Conflict

Following the partition of Sudan in July 2011, the breakdown of the CPA process on transitional governance has led the Nuba Mountain Region to a state of crisis, stemming from fragmented tribes with ethno-political allegiances to President al-Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP), or the Nuba-backed SPLM-N. Furthermore, GoS initiated aerial bombardments combined with sweeping ground attacks by SAF forces against the SPLM-N and supporters has created a regional humanitarian crisis, with more than 150,000 IDPs fleeing to South Sudan and Ethiopia. In the face of an emerging alliance between Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) opposition and insurgent groups with the intention of regime change, the al-Bashir regime has denied the entry of aid organizations and international observers to the region, and has continued military incursions and attacks on South Sudan and autonomous regions in its plight to control disputed oil-rich territory. These are clear violations of UNSC resolution 2046 and undermine AU-mediated negotiations pushing a 3-month timeline for negotiations between the GoS and the GoSS to resolve disputed border areas, install a Safe Demilitarized Border Zone with an agreement on border demarcation, oil revenue sharing, and a resolution to the administration of the Abyei territory. Policy recommendations that prioritize an end to violence in South Kordofan, Blue Nile and Abyei regions, oil transit fee settlements, and alleviating the humanitarian crisis are addressed tos the internatonal community and the Government of Canada. These recommendations also address the obstructive and pre-emptive tactics by the al-Bashir regime to avoid a recurrent civil war fueled by the insurgency of the SRF amidst an emerging political crisis in Khartoum. Read more

http://www.humansecuritygateway.com/documents/IPI_PeaceandSecurityThre atsintehSahelSaharaRegion.pdf

The crisis in the Sahel will not end unless new responses depart from the traditional “business-as-usual” approach. This was the key insight offered in a high-level roundtable on the Sahel held at IPI on September 7, 2012. Six key points emerged from the meeting:
1. The emergence of Islamists serves as a cover for illicit trafficking, facilitating the transfer of a considerable amount of foreign currency. As such, a strict security approach should be complemented by principles of governance and the rule of law.
2. A negotiated settlement in Mali appears unlikely at present. The government institutions and political elite are too weak and divided to convincingly incentivize rebels to negotiate. An alternative to the Economic Community of West African States mediation process may be needed, one that would involves key players such as Algeria.
3. The difficult prospects for negotiation make military escalation increasingly probable. Since many of the groups operating in northern Mali have a tenuous tactical alliance, and given historic friction between sedentary and pastoral communities, any military action is fraught with risks.
4. Long-term reforms are needed to address legitimate grievances of the Tuareg and other populations, restructure a weak national army, and establish an effective government in Bamako. Regional platforms for capacity building could strengthen weak local structures.
5. The acute security crisis in Mali is eclipsing the longer-term humanitarian, developmental, and demographic time bomb in the region. Advancing the “resilience” agenda will be critical to meeting this challenge and staving off disaster.
6. To ensure coordination of activities, the expected appointment of a UN special envoy for the Sahel should be balanced by regional ownership of the proposed “field-led” integrated strategy to be presented to the Security Council on September 17th. Read more

Addressing the 'Conflict Minerals' Crisis in the Great Lakes Region

The year 2011 heralded the convergence of various initiatives seeking to curtail the financing of conflict in the Great Lakes region through the illegal exploitation of minerals. This policy brief provides a framework for responding to the unintended consequences of existing initiatives in the region. It details the areas of immediate impact of these initiatives, their overall impact on the trends of insecurity in the region and ways of addressing the issues in the short to medium term. Read more

Estimating the Causal Effects of War on Education in Côte D’Ivoire

: In this paper we estimate the causal effects of civil war on years of education in the context of a school-going age cohort who are exposed to armed conflict in Cote d’Ivoire. Using year and department of birth to identify an individual’s exposure to war, the difference-in-difference outcomes indicate that the average years of education for a school-going age cohort is .94 years fewer compared to an older cohort in war-affected regions. To minimize the potential bias in the estimated outcome, we further use a set of victimization indicators to identify the true effect of war. The propensity score matching estimates do not alter the main findings. In addition, the outcomes of double-robust models minimize the specification errors in the model. Moreover, we find the outcomes are robust across alternative matching methods, estimation by using subsamples and other education outcome variables. Overall, the findings across different models suggest a drop in average years of education by a range of .2 to .9 fewer years. Read more

Somalia Human Development Report 2012

: The future of Somalia and the well-being of its people rests significantly on empowering its large youth population. This is the first report of its kind on this war-torn Horn of Africa country in more than a decade. The new report – which is based on surveys conducted in more than 3,000 households in south central Somalia, Puntland and Somaliland - reveals that although the majority of Somali youth believe they have a right to be educated (82%) and a right to decent work (71%), they feel disempowered by multiple structural barriers built into the family, institutions, local government and society at–large. This lack of viable education and employment opportunities – in addition to clan and cultural prejudices – has created a high level of frustration and discontentment among young people. Therefore, radical shifts in policies and attitudes are needed in order to empower and place them at the core of the development agenda. Read more

Does Uranium Mining Increase Civil Conflict Risk? Evidence from a Spatiotemporal Analysis of Africa from 1945 to 2010

We employ a two‐tier spatiotemporal analysis to investigate whether uranium operations cause armed conflict in Africa. The macrolevel analysis suggests that – compared to the baseline conflict risk – uranium ventures increase the risk of intrastate conflict by 10 percent. However, we find ethnic exclusion to be a much better predictor of armed conflict than uranium. The microlevel analysis reveals that uranium‐spurred conflicts are spatiotemporally feasible in four countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Namibia, Niger and South Africa. We find strong evidence in the case of Niger, and partial evidence in the case of the DRC. Namibia and South Africa do not yield substantial evidence of uranium‐ induced conflicts. We conclude that uranium may theoretically be a conflictinducing resource, but to the present day empirical evidence has been sparse as most countries are still in the exploration phase. Considering that the coming years will see 25 African countries transition from uranium explorers into producers, we strongly suggest that our analysis be revisited in the coming years. Read more

Friday 6 July 2012

South Sudan Refugee Camp Under Water: Alarming Mortality Rates Indicate Worsening Crisis

Preliminary studies reveal mortality rates nearly double the emergency threshold in a refugee camp in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State, currently home to a quarter of the roughly 120,000 refugees who have fled Sudan’s Blue Nile State since late last year. The death rates were derived from rapid epidemiological surveys carried out in the Jamam refugee camp in Maban County prior to the onset of heavy seasonal rains that have flooded the camp and gravely expanded the risk of illness for the already weakened refugees. All agencies involved in the relief effort, led by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, must find better options for the people living in Jamam camp, one of three refugee camps in the area. Failure to do so will almost certainly lead to more misery and deaths. Read more

South Sudan: World's Youngest Country Yet to Embark on Road to Civil Liberties

The product of a visit to the South Sudanese capital of Juba from 9 to 15 May, it says that the divorce with Khartoum is not entirely consummated and that independence has brought no significant improvement in media freedom. It looks at the media war being waged by the two Sudans and highlights the impact of the ubiquitous, heavy-handed security forces. It also highlights a growing tendency of journalists to censor themselves, and stresses the need for laws regulating the media.

Ranked 111th out of 179 countries in the 2011-2012 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, South Sudan is currently at a crossroads, the report argues.

“South Sudan is not currently prey to concerted and systematic harassment of its media. But there has been a disturbing accumulation of incidents and isolated acts of repression or intimidation that end up undermining the climate in which journalists and media operate,” Reporters Without Borders said.

