Thursday, July 3, 2014

Boko Haram in prespective. Washington Diplomat: Ex-Envoy Sounded Alarm on Nigeria Long Before #BringBackOurGirls

http://www.washdiplomat.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10614:ex-envoy-sounded-alarm-on-nigeria-long-before-bringbackourgirls&catid=1520&Itemid=428





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Thursday, July 3, 2014



Ex-Envoy Sounded Alarm on Nigeria Long Before #BringBackOurGirls

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This spring, as news of the abduction of nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls by the radical Islamic group Boko Haram spread throughout the world, many Americans were riveted by the sensational story and finally woke up to the carnage that has bedeviled Africa’s most populous country for years.
A1.powi.campbell.headshot.story
Photo: Council on Foreign Relations
Eventually, every major U.S. news network covered the brazenly frightening kidnapping and a new hashtag, #BringBackOurGirls, exploded across social media, attracting the attention of celebrities, members of Congress and even first lady Michelle Obama.
Fast forward three months.
The Nigerian schoolgirls — abducted in protest of their “Western” education and threatened to be sold off for as little as $12 — are still missing. Nigerian officials have issued conflicting accounts on efforts to rescue the girls, only reinforcing impressions of the government’s impotence and incompetence.
Meanwhile, Boko Haram, in its ongoing campaign to impose strict Islamic Sharia law on the country, has escalated its murderous rampages, slaughtering hundreds in early June after its members posed as a Nigerian military unit sent to protect villagers. Reports have also surfaced of at least two other mass kidnappings of girls (and boys) since April. Other spectacular attacks have reached deep into the capital of Abuja, far from the group’s stomping ground in the northeast. In all, Boko Haram has killed at least 4,000 people in the last four years, Christians and Muslims alike, and driven over half a million more from their homes.
Boko Haram’s reign of terror no longer dominates global newscasts, but American officials and African experts continue to pay close attention to the Islamic group that threatens the stability of Africa’s largest economy.
John Campbell, who served as U.S. ambassador to Nigeria from 2004 to 2007, is among the world’s foremost experts on Nigeria and has been sounding the alarm about its problems for years. Campbell’s 2010 book “Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink,” reprinted last year, explores the country’s precarious political state, as well as the radical Islamic violence plaguing the country’s northern sections. Now a senior fellow for Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Campbell told The Diplomat in an interview at CFR’s downtown office that Boko Haram wants to create a breakaway Islamic state in the religiously mixed country of 170 million people where Muslims make up the majority in the north while Christians dominate the south.
Although Boko Haram — whose name, loosely translated from the Hausa dialect, means “Western education is forbidden” — is comprised of Islamic radicals, its agenda is different than other anti-Western jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda or the Taliban. In fact, some experts say the highly splintered group is inspired as much by opportunistic banditry and local grievances as it is by religious ideology.
“Boko Haram is a product of uniquely Nigerian factors and its focus is on the destruction of the Nigerian government,” Campbell explained. “It doesn’t have an international focus and it is not part of an international jihad. But its rhetoric is becoming increasingly anti-American, particularly as we are more and more associated with the Jonathan government.”
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has drawn intense criticism for his handling of the crisis. He refused to acknowledge the schoolgirl kidnappings for weeks (while his wife ordered the arrest of protesters pleading for the girls’ return) — a symptom of the president’s longstanding reluctance to forcefully confront Boko Haram.
A1.powi.campbell.story
Photo: UN Photo
A rally in Lagos calls for the return of nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls abducted in April by the extremist group Boko Haram, which has terrorized northern Nigeria in its campaign to impose strict Islamic Sharia law on the country.
That reticence stems in part from the country’s delicate, ethnically dictated political balance. The presidency traditionally alternates between a Christian and a Muslim to keep religious rivalries in check. Jonathan, a Christian southerner, took power in 2010 after the death of his Muslim predecessor. Some say he’s breaking this informal gentleman’s agreement by running for re-election in 2015.
As a result, even though he declared a state of emergency in the north, Jonathan has seemed hesitant to wage open war against Boko Haram, perhaps for fear of alienating the region’s Muslim majority. Some segments of Nigeria’s security forces, whose political loyalties are dubious, may even want to see Jonathan fail.
