In accordance with the news circulating among the Irob migrants in Israel — the youths along with other Eritreans attempting to reach Israel to seek asylum and themselves in search of jobs, like many other Irobs who preceded them — were starved to death and dehydrated in the hands of ruthless human smugglers/traffickers in the hostile and hot deserts of northern Sudan while travelling illegally to Sinai (Egypt) and before they were able to reach their destination from where to cross the deadly and notorious Egypt-Israel border. (As it is well known from various media news, if African refugees or migrants were found or seen crossing the border area have been often hunted and gunned down in daytime or night-time by the border securities especially by the Egyptians patrolling the border.)

IRROB.org would like to express heartfelt condolences to the general global Irob Community and particularly to the families who lost their children. And at the same time strongly condemns the cruel and inhumane activity of those human-traffickers who expose young people by exploiting them for their own financial gain and trading and gambling on their lives without even providing them with some basic needs of food and water in a scorching heat in hostile and dangerous deserts.

As IRROB.org has learned, such underground illegal activity networks of human traffickers or smugglers are well set up and organized groups that operate all the way from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt (and apparently Israel) seducing those economically underprivileged young men and women who are determined with all cost to emigrate from their native places to escape poverty and destitution in search of better life abroad. In the process, these misinformed and restless young people have to pay them unaffordable money most of the time they have to borrow from their families, relatives or friends with the promise of repaying them back by working in foreign countries of their destinations and illusive dreams. The smugglers entice them providing them with deceptive information and promises of wealth in foreign countries of their choice…simply for their own unethical greed and gain.

Unfortunately, before they even get to the dreamed destinations, quite many of the migrants perish in the scorching deserts or in dangerous seas or borders while trying to cross under the guidance of those ruthless and greedy human smugglers. When they reach, for instance, countries like Libya, Egypt, etc. before they’ve to attempt such risky and life-threatening ventures, migrants are told to pay ransom monies. If they are unable or cannot afford to pay the demanded amount of money in the US currency, they would be tortured physically and psychologically, including rapes and electric shocks until all their demands are fully met.

According to the telephone interviews held with some migrants in Egypt and Israel, IRROB.org was told, for example, that the migrants are forced to pay their dues in the full amount starting from $2,500.00 to over $6,000.00 via the Western Union to the smugglers’ representatives in Cairo, which must be procured all in the US currency. If they don’t have the money with them, they have to call their families, relatives or friends back home or abroad and get the money. Otherwise, if they fail to meet their demands, the migrants will suffer in the merciless hands of the smugglers who will abuse them with variety of torturing means including physical beatings causing serious bodily injuries or even bodily mutilations and maiming, as well as starvation and verbal abuse that will leave them with emotional and psychological scars. (Eritrean & Ethiopian Refugees suffering in Egypt). There had been scores of stories of incidents that organs had been harvested for selling from those who could not meet their fiscal demands and mercilessly left to suffer and die in the wilderness.

IRROB.org would like to warn as well as to plead with all those restless young men and women from Irob Woreda and elsewhere in the country — who might be contemplating or have already planned to venture following on the footsteps of those others who managed to reach those countries with a mere luck or simply after undergoing a lot of hardships and traumatic experiences — to stop immediately gambling with their precious and youthful lives. It is better to avoid such a dangerous survival approach in foreign countries where no one will be able to guarantee them with jobs without legal status or work permits. It is fallacy and illusion to dream that they will find better life in alien countries they desperately seek to go to without language and/or professional skills. They have to realize that their rights won’t be protected but rather might very well abused with hard labors without fair and just pays for the hard physical works and sweats in the environmentally risky and hazardous places. Today such physical labors are described as “modern slavery” that often happens to migrants and refugees who are constantly and randomly exploited and even killed in those dreamed countries of utopist wealth and paradise. It is much better to face realities and choose to stay home where you can die in dignity and poverty in your own country rather than left out in the seas or in the deserts of foreign countries!!

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