In its conclusions, the report urges the authorities to severely punish anyone violating freedom of information and to stop using nationalistic arguments to pressure the media. It urges the military and security apparatus to put a stop to acts of brutality towards journalists. And it urges the National Legislative Assembly to quickly adopt the three media laws that were submitted by the government.

Reporters Without Borders also encourages the international community to condition aid to South Sudan on respect for fundamental freedoms, especially freedom of information, and encourages NGOs to support the development of South Sudan’s media and training of journalists. And finally, it calls on South Sudan’s journalists to adhere to professional ethics and resist pressure to censor themselves. Read more

Monday 2 July 2012

End the negotiations on expelling Eritrean asylum-seekers!

Monday, 02 July 2012 07:02 Kidane Isaac

By KIDANE ISAAC
A single party and president have ruled Eritrea since independence from Ethiopia in 1993.

Eritrean community activists are highly concerned about the recent invitation of Eritrean Ambassador Tesfamariam Tekeste to the Knesset Foreign Workers Committee, where possible return of Eritreans to Eritrea was discussed.

Eritreans came to Israel with the expectation to find protection and safety from the dictatorship in Eritrea and are therefore extremely bothered and disappointed that a so-called democratic state invites a representative of a dictatorial regime to discuss the option of deportation.

These negotiations leave us Eritrean asylum-seekers in a state of fear and insecurity.

In addition, Eritrean asylumseekers are concerned about the current political atmosphere against what the State of Israel calls “infiltrators” and the violent and inciting response by the Israeli society. The measures taken, such as expanding the Saharonim detention facility to over 12,000 places; to prolong imprisonment of asylum-seekers; to discuss the possibility of a “tent city” without basic necessities; and enforce fines against employers that hire “infiltrators” violate Israel’s obligations under international law.

We would like to pose the following questions: is it a crime to flee dictatorship? Are asylumseekers criminals, on par with, for example, arms dealers? Eritrean asylum-seekers forcibly returned to Eritrea face and will continue to face serious risk of arbitrary detention, torture and death. Persecution has become a reality for those forcibly returned from countries such as Malta, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, Yemen and Djibouti. Does the State of Israel want to join a list of countries that deported Eritreans to imprisonment and torture? Will the State of Israel take responsibility for the death of deportees from Israel? A SINGLE party and president have ruled Eritrea since independence from Ethiopia in 1993.

Our country is ruled by an extremely repressive regime that forces all citizens – until the age of 65 – to serve in the military for indefinite periods of time.

Anyone of draft age leaving the country without permission is perceived as a traitor, risking imprisonment in inhumane conditions, as well as forced labor and torture.

In a recent press release United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay said that credible sources indicate that “violations of human rights include arbitrary detention, torture, summary executions, forced labor, forced conscription, and restrictions to freedom of movement, expression, assembly and religion.”

In addition we would like to recall the words of the Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, who last year said that, “Eritrea is known in the international community as a country that does not safeguard human rights, and anyone who returns there is in danger, including danger of death.”

According to figures of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as of January 2011, 236,000 Eritreans have fled imprisonment, torture and murder in Eritrea and are currently living as refugees and asylum seekers outside of Eritrea. The UNHCR estimated that 3,000 Eritreans fled the country every month, mostly to Ethiopia or Sudan, despite a “shoot to kill” policy for anyone caught attempting to cross the border.

Many of those fleeing were young people escaping indefinite national service conscription.

Families of those who fled faced reprisals, including harassment, fines and imprisonment. Because of a global understanding of the human rights abuses that occur in Eritrea, the UN has insisted on a moratorium on all deportations back to Eritrea.

ERITREANS HAVE been granted refugee status in high numbers in most of the Western world.

According to UNHCR data, in 2010, the United Kingdom granted 66 percent of Eritreans applicants refugee status, Germany 83%, Switzerland 72% and Canada 96%.

Under international refugee law, asylum seekers have a right to claim asylum, which applies regardless of how they enter a country or whether they have identity documents. International law forbids countries from deporting asylum seekers without first allowing them to apply for asylum and considering their cases. Since the State of Israel refuses to grant Eritreans access to the Refugee Status Determination process and Eritreans are therefore not eligible to explain why they left Eritrea, the following is an outline of the dictatorial regime and its impact on Eritreans based on our own experience and a compilation of human rights reports by the United Nations, US State Department, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

THE MAJORITY of Eritrean asylum seekers in Israel fled forced military conscription, as national service is compulsory for all men and women over the age of 18. Our schoolchildren are required to complete their last year of secondary education at Sawa military training camp.

Children as young as 15 are caught in round-ups and taken to Sawa for military training.

National service for many means forced labor in state projects. We are used as slaves to build roads, or working for companies owned and operated by the military or ruling party elites. Although the initial national service period is 18 months, this period is commonly extended indefinitely.

We are paid minimal salaries that do not meet our families’ basic needs. Punishment for desertion and draft evasion include torture and detention without trial.

There were between 5,000 and 10,000 political prisoners in Eritrea including political activists, journalists, religious practitioners and draft evaders.

The whereabouts of most are unknown and they have never been charged or tried for any offense, as the rule of law is non-operative.

There is no freedom of religion in Eritrea; members of faiths other than Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches, and Islam are arrested, arbitrarily detained and illtreated.

For example, believers in Pentecostalism, Seventh-day Adventists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses are arbitrarily detained for practicing an unregistered faith.

Eritrea has more prison centers than hospitals. The conditions in these prisons are horrendous, and in many cases amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Many prisoners are held in underground cells or metal shipping containers, often in desert locations, and therefore suffer extremes of heat and cold. Prisoners are given inadequate food and water.

Many prisoners are held in severely overcrowded and unhygienic conditions. Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees are frequent. These conditions remind us all of those suffered by Eritrean hostages imprisoned in trafficking compounds in the Northern Sinai desert. Prisoners are forced to undertake painful and degrading activities, and were tied with ropes in painful positions for long periods. We, Eritreans in Israel, are all too used to this treatment since we escaped from persecution. We cannot be returned to such persecution.

One of the outcomes of the Knesset meeting was to send an Israeli delegation to Eritrea. We urge the delegation to take into consideration the above-mentioned human rights abuses when visiting Eritrea and be critical of the picture the Eritrean regime will paint.

We would like to remind the government of Israel of its obligations under the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol which states that: “No Contracting State shall expel or return (refouler) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”

UNHCR’s official Guidelines to States on the protection needs of Eritrean asylum seekers that states that “individuals of draft age who left Eritrea illegally may be perceived as draft evaders upon return, irrespective of whether they have completed active national service or have been demobilized” and that “the punishment for desertion or evasion is so severe and disproportionate such as to amount to persecution.”

We would like to remind the Israeli government to work on our case with care and responsibility and we demand protection and safety until the political situation of Eritrea changes.


Once a political prisoner in Eritrea, Kidane Isaac is now an Eritrean community activist and the co-founder of the Refugee Voice in Israel.
(Source: The Jerusalem Post)
http://asmarino.com/articles/1461-end-the-negotiations-on-expelling-eritrean-asylum-seekers

Eritrean tyranny fuels mass exit

Saturday, 30 June 2012 05:43 Don Connel

Dan Connell   

Draconian military conscription rules in Eritrea mean children as young as 12 can be forced into duty. Dan Connell reports.