Whatever the case, the military’s reputation is not much better than the president’s. After the schoolgirl kidnappings, reports surfaced that the military knew about the attack in advance but did nothing to stop it. Other news reports indicate that some members have provided arms and information to Boko Haram. The Nigerian armed forces have long been criticized for being too disorganized, disinterested, ill equipped and corrupt to confront the extremist group. Some blame the military’s heavy-handed campaign of retribution, including arbitrary detentions and “disappearances,” for fueling the insurgency in the north.
This record of human rights abuses has kept the United States from cooperating with Nigeria’s army more closely in the past. But the recent violence seems to have changed the calculus. President Obama has deployed a group of U.S. officials to aid in the search for the missing schoolgirls, along with drones to patrol northeastern Nigeria, a move Campbell likened to searching for a needle in a haystack.
“Don’t hold your breath on what surveillance cameras can actually find,” he warned of the heavily forested terrain. “The territory involved is larger than all the New England states combined.”
And despite the global outrage, Campbell said the world’s last remaining superpower is highly unlikely to send American troops to Nigeria.
“Can you imagine the level of support for that after Afghanistan or Iraq?” he asked, instead suggesting that the United States engage in intelligence sharing and military training.
“What I would like to do is try to build [support] for targeted humanitarian assistance in the north. The number of internally displaced citizens is very large. A governor of a northern state told me he had 2 million of them in his state. Now that would be an extremely soft number but clearly there are a lot of displaced citizens,” Campbell said.
“We are quite good at humanitarian assistance through medicine, and in terms of countering the narrative that the United States is at war with Islam, those bags of beans that say, ‘These are a gift from the U.S.,’ that helps and we’re good at it.”
Nigeria could use the help. Even though it recently overtook South Africa as the continent’s largest economy after a statistical re-evaluation, Nigeria has been chronically mismanaged since its independence in 1960. It has failed to spread its oil windfall to the bulk of its people, notably in the undeveloped north. In fact, poverty has actually increased despite steady GDP growth, with more than 60 percent of the population living on less than $1 dollar a day as of 2010. Boko Haram gained a foothold by denouncing the rampant corruption that has fueled resentment in the north, where male unemployment exceeds 50 percent.
The Obama administration has no intention of sending boots into this cauldron of economic disparity and ethnic strife. Likewise, President Jonathan refuses to consider foreign troops on his soil.
But some very influential Americans contend more should be done.
“If they knew where they were, I certainly would send in U.S. troops to rescue them, in a New York minute, without permission of the host country,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said shortly after the girls were abducted.
That prompted a sharp rebuke from Nigeria’s ambassador in Washington, Adebowale Ibidapo Adefuye,who advised McCain’s “well-paid staff to brief him properly on Nigeria and accord our country as well as the office of the president the respect they deserve.”
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UN Photo / Mark Garten
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan holds a press conference at U.N. headquarters in New York in 2011. Some Nigerians have criticized Jonathan for what they say is a weak response to the barrage of terrorist attacks perpetrated by Boko Haram in recent years.
Hillary Clinton has also come under fire because as secretary of state, she refused to place Boko Haram on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations after the group bombed the U.N. headquarters in Abuja in 2011.
But Johnnie Carson, assistant secretary for African affairs at the time, defended the decision, saying such a listing would’ve conferred legitimacy on Boko Haram, possibly sparked retaliation against Western interests, and diverted attention from the homegrown nature of the group’s complaints.
The State Department did eventually list Boko Haram and an offshoot group as terrorist organizations under John Kerry. The listing allows Washington to freeze members’ assets, impose travel bans and prohibit Americans from offering them material support.
Campbell said the criticism of Clinton was unwarranted and that he still opposes the listing, which has done little to quell the violence thus far.
“It was not remotely justified,” Campbell said. “I along with some 20 others who watch Nigeria quite closely sent a letter to Secretary Clinton that Boko Haram not be so designated. The reasons we advanced are still every bit as relevant now as they were then. It’s water over the dam … but I continue to think the designation is a mistake and in the future what it may do is deprive us of a diplomatic instrument.
“The ability of Americans out of government to enter into any kind of dialogue with some part of Boko Haram is depriving us of a potential tool,” Campbell said. “Officially that [listing] made sense, but there are times when it is useful for private American citizens to be able to talk to these people.”
