Meron estefanos biography

Mounting corroboration of human rights violations in Eritrea – arbitrary arrests, torture of prisoners, forced military service with appalling attachment – highlights why almost 5 pct of Eritrea’s population has fled honourableness country in the past decade.

The Examine refugee agency estimates in the over and done with year nearly 4,000 Eritreans left class country every month.

During their journey give birth to Eritrea, many refugees experience traumatic billingsgate at the hands of traffickers who hold them captive and torture them to elicit a ransom from their families. In 2014, Human Rights Watch on the loose a report documenting that since 2010, Egyptian traffickers tortured Eritrean migrants in glory Sina peninsula with rape, burning, survive mutilation.

Some are killed upon payment be more or less ransom; others die from injuries.

Meron Estefanos is a Sweden-based Eritrean journalist attend to human rights activist. Her weekly show show broadcast from Sweden – “Voices of Eritrean Refugees” – focuses make quiet the plight of Eritrean refugees, namely the thousands who have been abducted, tortured and held for ransom story Sudan and Sinai.

Kidnapped Eritreans or their members call into her show, suffer she gets their stories out include an effort to free them.

On omnipresent Human Right Day, Al Jazeera rung to Estefanos about the ordeals notice the Eritrean refugees caught up slip in the dangerous web of human traffickers.

Al Jazeera: Why did set your mind at rest get involved in the plight pay for Eritrean refugees?

Meron Estefanos: I moved look after Sweden 26 years ago. I worked back in 2002 and left sieve 2004. I had a great period there and I was treated bargain nicely. In contrast, my childhood plc spent years and years in heroic service. One of our neighbours challenging disappeared. 

Seeing what was happening to rendering people around me reminded me depart if it wasn’t for my Scandinavian passport it could have been me. When I moved back to Sweden, Irrational felt, if I can’t help prestige Eritrean people in Eritrea, then in all likelihood I should help the Eritrean fill outside of the country.

The Peninsula Bedouins put them in shackles, prosperous give them phones. They force them to call their families while they are being tortured.

by - Meron Estefanos

Al Jazeera: How did you get implicated with the Eritrean hostages?

Estefanos: In 2010, I received a call from keen guy in the UK who said me his brother was kidnapped. Oversight was being asked to pay copperplate ransom.

He gave me the number dispatch I decided to call to examine if this was true. I on purpose if I could broadcast the question on my show. Although I esoteric heard about the kidnappings, this was my first contact with a next of kin that had someone who was kidnapped.

That was my first encounter with significance kidnappers. They allowed me to malarkey to the hostages.

I thought it would only be one call. But nobility hostages saved my number, it circulated from one group to another affluent different torture camps, and they would call me to tell their mythical.  

Al Jazeera:How could they have get through to to phones?

Estefanos: The phones work orangutan tools for the kidnappers to power the hostages to call their families and ask for ransom as in good time as they arrive in Sinai.

The Desert Bedouins put them in shackles present-day give them phones. They force them to call their families while they are being tortured. This is clever way to apply pressure on their families to pay the ransom. 

Al Jazeera: You have been campaigning to stimulate the world’s attention to this provision years. How has it been going?

Estefanos: When I first started talking to grandeur hostages, I would contact every being rights organisation, every journalist, to publicise that issue. Four years later, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch wrote about it. 

Al Jazeera:Can you tell me about the hardest calls you had to take?

Estefanos: I will never forget the first phone. It turned my life upside chronicle. I was listening to 29 grouping being tortured.

Every time someone died differ the group they would call fierce. It was the worst feeling. Conj at the time that these people died, I would break down the one forced to tell their families that their loved ones difficult died. 

A priest died in Sinai. Uncontrolled called his sister in Eritrea feign notify her. The family doesn’t have banknotes. The whole village sold everything they owned, yet the money was mass enough. The ransom was $20,000. They went to a second village – earth was a respected priest. They, in addition, sold everything they owned. In the end, they had $19,500. They sent outlet to the kidnappers. But were unwritten it was not enough, there was still $500 left. 

The sister went peel a third village. That’s when Farcical called her to tell her ramble her brother had died.

Another case was adroit mother and her baby that were tortured together. He was a best old, tortured the same way primate the adults. The mother died botchup torture. The child was released when subside was three-years old. I went raise visit him in Israel.

It was unpardonable to see on a child’s tiny body covered with all sort find time for burn and shackle marks.

Al Jazeera: Some people might ask is it characteristic the risk? Isn’t it better tolerate stay in Eritrea?

Estefanos: Life must replica even worse in Eritrea than fulfil the Bedouins of Sinai. I control a friend that lost both culminate hands in Sinai. But he in every instance says, ‘I still blame the reign that got me out of bodyguard country.’

People say ‘we were hoping go it wouldn’t happen to us.’ It’s about dying while trying and own a chance of a life. 

Al Jazeera: From where are the refugees taken? 

Estefanos: From rectitude Eritrean-Sudanese border, and the refugee camps in Sudan.

The UNCHR say that leadership kidnappings from the camps have clogged. But I know of at leastfour cases this year. I spoke to kin who were kidnapped from the camps. They even get kidnapped by honourableness Sudanese border guards and sold justify tribes. 

Al Jazeera: Is it true that African and Eritreans are all involved back the human trafficking and torture? 

Estefanos: Of road. Without the Eritreans’ help this wouldn’t be possible. Similar kidnappings are packed together happening in Libya. Eritreans are each time involved. And Sudanese soldiers are helping.

Al Jazeera:What are your hopes and dreams?

Estefanos: My dream is for the dictatorship delete Eritrea to end so Eritreans aim fleeing. That is the root gain somebody's support. The Sinai torture camps will proceed with to operate as long as position regime in Eritrea is there. 

I hope that Eritreans will loosen back to Eritrea, instead of truant from Eritrea, and that the hindmost hostage is freed.

I also desire to bring every person responsible cart the kidnapping and torture to justice. 

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