Binyam Zaid (22) was an unwilling conscript in the Eritrean army when he was caught trying to flee the country and jailed for 18 months at the Halhal military prison. On May 24 he was released in an amnesty that marked Eritrea’s 21st birthday and sent back to his unit.

Three days later he walked into the bush to relieve himself and never turned back.

Tigiste Beyene (35) was pregnant with her second child when she was sent to a desert prison in northern Eritrea for attending a banned Pentecostal prayer meeting. Upon release she was given 10 months to renounce her faith and pressed to do so by the local Eritrean Orthodox priest who had turned her in and by her family, who had to guarantee the state 50 000 nakfa (R28 000) to get her out. Four months later, she paid a smuggler 30 000 nakfa [R17 000] to take her to Ethiopia.

“The dark side of my life was not the year in prison, but the time I spent at home with my family,” she said as she sat on the dirt floor of her cramped 3m-by-5m mud-brick house. “It was a torment.”

Said Ibrahim (21), orphaned and blind, made a living as a singer in Adi Quala bars when a member of the security police claimed one of his songs had “political” content and detained him at the Adi Abieto prison. After a month he was released but stripped of his monthly disability payments for two years when he declined to identify the lyricist.

“I went back to my village and reflected on it,” he said over tea at an open-air café in the Adi Harush camp, set up in 2010 when the Eritrean refugee camp Mai Aini reached capacity. It is already nearing its limit of 20 000, according to United Nations officials. “If the system could do this to a blind orphan, something was very wrong.”

After appealing to his neighbours for help, two boys, aged 10 and 11, helped him to sneak over the border to Ethiopia and asked for asylum with him.

Tense border
The newcomers join more than 65000 Eritreans in five camps along the tense border, whose disputed location was the spark that set off a fierce fight between the two countries from 1998 to 2000 and remains a source of heightened tension.

Most refugees tell similar stories of run-ins with the authorities in this once promising new nation, which has turned into one of the most efficient tyrannies on the continent over the past decade.

What distinguishes the influx here, as in Sudan on Eritrea’s western flank, is that most are young men who, like Binyam, are trying to break free of Eritrea’s national service, which they describe as a system of state-run indentured servitude that ties them up for 10 years or more, often as low-skilled workers in government departments or state- and party-owned businesses for which they are paid a pittance.

Launched in 1995, the programme initially demanded 18 months of military training and work on national reconstruction. Some grumbled at the time, but most saw this as a legitimate obligation of citizenship after a 30-year war for independence from Ethiopia that had left the territory devastated.

Even now, many escapees say they support the concept, just not the length of service, which has been extended further by requiring secondary school students to take their final year of school at a military base to prevent them from escaping. Students who drop out before that, or who fail to achieve passing grades, can be conscripted as young as 12.

Crisis seizing the country
The huge outflow of draft-age men it has triggered has become a major factor in the crisis seizing the country today. Its intensely secretive leadership shows signs of unravelling for the first time since a brutal crackdown on dissent in 2001 that followed Eritrea’s defeat in the last round of the border war.

Former soldiers say that most Eritrean Defence Force units are now operating at 25% of capacity or lower and the overall strength of the army, often estimated by outsiders at 250 000 to 300 000, may actually be less than 80 000.

Perhaps to compensate, Eritrea’s unelected president – former liberation front commander Isaias Afwerki – has ordered all able-bodied men not in the uniformed military to join village and neighbourhood militias and is issuing AK-47 assault rifles to them. He also ordered a shake-up in the defence force command structure, diminishing the authority of General Filipos Weldeyohannes, his favourite for the past five years, and elevating General Tekali “Manjus” Kiflai. It is  something he does periodically with top generals and political appointees to prevent anyone from accumulating a base of support.

Taken against the backdrop of recent Ethiopian incursions along the disputed border – none answered by the Eritreans – these moves could signal the possibility of renewed head-to-head conflict, a threat Afwerki frequently invokes to justify his continuing crackdown on public debate. However, they may also indicate that the embattled leader, who has steadfastly refused to implement a Constitution ratified more than a decade ago and has never permitted national elections, is circling the wagons to protect himself from internal challenges.

His abrupt disappearance from public view for most of April – an unprecedented absence for a man whose daily comings and goings are the centrepiece of coverage in the state-run media – set off a wave of speculation among exiles that he was either incapacitated or dead. Although he reappeared in May, reports that a cabal of second-tier officials is meeting to plot a transition continue to circulate.

Irritant
But, although Eritrea appears obsessed with Ethiopia, the reverse no longer seems to be the case. “Eritrea is an irritant, not a strategic enemy,” said Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

“Our strategic enemies are poverty and backwardness,” he said in a two-hour interview on the subject of Ethiopia’s economic and social transformation. “We have seen poverty at its worst,” he said. “Nothing is more dehumanising.”

A former guerrilla commander himself, who came to power at the same time as Afwerki when the rebel armies they commanded routed the regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, Zenawi insisted that he would step down at the end of his term in 2015. But he wants to wind down the conflict with Eritrea first, stabilising relations and reaching a service agreement to access Eritrea’s Red Sea ports similar to the pacts Ethiopia has with Djibouti, Somaliland, Kenya and Sudan.

“I would like Eritrea to be at peace with itself so it can be at peace with us and we can all benefit from common prosperity,” he said. “But I am not choosy how it happens.”

The decade-long standoff between the two countries, which  played out in a web of proxy wars across the region, none of which reached the point of a direct confrontation, took a turn for the worse in 2010 when Ethiopia charged Eritrea with a bomb plot intended to disrupt an African Union summit in Addis Ababa.

“They wanted to transform Addis into Baghdad,” said Zenawi. “This made it impossible for us to ignore what they were doing.”

Pressure
Since then, Ethiopia has sought to increase the pressure on the Afwerki regime, first lobbying for sanctions at the United Nations and then launching a series of attacks on “hard targets” close to the border inside Eritrea, while simultaneously waging a hearts-and-minds campaign aimed at the Eritrean public.

Ethiopian media have toned down their once vitriolic coverage of Eritrea – or simply ignored it – and Eritreans deported from Ethiopia during the border war have been urged to return to reclaim seized assets. But the most dramatic shift was the announcement of an “open camps” policy permitting refugees to live anywhere in Ethiopia so long as they prove that they have the means to support themselves. More than 1000 Eritreans now attend Ethiopian universities, refugee officials say.

Ethiopia also hosts about 34 Eritrean opposition parties, a number that has refugees here scratching their heads in frustration and leads many to dismiss them as little more than a talk shop. During a week of interviews in three camps, the Addis Ababa-based parties were rarely mentioned.

“The only time we see them is when they want to recruit us,” said one refugee, who denounced the government in Asmara, but saw the squabbling opposition parties as cut from the same cloth.

Many here think that change, when it comes, will arise from within the country and that it may take time to sort itself out. One scenario is for a junta to take over that would include key figures from the three main power centres: the military, the national security forces and the ruling party, the ironically named People’s Front for Democracy and Justice, over which the defence minister, General Sebhat Ephrem, presides.

Inherently unstable
Such a coalition would be inherently unstable because it would comprise bitter rivals, all of whom aspire to step into Afwerki’s shoes, even though none has his charisma or commands a similar following among the rank and file.

What makes Ephrem attractive as a front man is that Afwerki has long treated him as a largely ceremonial figure and given him little actual power, so he is not seen as a threat by his more ambitious colleagues.