Campbell said there are other reasons why the designation is counterproductive.
“Its primary provisions are almost entirely irrelevant,” he argued. “It denies visas to members of the group. Boko Haramites are hardly lining up at embassies to get visas to come to the United States. It also blocks the transfer of assets from the U.S. to the designated organization. Boko Haram doesn’t have any assets in the United States. The Nigerian-American community in the U.S. is overwhelmingly southern and Christian, so it’s not going to be sending remittances to Boko Haram. It’s irrelevant, but it makes people feel good.
“It is extremely limited in scope,” Campbell added. “It was originally designed for Middle Eastern groups like Hamas and that just doesn’t fit.”
The former diplomat said it’s important to distinguish between Boko Haram and other Islamic terrorist groups.
“They use the same rhetoric and they have essentially the same abstract goal, which is the achievement of God’s kingdom on earth through justice for the poor by means of Sharia,” Campbell said. “The difference is al-Qaeda in its various iterations is part of an international movement with an international focus and the U.S. is the great Satan.
“Boko Haram’s focus is on Nigeria but that could change the more we are associated with the Jonathan government’s struggle against them,” Campbell added.
The group has long viewed American values as corrupting influences, in particular education but also democracy, which it considers un-Islamic.
“The syllogism works this way,” Campbell explained. “Western education promotes secularism. Secularism is a foundation of the Nigerian state. The Nigerian state is utterly corrupt and exploits the poor, therefore the Nigerian state is anti-Islamic and so the destruction of Western education is an Islamic goal for which any means is justified, including slitting the throats of 59 adolescent boys or kidnapping 200 girls,” he said, referring to a February ambush on a boarding school in which the male students were massacred. In that attack, the girls were spared and told to leave school and get husbands. A few months later, another set of girls was not so lucky.
“It’s perfectly logical — the girls were brought together to take high school exams,” Campbell said of the April kidnappings. “That’s Western education.”
Some observers say the source of Boko Haram’s rage — education — could also be its downfall, if the government addressed the marginalization that has made the north fertile recruiting ground for the group. Isobel Coleman and Sigrid von Wendel, writing in Foreign Affairs, point out that despite its oil wealth,Nigeria has the “ignominious distinction of spending less on education as a percentage of [gross national income] than every other nation on earth, except Myanmar.”
“Abuja has long relied on indiscriminate force to fight Boko Haram, which has only resulted in massivecivilian casualties, fueled popular distrust of government forces, and left vulnerable villagers feeling trapped between radical extremists who favor no-holds-barred violence and an ineffective, even disinterested government that is also willing to resort to brutality,” they wrote, urging the government to tackle underlying socio-economic issues such as unemployment, illiteracy and insecurity. 
Campbell said the brazen kidnapping is a testament to Boko Haram’s support in northern Nigeria — a popularity that is often downplayed by the government — as well as its relative sophistication.
“You’re talking about more than 200 girls all dressed uniformly,” he pointed out. “That means Boko Haram has the ability to move around more than 200 girls, dress them, feed them and provide some kind of shelter. This implies a logistical and support train, which is more than a bunch of thugs running around,” he said, noting that they had access to military uniforms and transport for the girls.
Boko Haram’s ability to blend into the population may also be hampering efforts to rescue the girls, who may have been broken up into smaller groups.
Campbell said that Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram’s leader, has shown signs of political savvy, despite his out-of-touch rants and doubts over how much control he exerts over Boko Haram’s disparate cells.
“Shekau knows how to push buttons. What he is now saying is, ‘You can have your girls back if you release all of our operatives that are in jail,’” Campbell said. “No government can really do that, but suddenly he seems, if not reasonable, then he is at least opening up an avenue of hope. It’s quite clever. He knows exactly what he is doing.”
But while Shekau may know how to push political buttons, there is no indication Boko Haram is prepared to govern.
“They seek the destruction of the Nigerian state and its replacement by a purely Islamic state,” Campbell said. “They are a movement; they are not a political group. Their goal is not a political program; it’s a kind of religious aspiration.
“They don’t have 12-point program to address poverty in the north,” Campbell continued. “It’s all about God. That is one of the reasons they are so very difficult to deal with. You can’t buy them off, which is the traditional way of doing things.”


