Eritrea's botched kick-off – Football players defect

Once more it is not going well for the oppressive regime of Eritrean's President Isaias Afewerki. Desperately trying to find some honour abroad, at least in the field of sports, something keeps going awfully wrong.

Yesterday nine members of the Eritrean national football team, currently in Kenya for the 2013 CECAFA Cup, disappeared from their hotel and defected. With them is the team coach, which leaves the rest of the players stranded.

Already a week ago two players of the team had gone in hiding, so that now eleven Eritrean football players have turned their back on the regime that send them to the tournament. It is expected that they will file an asylum request with the UNHCR in Kenya.

Defecting athletes, something well known of Eastern Bloc nations during the time of the Cold War, are always an embarrassment to the regimes they flee from. Nothing shows so intensely the desperation of a people as when its national athletes make use of a sports event abroad to abscond. Eritrea however almost has a running tradition of this by now, and President Afewerki will have to think once more about the honour he tried to gain and lost double by the defection of national football team members, a situation he knows well from the past.

A running tradition of defection

In 2006, four players of the national team defected after a CAF Champions League match in Nairobi, Kenya. One year later, 12 members defected after a game of the 2007 CECAFA Cup in Tanzania.  Another 6 players sought asylum in Angola in March 2007 after a game in the qualification group 6 for the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations, and three more players from the national team sought asylum in Sudan.

As this was clearly getting out of hand, heaping shame after shame on the regime of President Afewerki that was so desperate to keep up the fairy tale of normality in the oppressed country, the plug was pulled, and Eritrea withdrew from the 2008 CECAFA Cup. With no players abroad, no shame by defection was to be feared.

Not participating however in the most important football tournament of Africa was shame in itself. So one year later Eritrea decided to take part again and hastily assembled a new team of football players for the 2009 CECAFA Cup in Kenya. In only 12 days the young team was drilled and this time a security payment of 100,000 nakfa (around $ 6.500) was demanded from the athletes before leaving to ensure they would return.

It went awfully wrong. 12 players – half the team Eritrea send to the tournament – failed to report for the return flight and filed asylum requests with the UNHCR in Nairobi. At first Eritrea pretended not to be aware of the defection, then it promised the defectors a "good welcome" on return despite them having "betrayed" the country. At the same time Eritrea however urged Kenya's police to find and arrest the defectors who for good reason did not fall for the temptation of a "good welcome" and remained in hiding for eight months. They were then granted asylum status and are now living – and playing football – in Australia.

In 2010, vowing to this time have a police escort that keeps a watch over the players at all times, Eritrea tried once more and send a new national team to the 2010 CECAFA Cup to Tanzania. But again 13 players defected, asked for asylum and are now living – and playing football – in Houston, Texas.

The streak of bad luck for the Eritrean regime was far from over. In 2011 it once again withdrew from the CECAFA Cup citing lack of funds, though everyone was convinced it was to prevent even more players to defect. By 2012 however the regime had pulled itself together and gave it another go. It turned out not to be the best of ideas.

During the 2012 CECAFA Cup in Uganda, 17 members of the Eritrean national football team and the team doctor left the hotel in Kampala to 'go shopping' or 'visit friends' – but never returned. They defected and filed for asylum. Only five players and two officials were left to return home to the once more deeply shamed regime of Eritrea. The defected players were granted refugee status by Uganda in February this year.

After such a tradition of losing its football players on practically every African tournament year after year Eritrea should have perhaps known better than to give it another try. But overzealous national pride yearning for at least some acceptance abroad despite the horrific human rights situation in the country seemed to have won over reason. With no good result.

It happened yet again

The 2013 CECAFA Cup proved to be yet another Eritrean Waterloo: 2 players ducked into hiding at the beginning of last week, 8 more players and the team coach disappeared from their hotel last night, are now in a secret place and will ask for asylum with the Kenyan Office of the UNHCR. Once more the plane taking the Eritrean national football team home will be half empty.

Eritrea, dubbed the 'North Korea' of Africa, has a serious problem. According to estimates, around 3,000 Eritreans are secretly leaving the country every month trying to get out of the terror grip of the ruthlessly authoritarian regime. High ranking air force pilots fly their planes to nearby Saudi Arabia to defect, where three planes have by now accumulated on the tarmac. A female pilot, sent by Eritrea to pick up one of the planes, immediately asked for asylum herself. And one of the most famous Eritrean singer, Yohannes Tikabo, defected only two months ago. It just doesn't work out well for President Afewerki.

