Torture victims may be sent back
Survivors of Eritrea’s labour camps recall few methods of torture with as much fear as the technique known as the ‘‘helicopter’’.
Victims have their elbows and feet tied tightly together behind their backs, often with wire or plastic rope that makes their limbs bleed. They are then strung from trees and dangle in the scorching sun. Gangrene sets in, resulting in amputations.
Eritrea is the third-largest source of migrants flooding Europe with more than 5000 people fleeing their homeland every day.
Despite the country’s horrors, catalogued in United Nations reports, investigations by activists and court papers, European Union officials last week outlined plans to deport Eritreans seeking asylum in Europe back to Africa.
A plane carrying the first Eritrean refugees to be relocated within Europe left Rome on Friday for northern Sweden.
Not all the Eritreans who follow will be so fortunate. The EU is set to build reception centres in Niger and other African states to house those whose asylum applications are rejected.
The plans follow a British Home Office decision last month to change its guidelines on Eritrea in a way that could make it more difficult for the African country’s citizens to claim asylum. Crucially, the new version states that conscripts are not routinely tortured and deserters are no longer considered traitors at home.
The country has been run as a one-party state under President Isaias Afewerki since winning independence from Ethiopia in 1991.
Electrocution, rape, mock executions and metal handcuffs that screw into the flesh remain common forms of punishment.
The torture techniques used by the regime include names such as otto, torch and Jesus Christ, where victims are tied in various
You can’t oppose a regime from within if it tortures, controls and brutalises its own people in such a way. Elsa Chyrum, an Eritrean human rights activist
positions, sometimes to the barrels of tanks, and then whipped or electrocuted.
Eritreans were the biggest national group to apply for asylum in the UK in 2014. But after the rule change officials can argue that most Eritreans are ‘‘economic migrants’’ rather than victims of political persecution.
Critics have warned that the Home Office wrongly took its lead from a flawed Danish immigration report that was partly repudiated by its own author.
‘‘The reliance on a weak and discredited report suggests the Home Office is more interested in keeping asylum seekers out than in protecting people in danger,’’ said Gerry Simpson, a senior refugee researcher at Human Rights Watch.
One leading activist, however, has mixed feelings about the exodus from her country.
Meron Estefanos, 40, an Eritrean-born Swede, now spends her days trying to save refugees from drowning in the Mediterranean.
Estefanos argues that Eritreans should stay in their country and rise up against Afewerki’s dictatorship.
Others say Afewerki’s grip on the country makes resistance futile.
‘‘Nothing has changed in Eritrea and the situation is getting worse,’’ said Elsa Chyrum, an Eritrean human rights activist. ‘‘You can’t oppose a regime from within if it tortures, controls and brutalises its own people in such a way.’’