n memory of my beloved brother Mohammed Saleh Mohammed Hagos 1953-2008

• July 25, 2008
• Written by: Seidi Mohammed Hagos

• Hagos Juhar and his mother Fatima Idris Kahssay. Soon after he was born our parents migrated to Addis Ababa leaving Mohammed with our grandfather. Our grandfather was a self made businessman who was known for his famous bakery shop in Mendefera.

Mohammed completed his elementary school at St. Georgeo School Mendefera. At school Mohammed was always a top student coming 1^stin his class. When he came 2^nd once or twice he would make sure he secured his first spot the next time around. During his school holidays Mohammed worked at our grandfather’s bakery where he had his first experiences of involvement in business. Mohammed, only about 10 years old then, would load bread on the delivery bicycle and supply shops and tearooms. The clients loved him, they would ask him to have tea and chat with them. Even at that early age his communication skills and attraction to people was there to be noticed. This experience at the bakery left him with a love of freshly baked bread. There is nothing Mohammed liked to eat more than freshly baked bread.
In 1970 Mohammed moved to Addis Ababa to join his parents and his younger siblings. By then Mohammed had completed 9^th grade at St Georgeo in Mendefera. My father wanted him to go to the best school in town, St. Joseph School in Addis Ababa where the feudal elites sent their children. Coming from remote Mendefera, Mohammed’s first challenge was to sit for a tough entry exam to join 10^th grade. Again Mohammed scored high points and got admitted.
Within a year Mohammed spoke Amharic fluently and made lots of friends at his new school. He finished in the top five in his first year and by grade 11 and 12 Mohammed was always coming 1^st.
In 1973 he joined Addis Ababa University Faculty of Science. After a year of studying at the University the Derg came to power and Mohammed had to go to do his national service (Zemecha). In 1976 he ran away from the Derg and came to the UK.
From 1976-1980 Mohammed studied Chemical engineering at Brunel University, Uxbridge and gained a Bachelors Degree in 1981. Then from 1981-1982 he went to Aston University, Birmingham to do his MBA. Typically both his Bachelors and Masters Degree were achieved with first class grades.
In 1983 he tried in various ways to set up his own business. Then in 1984 he started a very successful property development business in London. His talent in communication and lovable character gave him an advantage in business. To him work was done at leisure and he would be talking and laughing with clients whilst closing deals at ease.  Mohammed had the knack to make life appear so simple and enjoyable. He was full of energy and loved having a good laugh, he saw humour in everything. His energy rubbed off on people and even clients enjoyed his company.
Mohammed was married in August 1988 to Mensura Idris and has 3 children.  It would have been his 20^th wedding anniversary this August.
Mohammed was doing well in London. However Mohammed had a lifetime ambition to go back to his country and work there amongst the people he loved. After Eritrea became independent he started to seriously concentrate on what to do back home. The opportunity to fulfil his ambition came when the Eritrean government announced that it would privatise industries run by the government. For Mohammed it was just another deal to be made. He travelled to Asmara a couple of times and then took a trip down to Bristol in the UK to see Unilever, the Omo brand owners, and within months Mohammed had finalised and convinced the family to buy The Red Sea Soap Factory. The factory was eventually bought and Mohammed was sitting in the general manager’s office by June 1997. The factory was established during the reign of Emperor Hailesilassie with second hand machinery bought from Italy. By the time Mohammed started to work at the factory some of the machines were obsolete and the parts were not available. Often the machine manufacturers no longer existed.
From day one Mohammed went about modernising the plant and the buildings and began to construct a new factory from scratch on the land within the factory premises. I remember when, just after the 1998 – 2000 war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, the family were all in London discussing the environment in Eritrea. As we all know Ethiopian fighter jets had bombed near the factory, Mohammed was in his office when windows were shattered and shrapnel littered the compound. Some of us said that he should close and come to London as it was not safe if another round of fighting erupted. Also some of us sighted that there was problem with the business. Mohammed’s initial business plan, which was drawn up before the war, depended on large volume export sales to Ethiopia and this big chunk of revenue was affected.  We therefore advised him to come to the UK until the dust settles down.
Mohammed was not having any of these negative views. To him his lifetime ambition to help develop his country was non negotiable. He immediately tabled a further investment and expansion proposal and insisted that he must get on with it. He always viewed things in the long term even if it meant suffering in the present.
The factory went through a particularly difficult stage when it was forced to close for a short period of time due to a lack of vital foreign currency. The factory workforce were so personal to him he treated them like his own immediate family. Whether business was done or not he maintained their wages and welfare.
His contribution to his county did not stop there.  He was elected as executive member of the newly formed Eritrean Employers Federation and was elected president of the Employers Federation. Mohammed became an asset to the country. He was a regular traveller with government delegates to various countries working on Eritrea’s interests. He attended seminars in the country with courage and passion. Here is what Mohammed had to say during a seminar sitting alongside Hagos Gebrehiwot, Dr. Woldai Futur and others:
“Up until 1998, many Eritreans from outside were flowing to Eritrea to invest and do business. After the war, the flow has been either trickling or has stopped. I say this issue deserves a proper attention. I think it is important to conduct a study on what needs to be done to attract investors, be they Eritreans or foreigners, and take the necessary measures. The obstacle is not just the war; image can also be a problem. Especially since Eritreans love their country, we should do what we can to attract them. In general, we should take practical measures, small or big, that send positive signals of open opportunities to potential investors.” Hidri Magazine (April 2005, Nº 14)
Those who know Mohammed would say that he was an exceptionally able and ambitious man who had determination and an incredible capacity to mix with people of all generations and race. He always sets for himself extremely high goals and does not rest until he achieves these goals. He was so driven and loved the sense of accomplishment. He loved sharing his joy with others and people loved Mohammed’s energy. He was the type who would cry when others were troubled and laughed and celebrated when others made achievements.
To our shock and horror on 2 July 2008 Mohammed’s dead body was found just outside Asmara on the hills along the Asmara Massawa road.
On the evening of Tuesday July 1^st 2008, he had received a call from an unknown caller on his mobile insisting that he should meet them near his guest apartment in Monopolio.  We learnt that he was then handcuffed and cruelly tortured to death. Afterwards the killers drove the car with his body inside onto the Asmara Massawa road and dumped him.
The killers pushed the car down the hill. He fell out of the car about 20 meters down the hill while his car was found a further 100 meters down. Mohammed’s body was recovered and then taken to the hospital in Asmara. An autopsy investigation was carried out which took 4 days. We were eventually allowed to bury him on Sunday July 6^th 2008.
We are still waiting for the post-mortem report from the hospital and the police report of the investigation into Mohammed’s death. At this stage there has been no official verdict recorded as to why Mohammed died or who killed him.
Mohammed’s death has been a great loss not only to his dear family and friends but to the whole of Eritrea.  Mohammed had high hopes to use his knowledge and skill to help the people of Eritrea build a new and modern country that would be an example to the entire continent. To Mohammed, the “Eritrea will be a Singapore” saying was not just a slogan.  He believed that it was a viable dream.
The family would like to take this opportunity to thank all the relatives and friends from around the world who have mourned Mohammed’s death. We were overwhelmed by the hundreds of people that came to pay their respect to the man they knew and loved. In Asmara thousands attended his funeral. The quiet mourners were demanding justice in their polite Eritrean way by attending the funeral in huge numbers. The fact that he was such a well-loved person gave great comfort to the family during this difficult time.
I am sure you will all join me in remembrance of a truly exceptional man and join the family in praying that the government will bring the perpetrators of this horrific crime to pay for their actions.
His loving sister
Seidi M Hagos  seadyhagos@yahoo.co.uk

