http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/africa/article3048857.ece

 

Unreported World: Breaking into Israel, Channel 4, 7.30pm tonight

Migrants risk kidnap and death for desert trek into ‘rich’ Israel

Eritreans at a holding house in the desert, waiting for the last leg of their trek into Israel

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Eritreans at a holding house in the desert, waiting for the last leg of their trek into Israel

Ramita Navai Sanai Desert

June 3 2011 12:01AM

 

Deep in the Sinai Desert in a secret location surrounded by sand dunes, more than 100 Eritrean men, women and children are packed into a low-brick building known as a “holding house”. It has taken them more than a month to get here, smuggled by Beduin nomads hundreds of miles from the border of Sudan.

Scared and tired, they lie on the ground, waiting for the final part of their journey: the attempt to cross the border into Israel. They have each paid $2,000 (£1,200) to be hidden under piles of fruit and vegetables in pick-up trucks and driven for hours in blistering heat. “Before we met our smugglers, we walked across the desert for weeks with no water, no food. Many died,” said Tadsse, one of the migrants. “But Israel is rich and there are jobs there.”

The smugglers will drive Tadsse and the others to the border where the migrants will make a run for it. Egyptian border guards have been accused of a shoot-to-kill policy — 86 people have been reported killed attempting to cross, but human rights groups claim the number is much higher. Once in Israel, if captured within 30 miles (50km) of the border, the migrants can be handed to the Egyptian authorities, then detained or sent back home where Eritreans face prison and torture for having left the country illegally.

Eritrea has one of the most brutal regimes in Africa and about 1,800 people flee every month. Most head to Israel but to cross the desert they need the Beduin.

For years, the Beduin have smuggled weapons and goods to Palestinians in Israel and Gaza, and are expert at evading police checkpoints. But migrants are now the lucrative commodity.

“A good smuggler can earn $30,000 a month,” said Abu Suleiman, who has transported about 6,000 Eritreans into Israel in three years. “I’m known for getting people across but there are some pirates out there giving us a bad name.”

There is a new trend of refugees being kidnapped for ransom by their Beduin smugglers and held for months while their captors press their families to send money.

An Israeli charity, Hotline for Migrant Workers, claims that in the past year about 1,000 African migrants trying to cross Sinai have been kidnapped, beaten and raped. Human Rights Concern Eritrea claims that about 200 Eritreans are captive in the desert.

“The kidnappers call me and torture my cousin, I can hear it over the phone,” said a London-based Eritrean. The kidnappers want $13,000 to release the cousin, he said.

Yet the Egyptian Government has denied that there is kidnapping in Sinai.

Unreported World: Breaking into Israel, Channel 4, 7.30pm tonight