Ephrem is also popular with Western governments and carries a degree of credibility with the public for his prominent role in the liberation of the country, first as the head of civilian mobilisation and then as the military chief of staff in the final years of the war.

How long such an arrangement would last, though, is an open question.

Dan Connell, a lecturer in journalism and African studies at Simmons College, Boston, has covered events in Eritrea for more than 35 years (danconnell.net)
(Source: Mail & Guardian)
http://asmarino.com/articles/1459-eritrean-tyranny-fuels-mass-exit

Friday 29 June 2012

Yishai: Situation in Eritrea better than in Sderot


Yshai By JPOST.COM STAFF
Interior Minister Eli Yishai on Thursday called the situation in Eritrea better than in Sderot.
Yishai’s comments came hours after the interior ministry announced that migrants from the Ivory Coast have two weeks to leave voluntarily before being deported by force.
“Infiltrators, starting now, will be thrown directly into jail,” Yishai said. “I insist that the Eritrean and Sudanese migrants will all eventually be thrown out of the country… the situation in Eritrea is better than in Sderot and southern Israel.”
Yishai added that Israeli officials are in contact with counterparts in Sudan and Eritrea to organize the deportation of migrants.
Source: Jerusalem Post

Thursday 28 June 2012

Tribune de Genève Describes Eritrea as Mafia State

Tribune de Genève, a leading Swiss daily newspaper in French, in a full-page coverage described Eritreans as hostages at gun-point by “a regime of gangsters, a Mafia clan” that has turned a once promising new country into “a Mafia State”.
tribune-de-genveWriting on the June 28, 2012 issue of the newspaper, its journalist Bernard Bridel believed that the Eritrean president, Isaias Afworki, is “a warlord who runs a state as his guerrilla army”. He also extensively quotes a 248-page book published in French this year by Leonard Vincent, a journalist of the Reporters Without Boarders, who wrote that Eritrea is already  “an African version of North Korea”.
The writer of the reportage stated that Switzerland is hardening its refugee laws to deny asylum to military deserters, majority of those who come to Switzerland being Eritreans. But he added: “Eritreans are not migrant workers or economic refugees but fugitives running away from a prison at a nation-wide scale”. Journalist Bernard Bridel further stated that the Eritrean president and his regime force everyone to belong to the army and the party and that anyone who fails to obey is considered a deserter.
The forceful reportage of Tribune de Genève adds that “Eritrea is at war because its leaders wanted it to be at war”. It said this is their Maoist method of “conquest of power through the barrel of the gun and maintaining it through the gun”.
Besides facing torture and denial of freedoms like in any dictatorship, ordinary Eritreans who take risk to escape forced conscription are subjected to constant harassment of rounding up and capture (Giffa) to return to the army. The consequences are severe treatments under  the security apparatus.
The newspaper mentioned the sources of support for the Eritrean regime to include Iran, China, Qatar, extremist groups and the regime’s Mafiosi activities.
The writer believes that over 20% of Eritrea’s population of 5 million resides outside Eritrea, and that the Eritrean opposition organizations in the diaspora are bedeviled by the diversity that reflects the presence of nine ethnic groups, two religions and a history of two rival liberation movements of the armed struggle era.
The writer concluded that the only possible change of regime in Eritrea may come through an internal coup d’etat by the Eritrean regime’s army itself.

Wednesday 27 June 2012

Rape and HIV as Weapons of War

While the history of wars and conflicts is replete with systematic incidents of sexual violence against vulnerable women, modern-day wars have witnessed large-scale indiscriminate deployment of rape as a “weapon” of war by combatants. In recent armed conflicts — such as in the former Yugoslavia, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Sierra Leone and Rwanda — the widespread use of rape as a tool of warfare has become a conspicuous phenomenon. Read more

Tuesday 26 June 2012

'Eritrea won't accept forced citizen repatriation'


‘Thank you for betraying your country,’ Eritrean envoy tells asylum-seeker at Knesset panel; 144 S. Sudanese head back to Juba.