With the new embarrassment now at the 2013 CECAFA Cup in Kenya, Eritrea has shown the world once more that its botched kick-off at African football tournaments is becoming tradition. There is no doubt that the lean, well trained Eritrean football players can run. Sadly for the President and his oppressive regime however, most of them – at least in the eyes of the President – keep running in the wrong direction.

Sinai: In the Realm of Death

In the current weekly print supplement Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, published in the German leading newspaper SZ, a horrific story about the torture of kidnapped Africans in Egypt's Sinai is spreading across 24 pages. Called "In the Realm of Death", it is a harrowing account of an 18-day trip to hell by the award winning journalist Michael Obert and Magnum photographer Moises Saman. As the report is only published in German but contains vital information especially for Egyptian readers and government authorities, I am recounting their trip here and added translations of vital passages that are chilling to read. Wherever quotation marks are set, the passage is a direct translation of the original report.

If anyone wonders if the horrid accounts of torture practices mentioned here are factual or not just products of over imagination, I can assure you I have read and heard numerous reports to this for a long time now that are as brutal as these. A human rights organisation in Israel alone has collected testimonies from over 1,300 Africans who barely survived the torture camps in the Sinai. Their stories tell of unspeakable crimes against humans and they carry the – well documented – horrific scars and injuries to go with it. The brutalities reported here in this report sadly are factual. We have to face it, whether we like it or not.

It is my wish that more people are willing to be aware of the terrible crimes against humans that are ongoing day by day by day in the Sinai desert. And that we manage to pressure the interim Egyptian government to undertake steps to put an end to one of the biggest atrocities of our times.

I urge anyone who is fluent in German to read it. It gives harrowing insights into the mindset of the torturers of Sinai, the Egyptian authorities who look away – and a world that does not care.

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UPDATE:

Up to July 26, 2013, you could find my very long, detailed recounting of the trip the two journalists took,with a number of translated quotes from the original German article here. The reaction to this blogpost was overwhelming and the many readers, the post had, were shocked to hear what is going on in the Sinai regarding the horrific torture of innocent human beings held hostage.

However, the publishers of the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin asked me to remove my post as their licensing department has purchased the rights for the translation to exclusive partners and they fear my post could interfere with this.

I have been assured that the article I find so important for English readers to read will be published in translation shortly in a big newspaper/mag, so it will then be possible for the English speaking audience to read the article in it's complete form.

As things stand, I have decided to oblige with their request and remove my recounting of the journey on this blog so as not to interfere with the said republishing process. I am very much interested that the article in translation finds it's way in whole into the English speaking public sphere.

My post was intended to inform and raise awareness of the horrors that happen daily in the Sinai. In this I was agreed with the author, who wanted nothing as much as to stir the world in order for it to wake up and make an effort to finally put an end to these unbelievable atrocities that have cost thousands of African lives in the last years.

(Read my article in the Daily News Egypt on this, and check this blog for further posts on the subject.)


Three quotes from the original article I would like you to read and know.

Of those hostages, who after horrible torture manage to come free, many are arrested by the Egyptian authorities, if they are badly injured, handcuffed to hospital beds, or otherwise thrown into jail. Michael Obert writes on this:

» Because, instead of going after the kidnappers and torturers, the Egyptian authorities go after the victims. «

That is – in addition to the original torture by the kidnappers – a serious crime and, as the representative for the UNHCR in Cairo puts it rightly, "a violation of the Geneva Convention".

The Bedouin guide, who led the journalists to the place were the torture chambers are hidden in houses of Bedouin human traffickers, showed himself outraged:

» "If only one European is abducted somewhere in the Middle East, then the whole world cries out, the media goes crazy and everything is done to rescue the hostage – but with thousands of Africans the world looks away and lets them rot to die."«

And one of the reasons behind this, Michael Obert points out:

» Because the world can't see these people and hardly anyone knows their stories, the kidnappers can torture them unhindered. «

Let us raise awareness where we can so the world starts to 'see' these people who suffer such incredible pain in the darkness of windowless rooms in torture chambers in the Sinai.

It is up to us to make it impossible for the kidnappers to torture them 'unhindered'. It is up to us and up to how much effort we make to put a stop to this, that decides the fate and often decides over the lives of those who fell victim to human trafficking in Sinai.

Theses horrors must come to an end. Once and for all.