About the Author

Michael Coleman is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.

Disaster Risk Reduction. Effective Law and Regulation

Effective law and regulation for disaster risk reduction: a multi-country report International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC); United Nations Development Programme - Headquarters (UNDP), 2014

The aim of this report is to support legislators, public administrators, DRR and development practitioners and advocates to prepare and implement effective disaster risk management (DRM) legal frameworks for their country's needs, drawing on examples and experience from other countries. The report considers both legislative provisions and stakeholder views on implementation. Its four objectives are to: (i) present examples of DRR legal provisions...

Themes: Capacity Development; Disaster Risk Management; Governance

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Too hot for your health

http://www.nih.gov/news/health/jul2014/nia-02.htm


National Institutes of Health (NIH) - Turning Discovery Into Health

For Immediate Release: Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Hyperthermia: Too hot for your health

NIH provides advice on heat-related illness for older adults
During the summer, it is important for everyone, especially older adults and people with chronic medical conditions, to be aware of the dangers of hyperthermia. The National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the NIH, has some tips to help mitigate some of the dangers.
Hyperthermia is an abnormally high body temperature caused by a failure of the heat-regulating mechanisms in the body to deal with the heat coming from the environment. Heat stroke, heat syncope (sudden dizziness after prolonged exposure to the heat), heat cramps, heat exhaustion and heat fatigue are common forms of hyperthermia. People can be at increased risk for these conditions, depending on the combination of outside temperature, their general health and individual lifestyle.
Older people, particularly those with chronic medical conditions, should stay indoors, preferably with air conditioning or at least a fan and air circulation, on hot and humid days, especially when an air pollution alert is in effect. Living in housing without air conditioning, not drinking enough fluids, not understanding how to respond to the weather conditions, lack of mobility and access to transportation, overdressing and visiting overcrowded places are all lifestyle factors that can increase the risk for hyperthermia.
People without air conditioners should go to places that do have air conditioning, such as senior centers, shopping malls, movie theaters and libraries. Cooling centers, which may be set up by local public health agencies, religious groups and social service organizations in many communities, are another option.
The risk for hyperthermia may increase from:
  • Age-related changes to the skin such as poor blood circulation and inefficient sweat glands
  • Alcohol use
  • Being substantially overweight or underweight
  • Dehydration
  • Heart, lung and kidney diseases, as well as any illness that causes general weakness or fever
  • High blood pressure or other health conditions that require changes in diet. For example, people on salt-restricted diets may be at increased risk. However, salt pills should not be used without first consulting a physician.
  • Reduced perspiration,caused by medications such as diuretics, sedatives, tranquilizers and certain heart and blood pressure drugs
  • Use of multiple medications. It is important, however, to continue to take prescribed medication and discuss possible problems with a physician.
Heat stroke is a life-threatening form of hyperthermia. It occurs when the body is overwhelmed by heat and is unable to control its temperature. Heat stroke occurs when someone’s body temperature increases significantly (above 104 degrees Fahrenheit) and shows symptoms of the following: strong rapid pulse, lack of sweating, dry flushed skin, mental status changes (like combativeness or confusion), staggering, faintness or coma. Seek immediate emergency medical attention for a person with any of these symptoms, especially an older adult.
If you suspect someone is suffering from a heat-related illness:
  • Get the person out of the heat and into a shady, air-conditioned or other cool place. Urge the person to lie down.
  • If you suspect heat stroke, call 911.
  • Apply a cold, wet cloth to the wrists, neck, armpits and/or groin. These are places where blood passes close to the surface of the skin, and the cold cloths can help cool the blood.
  • Help the individual to bathe or sponge off with cool water.
  • If the person can swallow safely, offer fluids such as water or fruit and vegetable juices, but avoid alcohol and caffeine.
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) within the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services helps eligible households pay for home cooling and heating costs. People interested in applying for assistance should contact their local or state LIHEAP agency or go to http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ocs/liheap External Web Site Policy.
For a free copy of the NIA’s AgePage on hyperthermia in English or in Spanish, contact the NIA Information Center at 1-800-222-2225 or go tohttp://www.nia.nih.gov/health/publication/hyperthermia-too-hot-your-health orhttp://www.nia.nih.gov/espanol/publicaciones/hipertermia (Spanish).
The NIA leads the federal effort supporting and conducting research on aging and the medical, social, and behavioral issues of older people. The Institute’s broad scientific program seeks to understand the nature of aging and to extend the healthy, active years of life. For more information on research, health and aging, go to http://www.nia.nih.gov.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

