8/10/2023 0 Comments Conflict of nations world war 3![]() ![]() They told him that Eritrean refugees were scared of being forcefully returned, so they managed to get out of the vehicle and flee in the middle of the night. ![]() The night before, his relatives were on another bus that was also stopped while passing through east Sudan. On April 24, he boarded a bus from Khartoum to Kassala, but told Al Jazeera that the vehicle was stopped apparently by officers in civilian and military clothes.Īccording to the man, the officers asked all the Sudanese nationals to exit the bus and then allegedly began threatening the refugees still on board with deportation unless they paid bribes between $100-200. One Sudanese-Eritrean man, who requested anonymity due to fear of reprisal, claimed that Sudanese army troops may be implicated in forced returns. That’s why we are all going to Addis ,” he said, referring to Ethiopia’s capital. “All young are afraid to go back to Eritrea. If the war drags on, he intended to cross the border to Ethiopia and take refuge there. Tesfay added that he was struggling to pay rent and feed his family and that he has not had any luck finding work. But his phone suddenly shut off and I haven’t heard any news from him for three weeks,” Tesfay said. “He’s a friend of a friend, but we were in contact because I wanted to know the situation in Kassala. He contemplated heading to Kassala because of the cheaper rent and what he claimed was better access to UN aid, but he changed his mind after losing contact with an acquaintance on May 1. Samir Tesfay, a 28-year-old Eritrean who was born in Sudan, said that he and his family came to Gadarif, another city in eastern Sudan near the border with Ethiopia. The well-known dangers in Kassala have pushed many Eritreans to settle elsewhere across the country after fleeing the fighting in Khartoum. are at risk and they don’t have enough protection at these camps.” The fraught situation in Kassala has pushed many to settle elsewhere in the country “Ransoms can go up to thousands of dollars. There have been kidnappings from these camps for a very long time,” Tsehaye told Al Jazeera. In May, the UN said that refugees who had left camps in the east to work as labourers on farms have been kidnapped, triggering anxiety among Ethiopian and Eritrean asylum seekers who are struggling to find part-time work. In 2014, UNHCR reported that 14 Eritrean asylum seekers were abducted in Kassala state after armed men intercepted a truck that was transporting them to a refugee camp. Dangerous precedentĮritrean refugees have long been unsafe in Sudan because of the close security and political ties between the two countries. “If doesn’t have confirmation that this is happening, then why risk … if there is another chance of putting them elsewhere,” she added. Obviously, we have the geographic location which is not ideal considering the allegations of forced returns to Eritrea and that should be taken seriously.” Vanessa Tsehaye, the executive director of One Day Seyoum, which advocates on behalf of Eritrean refugees worldwide, said, “There are different reasons why UNHCR should reconsider its response to the crisis. I can’t speculate because we have no confirmation of forced returns,” said Faith Kasina, a UNHCR spokesperson. “We are doing the best we can to work in the conditions that are prevailing in the country. With the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) confining its assistance to Eritreans in camps in Kassala, many are being forced to choose between accessing aid in an area where they risked being kidnapped or relocating where help is not available. They comprise 11 percent of the 1.1 million refugees in the country. There are an estimated 126,000 Eritrean refugees in Sudan, according to UN data, struggling to survive the conflict. All have asked peers to search for them in refugee camps, but none has been found. Three Eritrean refugees told Al Jazeera that they lost contact with friends after their bus entered Kassala on April 19, May 1 and May 15. His friend could be among a number of Eritreans who have reportedly disappeared on the road to Kassala, raising fears that they have either been captured by Eritrea’s authoritarian government or by human traffickers after fleeing the fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). “If he was in a refugee camp, then I would have heard news from him. “He said, ‘They grabbed me and took me off the bus.’ The line was then cut off,” he told Al Jazeera from Sudan. Then he received an anxious call from his friend. He was fleeing Sudan’s war-torn capital, Khartoum, to a refugee camp and to access aid from the United Nations. Nabil Mohamed* last heard from his friend, a fellow Eritrean, on April 19 in Kassala, a city in eastern Sudan near the Eritrean border.
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