Eritrean Ambassador Tesfamariam Tekeste Photo: Ben Hartman Eritrea will not accept the forced repatriation of its nationals living in Israel, Ambassador Tesfamariam Tekeste said on Monday, at a lively and at times heated meeting of the Knesset Committee on Foreign Workers.
Tekeste said his government’s position remains that it will welcome those who choose to return and will help the Israeli government determine which migrants are Eritreans. He also said his government would ensure the safety of those returning and would not prosecute them for leaving the country, except those who skipped out on mandatory military service.
He then held up a list of what he said were the names of hundreds of Eritreans who had come to his office in the past year to arrange their voluntary return home.
Eritreans make up the majority of the more than 60,000 African migrants in Israel, with some estimates claiming there are over 40,000 in the country. Their homeland is ruled by a dictatorship and Israel cannot legally return Eritreans there due to the possibility of persecution upon their return. Commonly referred to as the “North Korea of Africa,” the country is ranked by Reporters Without Borders at the very bottom (179 out of 179 countries) in terms of press freedom, and has been accused of widespread human rights abuses against its citizens.
Tekeste began his remarks from a defensive stance, and expressed concern about the presence of NGO representatives and Eritrean asylumseekers, saying he was only coming to brief the government and not get involved in a debate.
Committee chairman Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz) told him it was a meeting open to the public and he would have the opportunity to respond to any allegations against himself or his country.
Throughout the meeting, which was held in English, Tekeste was dismissive of all claims presented against his country, which he said is beset by allegations and demonization from “external forces” trying to smear it. He defended the lack of democracy in Eritrea, where no elections have been held since independence from Ethiopia was gained in 1993.
“We consider democracy a process; it should not be imposed. We witnessed in our neighboring countries [that] because of elections, people are now buying guns and sharpening their swords. This is the history of Africa, where there is elections there is bloodshed. [Elections] divide the society and the country and other African countries have this, and we have our own recipe for our country,” Tekeste said.
“People blackmail Eritrea, say we are not a democracy and a lot of allegations because we don’t comply with their policies which have their own agenda,” he added.
The ambassador admitted that his country has never had elections, at which point MK Miri Regev (Likud) cracked that the Eritrean regime resembles that of Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party, which does not hold elections for party leader.
Tekeste was later interrupted by a back-and-forth between Regev and Horowitz in Hebrew, after which Horowitz apologized and said that “Miri Regev is considering immigrating to Eritrea.”
While there have been allegations that the Eritrean regime has encouraged its citizens to immigrate to Israel in order to send money back to their cash-starved homeland, Tekeste blamed Israel for giving work permits to Eritreans who arrived in 2006 and 2007, saying that it has created an incentive for economic migrants to continue to move to Israel.
Tekeste said he has followed the issue for the entire seven years he has been stationed in Israel, at which point MK Ya’acov Katz (National Union) asked, “Will you stay in Israel when your time is up?” He was answered by Horowitz with, “Yes, he will move to a neighborhood in Beit El.” Katz lives in the West Bank settlement.
Tekeste also claimed that Israel has granted group protection to thousands of African migrants from Ethiopia and Sudan, who claim to be Eritrean in order to remain in the country.
Horowitz then asked Tekeste about the UN position that Eritrean asylum-seekers cannot be returned to the country because they might face persecution.
He replied, “Well, as an Israeli member of the Knesset, do you accept all the UN resolutions against Israel? Do you take it at face value? I think we’re in the same position on this.”
Avi Granot, deputy directorgeneral of the Foreign Ministry’s Africa department, described how Israel has had relations with Eritrea since it became independent, but would prefer it chose a different path in its internal politics.
“We value the strategic relevance and importance of Eritrea, but this does not mean we agree on all variety of issues and politics. We do realize that Eritrea has taken a certain policy of isolationism in regards to its multilateral relations,” Granot said, earning a miffed look from Tekeste with his reference to isolationism.
“That is Eritrea’s choice,” Granot said. “But that is not what we’d welcome in our relation with Eritrea, we’d rather welcome greater sharing of responsibilities.”
Granot also spoke about the desire to find a third country willing to take in Israel’s Eritrean population, but said that since there are 20 million refugees and illegal migrants from Africa just within Africa – including 200,000 Eritreans in Ethiopia – this has not yet borne fruit.
Tekeste was beset by criticism of his country’s human rights record by Amnesty International director in Israel Yonatan Gher and Tel Aviv University Prof. Irit Beck as well as MK Dov Henin (Hadash). They said accepting the ambassador’s assurances of refugees’ safety upon return would be akin to a Syrian ambassador promising that Syrian refugees who return from Turkey would not be harmed.
Tekeste said he would invite a delegation to visit Eritrea, saying that people should not speak ill of his country without having visited it. He then added: “Everyone told me before I was going to Israel that it is hell. If you look at it from the outside you see hell, but seeing is believing. Someone who has never been to Eritrea cannot give me a lecture.”
As for accusations that the Eritrean Embassy is taking money from migrants in Israel, who have to pay a “recovery tax” on their earnings abroad, Tekeste said that this is done with Eritrean diaspora communities around the world. He compared it to Israeli practice, saying, “You Israelis collect money from Jewish communities all over the world, any hospital I go to [in Israel] I see this donation from somebody from here or there, so we can’t be accused of these issues.”
While Tekeste was criticizing protests held by Eritreans outside the country’s embassy in Ramat Gan, an Eritrean man named Isaias shouted, “It’s not like that, it’s not like that!” “Do I have to confront him? Is this the aim of the meeting?” Tekeste asked. “Democracy is not elastic, this is a problem of democracy.”
Isaias accused the ambassador of lying and said, “Eritrea is being led by a group of people who have a dictatorial way of thinking, and because of this we have been dispersed just like a seed all over the world.”
He added that he never dreamed of coming to Israel, but fled after seven years in Eritrean prison because “I love democracy, I love human rights.”
The ambassador responded, “Thank you for betraying your country. You are talking so much nonsense.”
He then said that if Isaias “had any courage to fight for the liberation of the country you should just come and fight for the liberation of the country. Why did you cross so many countries’ borders? Why didn’t you stay in Sudan and fight us from there? This is nonsense. If you had a gut and courage you would fight for the liberation of the country like I did, when I spent years in the bush. I am proud of that.”
The meeting concluded with Katz proposing a committee visit to Eritrea to assess whether Israel can return Eritrean migrants to their homeland. The proposal was greeted warmly by the ambassador.
On Monday night, a plane carrying 144 South Sudanese, including 53 minors, took off from Israel on a one-way flight to Juba. The Population, Immigration and Borders Authority said that would bring to 271 the number of South Sudanese repatriated since the first flight left last Sunday night.
Each adult received 1,000 euros and each child 500 euros.
PIBA spokeswoman Sabine Haddad said Israel had chartered an Ethiopian Airlines plane for the flight, and there were plans for two more flights next week. In total, 600 South Sudanese had agreed to leave voluntarily, 300 had refused and were arrested and another 500 face deportation proceedings.
PIBA also said that 800 African migrants had entered Israel from Sinai this month, and they were all in prison.

As African refugees are put into camps and attacked by racist gangs, Donald Macintyre reports from Tel Aviv

Immigration in Israel: African outcasts in the promised land


Amine Zigta is not a timid man. If he was, he would not have risked his life by escaping indefinite enforced army service in Eritrea, or making the hazardous journey through Sudan and the Sinai desert to Israel. Nor would he have kept open his corner bar in south Tel Aviv after 15 local hoodlums shouting "what do you care, you black son of a bitch?" broke off table legs in March to assault him after he refused to serve teenagers below the legal drinking age. "But now," Mr Zigta, 36, says in fluent Hebrew, "I am afraid, all the time. At night I can't sleep. I am in danger."
Given subsequent events, his fears are understandable. On 23 May, with a demonstration against African refugees planned for the evening, he locked up at around 4pm. Hours later, residents phoned to say demonstrators were breaking in. Mr Zigta went to two police stations for help and was still waiting at a third when he got another call to say a police patrol had finally turned up. When he arrived, he found the plate glass windows smashed by bricks, tables upturned and all his stock stolen by looters.
This month, a motorcyclist hurled a firecracker into the bar, injuring a customer. An Eritrean woman working there was threatened by two men that "her stomach would be cut open with knives", he says. "I have been to the police but they say they can't guard the place 24 hours." Friendly local Israelis phone in warnings when trouble is afoot. "But then they are told: why are you helping this man?"
Mr Zigta's experience is extreme. But otherwise he typifies the 60,000 African men and women who have crossed the still-porous Egypt-Israel border since 2005. Many of the more recent have braved kidnappings, torture and rape by their Bedouin traffickers. Of the 50,000 "infiltrators" (the official term has been condemned by the US State Department) still here, Eritreans and Sudanese cannot be deported because the dangers at home qualify them for "collective protection" under international conventions. A third group, 1,000 South Sudanese, are being deported after a court ruling that the new state is safe to return to.
But with a suspended deportation order hanging over them, the remaining African asylum-seekers are in legal limbo, unable to secure refugee status and therefore access to health and social services. Their entry documents forbid work, and though Israel's Supreme Court has ordered the state not to enforce this, the Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, says he intends to find a way to do so. A new law permits detention of refugees for three years, and so Israel is constructing a 12,400-place desert prison camp – along with tented facilities across the country – "to house tens of thousands of infiltrators until they can be sent out of the country", Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this month. The inmates will not be allowed to work.
Until this month, when the government decided to keep new "infiltrators" in jail, refugees have been detained and screened before "conditional" release. They generally say they were humanely treated by the soldiers on arrival. It's after that that life got difficult.
"I was shocked. I thought Israel would give us our human rights," says Abdo Omar, 32, a university graduate who is one of around 200 Darfuris currently living at a grubby shelter rented out at a steep £2,000 a month, with sleeping bags on the floor and in corridors. Israel says that, as the nearest democracy to Africa with a first-world economy, it is uniquely vulnerable to a migrant influx. And it's true that south Tel Aviv has replaced Calais as the highest-profile flashpoint of a global crisis, the handling of which by European countries, including Britain, has been criticised.
But it's hard to imagine the British Home Secretary, Theresa May, say, surviving the generalisations deployed by Mr Yishai about the asylum-seekers he says have made south Tel Aviv Israel's "garbage can". The minister has suggested that "most" African migrants are criminals, and that many, including rapists, are HIV positive. Arguing that the refugees threaten the "Zionist dream", he has claimed that most are Muslims. Yet official figures show that in south Tel Aviv 13.5 per cent of crimes are committed by foreigners, who make up 28 per cent of the local population. And while Health ministry experts estimate that 17 per cent of HIV sufferers are among legal and illegal foreigners, who are 3 per cent of the national population, police say only one refugee has been charged with rape. And most members of the largest single group – the 35,000 Eritreans – are Christian.
Miri Regev, a Knesset member in Mr Netanyahu's Likud party, told the May protest that African migrants were a "cancer in our body". That evening, rampaging demonstrators attacked Africans and ransacked businesses – including Mr Zigta's bar. Because of the overtones of Hitler's wartime language against the Jews, Ms Regev later apologised to Holocaust survivors (and cancer patients) but not to the Africans. Both the language and the violence were subsequently condemned by Mr Netanyahu. But Ms Regev also unwittingly touched on comparisons some liberal Israelis make with the country's own foundation largely by refugees. Each evening, in Tel Aviv's Levinsky Park, up to 500 Africans queue for a hot meal provided by Israeli volunteers.
One volunteer, Vardit Shlafy, 50, explains that her parents were also refugees – from Poland – and that her mother was saved by a Catholic priest who helped her fake an ID that would allow escape to Russia from the Nazis. "Otherwise I wouldn't be here today. I am saying how grateful I am to that priest by doing something for others."
Even some Israelis in south Tel Aviv express unease about the government's policies. Shop owner Meir Yakoby has participated in "anti-infiltrator" demonstrations. Yet he employs an Eritrean worker. While he wants the refugees dispersed across the country, he says: "He has to work, he has to eat." Israel, he acknowledges, has "not been showing a good face to the world".
Certainly, it's hard to see how mass detention will help. According to Sigal Rozen, of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, a non-governmental organisation, government hopes that the Eritreans (whose average asylum application success rate is 83 per cent in countries – such as those in the EU –which process them) will thus be persuaded to return home are baseless. Israel is hardly going to follow Eritrea's example by raping inmates or torturing them in basements, she says. "No matter how they are abused, they know their own country will abuse them worse."
Kidane Isaac, 26, an Eritrean community activist, says if he returned to his homeland he would face torture or even execution after escaping from the army and then from jail. He says the Eritreans are increasingly "nervous about the general atmosphere because of the new campaign against refugees". Of Israel's "right-wing government" he says: "They are forgetting their own history.