Nigeria: Health Minister Debunks Outbreak of Ebola Virus in Nigeria, Says Is Dengue Fever

http://www.health.gov.ng/index.php/news-media/recent-news/9-uncategorised/162-health-minister-debunks-outbreak-of-ebola-virus-in-nigeria-says-is-dengue-fever
Federal Ministry of Health
Federal Ministry of Health


Health Minister Debunks Outbreak of Ebola Virus in Nigeria, Says Is Dengue Fever

The Minister of State for Health, Dr. Khaliru Alhassan has denied a report in section of the media on the outbreak of Ebola disease in Nigeria.

The Minister made the clarification in Abuja today when he briefed the Press on the purported rumour of the ebola virus in Nigeria.

He said as a follow up to the report in a section of the media on the outbreak of Ebola disease in Nigeria, the Federal Ministry of Health wishes to inform the general public that laboratory investigation has revealed that it is a case of Dengue Heamorrhagic Fever and not that of Ebola virus as erroneously reported.

He said that the outbreak of the ebola disease was recorded in Guinea which has so far claimed 80 lives adding that the disease  has spread to Sierra Leone and Liberia which they share border with Guinea. He stated categorically that there is no recorded case of Ebola Virus in Nigeria.

He explained that Dengue Heamorrhagic Fever (DHF) is an acute illness of sudden onset that usually follows a benign course with symptoms such as headache, fever, exhaustion, severe muscle and joint pain, swollen lymph nodes (lymphadenopathy), and rashes. At onset of the disease, it mimics Malaria and, often so, it is mistakenly diagnosed as Malaria. However, other signs of Dengue fever which include bleeding gums, bloody diarrhoea, bleeding from the nose and severe pain behind the eyes, red palms and soles differentiate it from Malaria Laboratory tests are usually necessary for its confirmation.
Dr.Alhassan said that prevention of transmission of Dengue Heamrrhagic Fever is similar to the prevention of Malaria. It is therefore very important to give environmental sanitation and mosquito bites control a high priority to reduce mosquito-human contact and also to eliminate multiplication of mosquitoes that are the vectors of the Dengue fever virus.

He reaffirmed that the Laboratories at the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) have the capacity to confirm the Dengue Heamorrhagic Fever and other Viral Hemorrhagic fevers adding that the Federal Ministry of Health has intensified surveillance activities on this disease and all States Ministries of Health are alerted.

He stressed that any suspected case should be reported to the nearest health facility including General Hospitals, Federal Medical Centres (FMCs) or Teaching Hospitals where non-specific and symptomatic drugs against this disease have been prepositioned.

He announced that all Nigerian Port Health posts and border medical centres have been put on high alert to screen travellers from countries with confirmed Ebola Haemorrhagic Fever occurrences pointing out that Nigerian citizens travelling to these countries are advised to be careful and should report any illnesses with the above stated symptoms to the nearest health facility.

