His Excellency Hosni Mubarak
President of the Arab Republic of Egypt
`Abdin Palace
Cairo
Egypt
13 June 2008
Via fax: +20 22 390 1998
Dear President Mubarak,
Re: Inhuman treatment of Eritrean asylum seekers in Egyptian prisons & forcible return
Your government has so far forcibly returned 400 asylum seekers to Eritrea in the night of 11 and 12 June, and we have learned that you are preparing to deport an additional 1200 soon.
As you are probably aware your country is signatory to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the UN Convention against Torture.
This precludes the forcible return of asylum seekers to Eritrea where they are at risk of torture and other serious human rights abuses. As a signatory to the 1951 Convention, human rights abuses against Eritreans, be they Muslims or Christians or indeed of any other faith, is also in contravention of the convention. Furthermore, refusing any asylum seekers access to human rights organisations such as the United Nations Higher Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is also in contravention of the convention. However, your country is currently guilty on all counts.
We cannot believe that such acts of inhumanity can be occurring with the full knowledge of the President of the country.
Atrocities are performed in your country on a daily basis upon Eritrean asylum seekers who have been criminalised for trying to escape from a living hell in their own country. They have been herded like animals into little more than cages. Small rooms house forty of fifty asylum seekers night and day at high unbearable temperatures with no ventilation or any other basic hygiene, leading to skin rashes and more serious ailments none of which are treated, for adults and children alike.
Regardless of age or medical conditions (such as pregnancy), atrocities such as the slow starvation of one meagre meal a day persist in Egypt.
Even hardened criminals in high security prisons are given three meals a day and a few minutes in the daylight of the open air, but these innocent Eritreans guilty of nothing more than wanting an ordinary life free from persecution are not given as
much. These men, women and children, for example in Nasr al Nuba prison, to name, but one, are being beaten, tortured, and to add insult to injury, they are being verbally abused for being Christians even when they are not. There seems to be a dominant attitude among the prison guards that “Christians” are less than human, and “do not deserve sunlight and fresh air” or any kind of humane treatment.
Since communication with the outside world is another basic human right denied to these asylum seekers, surreptitious measures have been adopted to inform our sources of what goes on in some of these prisons such as sexual molestation and rape.
And after suffering all these deprivations and abuses, hundreds of these Eritreans have been sent back to certain torture, and in many cases death. This has all been done in collaboration with the Eritrean government which is ruled by a despot who has no regard whatsoever for human rights.
Does Egypt want to identify itself with these killers of men, women and children? Or does Egypt want to begin to dissociate itself from such barbaric behaviour by finally treating the remaining Eritrean asylum seekers as human beings and not, as has been reported by a Senior Egyptian Security Official, deporting them?
Yours sincerely
Elizabeth Chyrum
Director
Human Rights Concern - Eritrea
London, U.K.
Copies to:
Minister Habib Ibrahim El Adly
Ministry of the Interior
25 Al-Sheikh Rihan Street
Bab al-Louk,
Cairo, Egypt
Minister Ahmed Ali Aboul Gheit
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Corniche al-Nil, Maspiro
Cairo, Egypt
Ambassador Mokhless Kotb
Secretary General
National Council for Human Rights
1113 Corniche El Nil
Midane Al Tahrir
Specialized National Councils Building -- 11th floor
NDP Building,
Cairo, Egypt
Mr Antonio Guterres
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Case Postale 2500
CH-1211 Genève 2 Dépôt
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