source http://awate.com/in-memory-of-my-beloved-brother-mohammed-saleh-mohammed-hagos/

Recent Activities of the Plight of Eritrean Refugee By: Tigist Abebe & Simon Gebreselassie

The Plight of Eritrean Refugee Committee at St. Nicholas church was created to help address the issues that Eritrean refugees face once they leave Eritrea. The Committee was created with a group of volunteers led by Fr.  Vittorio Boria to work in conjunction with the Office of Refugees in the Archdioceses of Toronto (ORAT).

In November, 2009, the group organized a conference – The Plight of Eritrean Refugees- where various speakers from agencies and government spoke about issues related to immigration and refugee cases. The main focus of the conference included:

• speeding  the process for Eritreans who have applied for refugee status
• helping end a mounting crisis that has left thousands stranded in camps in Kenya, Egypt, Sudan and Libya
• alerting the public and federal government about the situation
• urging the public and federal government to condemn the actions of countries that violate the safety and basic human rights of these refugees  and to call on the international community to take action so that Eritrean refugees are protected.
• urging the government to increase the number of government and privately sponsored refugees to Canada and ensure the fairness of eligibility requirements of Eritrean refugee claims.

Working with the O.R.A.T. office has given us the tools to connect with the other agencies and express our concerns that Eritrean refugee have encountered.  This includes meeting with the Canadian Council for Refugees as well as meeting with the Minister Responsible for Citizenship and Immigration.  Recently our committee attended a meeting held with the Minister and the Iraqi community.  The focus of the meeting was to help increase the private sponsorship for Iraqi refugees.  Father Vittorio had an opportunity to request that the Minister address the problems faced by Eritrean and other African refugees whose processes are held up in the Nairobi Immigration office. The Minister committed to visiting and helping address those issues. read more

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

Written by Donald Macintyre

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-

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

June 24, 2012June 24, 2012 assenna [source http://assenna.com/dan-connell-eritreas-refugee-crisis-is-at-a-crisis-level-and-is-intensifying/

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

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

.

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