He said that the Federal Ministry of Health is in the process of enhancing multi-sectoral collaboration with the Livestock Department of Federal Ministry of Agriculture, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), World Health Organisation (WHO), US Centre Disease Control (CDC), etc.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Nov 12-16, 2014. Bermuda's City Of Hamilton To Host The 40th Annual Conference Of Black Mayors

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/30/bermuda-corp-hamilton-idUSnPn6WF6XB+9b+PRN20140630
Reuters
Bermuda's City Of Hamilton To Host The 40th Annual Conference Of Black Mayors
Mon Jun 30, 2014 8:00am EDT
* Reuters is not responsible for the content in this press release.
Bermuda's City Of Hamilton To Host The 40th Annual Conference Of Black Mayors
Event will convene the largest gathering of Black Mayors and elected officials from around the world
PR Newswire
HAMILTON, Bermuda, June 30, 2014
HAMILTON, Bermuda, June 30, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Bermuda's Corporation of Hamilton has announced it will host the 40th annual Conference of Black Mayors Convention later this year.  The event, which will take place on November 12 - 16, 2014, at The Fairmont Southampton, will convene the largest gathering of Mayors and local officials from around the world.  Mayors from cities, towns and villages from all over the U.S. will be joined by high level officials from China, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
In making the announcement, the Chairman of the local Organizing Committee, the City of Hamilton's Deputy Mayor Donal Smith, said the Conference of Black Mayors had grown from modest beginnings into an event of considerable political and economic importance that now includes more than 2,000 African/American Mayors and municipal staff and has attracted the participation of politicians, business and financial leaders not only from the U.S. but increasingly from around the world.
"Today the CBM also includes 39,000 political leaders and elected officials of color from around the world.  Currently we estimate that the City of Hamilton, Bermuda, will be greeting 400 - 500 plus delegates from as far away as Brazil, Colombia, China, Ghana,Cote D'Ivoire, Senegal, South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Jamaica and the Caribbean Islandsand we should note that the aim of this great gathering has always been to improve the quality of life in the cities, townships and villages these Mayors and these officials represent."  
The Mayor of Hamilton, The Rt. Worshipful Graeme Outerbridge, JP, said, the CBM represents one of the most influential political and financial groups in the U.S. and in many other countries around the world.  "They represent a powerful voting block in the U.S. and beyond and preside over millions of dollars of municipal funds and new development.  As such, they represent enormous opportunities for our  international business sector to pursue.  We are delighted that the CBM has chosen to come to Bermuda."
Mr. Smith noted that many U.S. politicians and their advisors who are already looking ahead to the 2016 elections will doubtless be planning to attend the Convention."  We shall, as well, be inviting business leaders from the U.S., Europe and beyond to join us as featured speakers," he said.
"This year's convention theme will be '40 FORWARD' and we shall be looking ahead to determine what the future holds for the U.S. and world economies.  A very full program will include panel discussions on important global issues including immigration, education, healthcare and the ways in which the spread of information technology will affect global trade and urban growth in the coming years," he said.
What:      
The Convention of Black Mayors 40th Annual Convention
Who:        
CBM, the international association representing 39,000 black elected and appointed mayors and local officials from throughout the African diaspora.
When:    
November 12-16, 2014
Where:       
The Fairmont Southhampton
101 South Shore Rd
Southhampton, Bermuda SN02
For information about the conference, registration and sponsorship opportunities, contact:
Vanessa Williams
National Conference of Black Mayors
T: (404) 931-2059 C: (404) 964-9201
e-mail: vwilliams@ncbm.org
Danilee Trott
Corporation of Hamilton
T: (441) 292: 1234 Ext. 219  C: (441) 300-1335
e-mail: dtrott@cityhall.bm
Media:
Victor Webb
Marston Webb International
T: (212) 684-6601  C: (917) 887-0418
e-mail: marwebint@cs.com

SOURCE Corporation of Hamilton

Displacement, Immigration. Bodies in the Desert. The Magazine of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Spring 2014

 http://magazine.jhsph.edu/2014/spring/features/bodies-in-the-desert/

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health       

The MAGAZINE of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
SPRING 2014 | www.jhsph.edu