source http://www.harnnet.org/index.php/news-and-articles/top-headlines/3873-immigration-in-israel-african-outcasts-in-the-promised-land-

Monday 25 June 2012

45K maids to arrive every month from Ethiopia


JEDDAH – Ethiopia is facilitating procedures to send 45,000 maids to the Kingdom every month, an informed source at the Ethiopian Embassy in Saudi Arabia has said.
Ethiopian housemaids have been high in demand after the Kingdom stopped recruiting housemaids from four countries, including Kenya, because the Kingdom has been unable to reach a satisfactory agreement with these countries, Asharq Al-Awsat reported Wednesday.
Noor Adeen Masfa, Vice Consul for Economic Affairs in Jeddah, said his department and committees from the Ethiopian Ministry of Labor met several times to facilitate the travel of housemaids to the Kingdom after they are properly trained in Ethiopia.
“We decided to finish procedures of 1,500 housemaids due to the increasing demand for Ethiopian housemaids by Saudi families. Ethiopian housemaids are trained well on Saudi customs and traditions, besides the percentage of runaways is low,” he said.
Unavailability of sufficient flights from Addis Ababa has also caused the delay in the travel of a large number of housemaids.
Some Saudi families have complained that their Ethiopian housemaids left their households after coming to the Kingdom to work illegally because they get lucrative offers from private companies and brokers. Masfa said this matter was studied and discussed. Deterring penalties will be put on housemaids who do that, he said.
“Some Saudi families employ housemaids illegally and pay them SR2,000 a month. That’s why many housemaids run away,” he added.
Masfa said the Ministry of Labor in Ethiopia is considering to put conditions in the contracts to allow housemaids use a cell phone and talk to their families and the consulate in the Kingdom.
“Saudi recruitment offices have welcomed this idea,” he said. – SG 
http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=20120315119698

a:FREE Bekele Gerba/Olbana Lelisa, Oromo Political Prisoners in Ethiopian Empire, and JUSTICE for the Assasa Massacre

Oromia-Ethiopi

Gadaa.com
On August 27, 2011, Oromo political leaders, Obbo Bekele Gerba and Obbo Olbana Lelisa, were thrown into prison by the TPLF regime, which has militarily occupied Oromiyaa since 1991.

Two of the estimated 20,000 Oromo nationalist political prisoners in the Ethiopian empire, Obbo Bekele Gerba was the deputy Chairman of the opposition Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM), and Obbo Olbana Lelisa a leader in the Oromo People’s Congress party (OPC) at the time of their arrests.
Obbo Bekele Gerba and Obbo Olbana Lelisa were thrown into prison after meeting with an Amnesty International delegation, which was also expelled from the Empire afterwards. Please read here about Amnesty International’s report about the two prisoners of consciousness. The Amnesty International delegation was in the country to collect information for its report, which was later published in Dec. 2011: “Dismantling Dissent – Intensified Crackdown in Ethiopia
The two were then joined in October 2011 by another 100 Oromo political prisoners, including leaders and activists of the Oromo civic organization, the Macha-Tulama Self-Help Association (MTSHA), which was afterwards closed down for yet another round.
According to an October 12, 2011 report by the Macha-Tulama Association, USA, INC., a US-based civic organization with a similar name as the one currently banned in Oromiyaa:
Gadaa.com
Obbo Laggese Deti, former leader of MTSHA (Read the biography of Obbo Laggese Deti here)
“The Macha-Tulama high officials, Mr. Laggese Deti Dhaba, Mr. Mulugeta Riqitu and Sisay Sarbesa, are all held incommunicado at the Maikelawi Torture Center in Finfinnee as of today. Mr. Dhaba was the Secretary General of Macha-Tulama Self-help Association for the year 2002- 2003. Mr. Dhaba has also served as the Chairman of History and Culture Committee of the association. He is a cultural expert of Oromo society, and hence imprisoning and attacking him are tantamount to destroying the Oromo cultural resources and foundations. Similarly, his colleagues, who have been imprisoned with him, have deep interests in promoting hte Oromo history and culture. They are Mr. Mulugeta Rikitu, School Director and Board Member of MTSHA; and Mr. Sisay Serbesa, 3rd-Year student at the Addis Ababa [Finfinne] University.”
Following the banning of the Macha-Tulama Self-Help Association, the oldest independent Oromo civic organization with the objective of promoting Oromo history and culture, the Voice of Oromo Liberation (VOL-SBO) carried the following editorial:

