MIDDLE EAST: African migrants report abuse on way to Israel

Record ID: 348139

  • Title: MIDDLE EAST: African migrants report abuse on way to Israel
  • Date: 14th January 2011
  • Summary: TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (FILE - NOVEMBER 30, 2010) (REUTERS) GERMAI OMAR, MIGRANT FROM ERITREA, SITTING INSIDE MIGRANT CHURCH IN TEL AVIV (SOUNDBITE) (Tigre) GERMAI OMAR, MIGRANT FROM ERITREA, SAYING: ===EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: BASED ON SIMULTANEOUS TRANSLATION TO ENGLISH=== "We were held, we were beaten. They only gave us very small pieces of bread and a small amount of water. S
  • Embargoed: 29th January 2011 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA8Q36LSYVC45EJY1KA5PS89PH4
  • Story Text: African migrants en route to Israel suffer torture, rape and assault by traffickers in Egypt's Sinai desert, Israeli Physicians for Human Rights say.
    An Israeli human rights body says illegal African migrants, using illegal trafickers to get them through borders, suffer a horrific journey through the Sinai desert at the hands of smugglers who make a fortune out of their victims.
    The Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said on Thursday (January 13) they collected more than 100 testimonies from migrants, en route to Israel, who said they had been raped and assault by their handlers.
    "We see quite a lot of patients that suffer from orthopaedic problems, women that suffer from sexual abuse that need abortions and so on. We started collecting these testimonies and what we discovered is a terrifying picture of what is happening in the Sinai desert," Ran Cohen, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, told Reuters television in PHR's open clinic in Tel Aviv.
    The migrants told PHR the Bedouins whom they pay to smuggle them through Egypt's border with Israel hold them for days, and sometimes weeks, demanding more cash and abusing them physically until the money is paid.
    "We were held, we were beaten. They only gave us very small pieces of bread and a small amount of water. Sometimes we used it to make porridge. We ate a small meal every three days. We were beaten and tied up, thrown outside for the night in the cold," Germai Omar, a 30-year-old Eritrean farmer, told Reuters in Tel Aviv.
    "There were ladies with us, one lady especially, the traffickers raped her, and she had many terrible experiences at that time. Her husband was also beaten by them," Omar said.
    He said the deep scars on his face and leg were from Egyptian gunfire.
    Omar said he was detained for a month in the Sinai by the traffickers who demanded he add 1,500 US dollars to the original fee of 2,500 US dollars. Omar contacted his family by cellphone and they gave the cash to the smugglers' contacts in Cairo.
    Israel says some 35,000 migrants from Eritrea, Sudan and other African countries have entered the country illegally mostly in search of work.
    PHR published a report in December based on the accounts of 167 migrants who spoke of abuse by the smugglers that included being burnt, branded, hung by the hands or feet and raped.
    Last month, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said it was concerned about some 250 Eritreans held hostage by smugglers in the Sinai for about a month. Egyptian security sources in the Sinai said they searched the area but did not find anyone.
    At the PHR clinic in Tel Aviv, Sister Aziza Kidane, an Eritraen nun interviews migrants about abuse they may have suffered or witnessed.
    One 19-year-old Eritrean tells her he had no money and the smugglers beat him with broken glass until one woman agreed to loan him cash. A 22-year-old Eritrean woman said she was threatened that her kidneys would be sold to organ dealers.
    They said they had heard rumours about the ill treatment but decided to risk it anyway.
    "We have been telling to the whole world how horrible it is, and the people who are suffering. and losing their lives, many people die either while they are crossing or by hunger or by beating. But still people come. We don't know why. They have to come even though they know they will pass horrible things and they might face also death," Kidane, who interviews some 250 migrants so far, says.
    Egyptian border police shot dead at least 30 African migrants in 2010, up from 19 in 2009.
    Rights groups say every year tens of thousands of Eritreans flee religious persecution in their country, arbitrary arrests and mandatory military service.
    In an effort to keep African migrants out, Israel has been erecting a fence along the porous border with Egypt and plans to set up a holding facility for those caught crossing the frontier.
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