Dan Connell: Eritrea’s Refugee crisis is at a crisis level and is intensifying

Refugee_Children The Eritrean refuge situation has been in a crisis level for a while and is now intensifying, according to Dan Connell, an author and longtime friend of Eritrea’s struggle for independence. In an interview he conducted with Radio Assenna on his recent visit to the Eritrean refugee camps in North Ethiopia, Mr. Connell said that the refuge situation is in “continuous flux” where some are being resettled in third countries, others are moving out to central Ethiopia, following Ethiopia’s recently implemented Open Camp Policy while many are still arriving from Eritrea. Dan Connell recently returned from Northern Ethiopia after vising three Camps that are sheltering Eritrean refuges.
“One of the most disturbing parts to it was that an increasing trend towards an unaccompanied minors coming to the boarder,” he highlighted. He elaborated that in “many cases what you see is kids who are searching for an older brothers and sisters or their mothers and fathers who had left before. Mr. Connell said that he has himself witnessed the screening of newly arriving refuges and put the rate at between 30 to 35 Eritreans a day.
“You have a significant number of young men which makes these camps very different from most of refugee camps in the world where you find mainly women, children and the elderly,” Mr. Connell underscored. According to him Eritreans are fleeing in all directions depending their [geographical] background in Eritrea. He elaborated that Majority of Tigrigna speaking highlanders with the small minority of Saho gets Ethiopia more accessible while the Afars and the Tigre finds Djibouti and Sudan respectively to be a much safer route.
Dan Connell said, “whenever you have a significant portion of young working age men and women fleeing a country, you are basically gutting the workforce, making it difficult for the country to develop in the future except under forced servitude.”
Speaking of the situation which lead into the festering of all the problems and ills that Eritrea found itself today, Dan Connell said that, despite an uneasy feelings that he and others like him saw early on when the EPLF refused to include ELF in the transitional government it set up, hinting the closing door for a future vibrant democratic society, they kept the “criticisms and questions about them in private and allowed the situation to percolate along the 1998-2000”.
Dan Connell said that the biggest problems at this point are that the Eritrean opposition is “so scattered so internally divided and without clarity for what it stands”. According to him, unless this changed beyond issuing statements, there will not be much interest

Sunday 24 June 2012

African migrants in Israel face angry backlash, deportations


Refugees_Israel

By Joel Greenberg, Published: June 23

TEL AVIV — Helen Barhat, a young woman from Eritrea, pointed to two bricks on the floor that she has saved since they were hurled into her small groceryshop by a mob that ransacked the premises last month after a raucous demonstration against African migrants.Crouching with her hands over her head, she showed how she had cowered in a back room as the rioters swept shelves clean, smashed bottles and emptied her cash register during a rampage against African-run stores in the neighborhood.
“People tell us, ‘Go back to Eritrea, this is our country,’ ” Barhat said. Joined by friends who were sitting in the shop, she added, “If there was no one here with me now, I would close.”
On the streets of the Hatikva quarter, one of the low-income neighborhoods in south Tel Aviv where an influx of illegal African migrants has stirred unrest among residents, tension is simmering under a facade of normalcy.
A roundup of migrants from South Sudan and the deportation of more than 100 this month has left other newcomers nervous about what lies ahead and residents clamoring for more action. A poster put up last week summoned people to a demonstration outside the home of Tel Aviv’s mayor against “the concentration of the foreigners in our neighborhoods.”
“The situation is very bad,” said Merhane Melake, an Eritrean who has been in Israel for five years, as he walked home. “We don’t know what comes next and what solution they will find for us.”
About 60,000 Africans have illegally entered Israel since 2005, most of them from Eritrea and Sudan. Two recent sexual assault cases in which migrants were charged and a chorus of heated rhetoric from rightist politicians have fueled a violent backlash against the newcomers. Apartments housing migrants have been firebombed and torched, and some Africans have been assaulted on the streets.
Complaints by residents in depressed Tel Aviv neighborhoods of rising crime and a sense of insecurity brought by the migrants have prompted a government crackdown. About 400 illegal migrants, most from South Sudan, have been rounded up in this month’s sweep, and preparations are underway to hold thousands more Africans in a vast tent camp in southern Israel. The moves to deport people from South Sudan went ahead after a Jerusalem court accepted the government’s argument that conditions in that country were safe enough for their return.
The migrants — some seeking refuge from war and oppressive governments, others looking for work and a better life — have trekked through Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, where many were held hostage and abused by Bedouin smugglers seeking ransom from their families. Crossing the porous desert border with Israel, the migrants have been briefly detained before being bused to Tel Aviv, where some sleep in parks and most live in cramped rented rooms in poorer sections of the city.
Left in limbo
While Israel has committed not to deport people from Eritrea and Sudan, because of the risks they could face if they return, it has not granted them work permits or social and health benefits, leaving them in limbo. But employers have not been fined by the authorities for hiring illegal migrants, enabling many to find occasional work doing menial jobs.
Source:The Washington Post

Sudan: Ban Death By Stoning

Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (Cairo)
Sudanese women in a market place (file photo) : The man she said she had a sexual relationship with has denied the charge and was therefore acquitted by the judge.
Nairobi — The sentencing of a young Sudanese woman to death by stoning for adultery presents numerous grave violations of domestic and international law, Human Rights Watch said today. The sentence also underscores the urgent need for Sudan to reform its legal system in accordance with its human rights obligations, Human Rights Watch said.
Intisar Sharif Abdallah, whose age has not been determined but is believed to be under the age of 18, was sentenced by a judge on April 22, 2012, in the city of Omdurman, near Khartoum. Since her sentencing, she been held in Omdurman prison with her 5-month-old baby, with her legs shackled. Read more

Saturday 23 June 2012

Rwanda's Long Shadow: U.S.-Rwandan Relations and a Path Forward in Eastern Congo

Evidence continues to mount that the government of Rwanda has been harboring, supporting, and arming war criminals and mutineers, including Bosco Ntaganda, in neighboring eastern Congo. Former rebels from the Rwanda-linked National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, and an affiliated offshoot group called the M23 movement are currently in open rebellion against the government in Kinshasa and fighting the Congolese national army, or FARDC. Further, recent documents leaked by the United Nations Mission to Congo, or MONUSCO, as well as several interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch and corroborated by the Enough Project field team are pointing to the government of Rwanda forcibly recruiting men and boys into the Rwandan army, or RDF, sending them to fight as rebels for M23 in eastern Congo, and summarily executing them if they prove too weak or try to escape.

Additionally, as part of its annual reporting process, the U.N. Group of Experts on Congo conducted an investigation into the allegations of Rwandan support to the M23 rebellion in Congo. In the process of briefing U.N. Security Council member states as part of the group’s interim report process, the results of this investigation were shared. Several U.N. diplomats as well as NGOs have confirmed that the investigation uncovered evidence of direct Rwandan involvement in the rebellion. Several sources also indicated that this group is best suited to continue investigation into the matter through the remainder of this year. Read more

Dangerous and Deadly Arms Trade

Hundreds of thousands of people are killed, injured, raped, repressed and forced to flee their homes every year as a result of the international arms trade. Families are torn apart. Livelihoods and lives are destroyed. Armed conflicts destroy social and economic infrastructure, breed corruption and divert public finances, denying the poor access to health care, water, food, shelter and education, increasing poverty and causing yet more deaths.

For decades there has been a global treaty on the import, export and transfer of dinosaur bones yet there is no global treaty to strictly control the deadly trade in conventional arms. Revolvers, rifles, machine guns, bullets, hand grenades, missiles, rockets, armoured vehicles and other weapons and arms can be traded between governments, arms dealers and armed groups with few restrictions. Unscrupulous governments allow almost unlimited amounts of arms to be supplied to those flagrantly violating human rights and destroying lives.

Regulation at the country level has failed to adapt to an increasingly globalized trade – components are sourced from across the world, and production and assembly take place in different countries. It’s time for all governments to commit to securing an international Arms Trade Treaty. Read more

"Prison is Not for Me": Arbitrary Detention in South Sudan

Flawed processes, unlawful detentions, and dire conditions in South Sudan’s prisons reflect the urgent need to improve the new nation’s fledgling justice system, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 105-page report, “Prison Is Not for Me: Arbitrary Detention in South Sudan,” documents violations of due process rights, patterns of wrongful deprivation of liberty, and the harsh, unacceptable prison conditions in which detainees live. The research was done during a 10-month period before and after South Sudan’s independence, on July 9, 2011.

“The experience of those in detention in South Sudan reveals serious flaws in the emerging justice system,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “South Sudan is a new country and badly needs an effective justice system that upholds human rights and dignity. It is a fundamental building block for establishing rule of law and accountability.” Read more

Friday 22 June 2012

End of the Roadmap: Somalia after the London and Istanbul Conferences

Indications are that, with continued international support and pressure, Somalia's Transition Roadmap will continue towards its goal of handing over to a caretaker administration on 20 August, 2012.

As such, Somalia's international partners should focus in the next few months on how to transform the momentum injected into the Roadmap process into policy attention and diplomatic support, or pressure, needed to see the caretaker administration develop into more of a government. A more functional government would focus on the provision of services beyond the attention already paid to the security sector.

The end of the Roadmap will not signal an end to Somalia's transition. The new administration will face many of the same challenges threatening the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), and some others generated by the Roadmap process itself. However some progress has been made in Mogadishu, and Somalis – especially in civil society and the private sector – are in a position to build upon that base. Constructive international engagement could support that process. Read more

Eritrean national tells police he was walking in south Tel Aviv park when he was set upon without cause by three teenagers

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Eritrean migrants Photo: Marc Israel Sellem
Three Tel Aviv youths launched a physical assault on an African migrant on Wednesday night, police said.

An Eritrean national told police he had been walking in a south Tel Aviv park when he was set upon without cause by three teenagers. In addition to absorbing blows, the man said, he was also pelted with rocks in the attack.

The migrant managed to flee his attackers, and arrived at a local police station to file a complaint.

Within minutes, police escorted him to the scene of the attack, and soon, the man spotted three boys aged 14 and 16 and recognized them as the attackers.

Officers proceeded to arrest the suspects. Police are treating the incident as a hate crime.

The victim sustained bruising in the attack and received medical attention.

Last month, a gang of 12 youths from south Tel Aviv were arrested on suspicion of launching a series of assaults on African migrants in south Tel Aviv.

Police believe the suspects, most of whom are minors, assaulted the migrants on several occasions.

During some of the assaults, the suspects allegedly beat victims with clubs, while in others, pepper spray was involved, police suspect.

African migrants have regularly reported being attacked in the neighborhoods of south Tel Aviv, often by young men riding up on motorscooters and assaulting them or throwing rocks or bottles at them before speeding off.

Last Saturday night, two men on a motorscooter drove up to an Eritrean-owned bar in the Hatikva neighborhood and threw a firecracker inside the establishment, leaving one patron lightly injured.

The same bar was ransacked during anti-migrant rioting that took place after a protest against asylum-seekers in the neighborhood in late May. 
source http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=274796

Yishai: I’ll work to deport all Sudanese, Eritreans

Yshai Interior minister speaks as 123 S. Sudanese prepare to board flight to Juba; deportees express anger, relief at journey home.

The deportation of the 700- 1,500 South Sudanese in Israel barely scratches the surface of solving the migrant problem facing the country, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said Sunday evening, as a group of 123 South Sudanese prepared to board a midnight flight home to Juba.
Yishai said the real problem “is with Eritrea that has 30,000 people [in Israel] and north Sudan with 15,000,” adding that he hopes “that the legal obstacles to this will be lifted soon and we can expel them as well.”
Yishai admitted that the South Sudanese make up only a “drop within a drop” of the 60,000 or so African migrants in Israel, but added that deporting them is a “national interest” and that if he “has to chose between the interests of Israel and the interests of the Sudanese, I will choose Israel.”
Currently Israel cannot legally deport migrants from Sudan, an enemy state where they would stand to face persecution upon return, or Eritreans, who are citizens of a police state and would potentially be in grave danger if sent back. As a result, both groups are granted group protection status and cannot be deported, giving them de-facto refugee status without the rights that refugee status affords.
As Yishai spoke, South Sudanese men, women, and children were being processed for their midnight flights behind mounds of suitcases inside Ben-Gurion Airport’s Terminal 1. They will be joined on the charter flight by four members of a South Sudan diplomatic delegation that came to Israel last Thursday to oversee the administration of the deportations and meet with local members of the South Sudanese community in Israel.
Gidon Cohen, the head of the encouragement of willful repatriation department of the Population, Immigration and Border Authority, said that each South Sudanese adult received $1,300 in cash, with an additional $500 for each minor traveling with them. They were also given vaccines against diseases common to Sub-Saharan Africa.
Cohen said each passenger was allowed to carry 30kg. of luggage. Many of the suitcases clogging up the entry to Terminal 1 were left by families who had exceeded their luggage limit, and Cohen said he had no idea if the luggage would be shipped to them or remain behind in Israel.
The first leg of the deportation of the South Sudanese community of Israel began early Sunday morning, when a bus full of South Sudanese left Eilat to make its way to the airport. It was followed by a bus leaving Arad at 9 a.m., while the rest of the deportees left from the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station at midday.
Escorted by friends and trailed by cameramen and reporters, dozens of South Sudanese men, women, and children filled into buses on the seventh floor of the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station. As they loaded their bags onto the bus in the midday sun, the migrants described a mixture of feelings. While many spoke of anger towards the anti-migrant atmosphere in Israel and the arrests that accompanied the deportations, others spoke of relief that the deportation saga is coming to an end and happiness about finally returning to their homeland, a new country that did not exist when they fled years earlier.
Andrew Akolawine smiled on the pavement at the bus station, saying “I’ve been here for five years and I’m happy to be going back. You know in any circle, you must end at the point where you start. I started there [South Sudan] and I will finish there, this is enough.”
Akolawine, a father of four, spoke warmly of the Israeli friends he’d made over his years in the country, but added that recent anti-migrant statements by Israeli politicians had soured his opinion of Israel.
Still, he cracked, “I’m very proud that I am part of a people Israel thinks are so important that they don’t talk about the Palestinians anymore, just us.”
One South Sudanese man facing eviction next week came to bid farewell to some of his friends, and sounded far more bitter towards the deportations.
“I need to say to Israel thank you, you don’t want any black people only whites.
When I go back to there, maybe I’ll work in the interior ministry and I will remember well what was done to us.”
He added “I remember growing up reading the Bible thinking Israel is people who help each other… we ran to Israel and we realized that it’s not Israel any longer, it’s just like Russia, Iraq, Egypt.”
Orit Marom of the Assaf NGO, which assists African migrants, called Sunday “a day of shame,” saying that Israel’s Interior Ministry “has trampled on the honor of great friends of Israel, the South Sudanese.” Marom added “the South Sudanese, unlike Eli Yishai, have a big heart and they forgive him.”
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the deportations during Sunday’s cabinet meeting, saying “today the government will begin the operation to repatriate illegal work infiltrators to their countries of origin. We will do this is an orderly and dignified manner.”
Netanyahu also spoke of the government’s efforts to stop the entry of further illegal migrants by finishing construction of the border fence, finishing detention facilities for illegal migrants and using diplomatic steps to find third countries to take in African asylum seekers.
On June 7, the Jerusalem District Court rejected a petition by human rights groups opposed to the deportation of South Sudanese, saying the NGOs did not prove that the South Sudanese would be in physical danger if they were returned home. Though assurances were made that the migrants would be given a week to prepare for deportation, three days later immigration officials began arresting South Sudanese across the country.
The arrests follow a decision announced in January by the Interior Ministry, which gave South Sudanese until April 1 to leave Israel willingly or face deportation.
The Jerusalem Post
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