Bodies in the DesertMichael Glenwood

Bodies in the Desert

Thousands of asylum-seeking Eritreans, Ethiopians and  Sudanese have been kidnapped  and tortured in the Sinai Peninsula.
Survivors suffer years of  mental anguish and live a stateless, hand-to-mouth existence.
The human trafficking chain must be stopped.
The truck stopped at 2 a.m. somewhere in the Sudanese desert.
The trafficker called to the six women in the back of the truck he was driving, telling them to send out the dark-skinned girl. “I knew he meant me,” recalled Merhawit (not her real name). “The other women gave me up. You have to understand that when people are afraid for their lives, they often do not make noble decisions.”
The trafficker told Merhawit, then 17, to follow him. She told him that she preferred to be killed rather than raped and that he should “pick his best weapon to do so.” The trafficker grabbed a metal pipe and hit her over the head. “I felt my hands go numb and then slowly the rest of my limbs. I was drenched in a dark blood that covered my entire body. I eventually fainted on the spot in the desert. He left me alone thinking I was dead,” Merhawit said.
After the man left her, one of the women risked leaving the relative safety of the truck to check on Merhawit. When she saw that Merhawit was still breathing, she returned to the others and begged them to help her carry the wounded woman to the truck. If the trafficker noticed, she would tell him that she couldn’t leave a “sister’s corpse to rot in the desert.” The body, she would say, must be properly buried. The others agreed, creeping out to retrieve Merhawit and lift her into the truck. To prevent the trafficker from noticing their stowaway, they hid her under their seats, praying she would survive.
The truck rumbled on across the border into the endless desert in Egypt, where the man sold the women to traffickers who would take them to the Sinai Peninsula. The new traffickers noticed Merhawit’s condition and gave her some milk to revive her. She’ll never know if altruism or the desire to protect a newly purchased commodity motivated them.
I remember one patient who watched Egyptian soldiers shoot and kill her best friend and one of her children. She had no words for her pain.
Merhawit’s journey was just beginning. In the Sinai, things would get much worse.
Like many of the women and men I interviewed in Israel as part of my doctoral research, Merhawit is an Eritrean asylum seeker who fled her home in the hope of finding freedom and security. She left Eritrea with her sister who died of an illness while they were crossing the border into Ethiopia.  She is one of countless thousands of Eritrean, Ethiopian and Sudanese people who in their flight have fallen victim to a human trafficking chain that, since 2009, has been a source of misery, abuse and torture.
Many of these victims—once their ransoms are paid—are abandoned at the Israeli border. There they find an entirely new struggle for survival. Most of those who make it into Israel to seek asylum are detained and banned from formal employment and citizenship. They lead a stateless, hand-to-mouth existence, taking work where they can and enduring the scorn and resentment of some Israelis.
Before I arrived in Tel Aviv in 2012 to research access to family planning by Eritrean asylum-seeking women in Israel, I knew almost nothing about these horrors even though like Merhawit, I am a member of the Tigrinya-speaking people from the area along the Ethiopian and Eritrean border.
I was born and raised in a tightly knit community of Eritreans and Ethiopians in the U.S. who were resettled from Sudanese refugee camps in the 1980s. Stories of war permeated my childhood. Members of my own family fled the despotic Ethiopian regime that decimated villages where people opposed it. I knew little, however, about the suffering and hardship my family and people in my community endured. I didn’t know how hard it was for them to regain the physical, psychological, economic and political security taken from them.
It was only by speaking with hundreds of asylum seekers like Merhawit that I began to better understand my own family, my own community. Although they are separated from today’s asylum seekers by time, experience and geography, both share the struggle to obtain the basic essentials for a full life. My work with asylum seekers in Israel and my new understanding of my own family’s experiences have reshaped my future and made me commit to helping asylum seekers in their struggle to maintain their resilience in the face of suffering.
A Bitter Journey
Since gaining independence from Ethiopia in 1993, Eritrea has been led by an increasingly authoritarian regime with a zero-tolerance policy to opposition. In addition to forced military conscription, the regime has expelled international NGOs, closed its main institution of higher learning (the University of Asmara) and persecutes anyone who challenges government policies or does not belong to the four state-sanctioned faiths (Eritrean Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Islam). Today under the military dictatorship, Eritrea is one of the most socially, politically and economically restrictive countries in the world, according to Dan Connell, PhD, an expert on Eritrea and a professor of journalism and African politics at Simmons College in Boston. As a result, more than 200,000 Eritreans have fled the country since 2004, according to Human Rights Watch estimates.
The journey for those who flee is long and often beyond human endurance. Many report going without food for up to two weeks and drinking urine to survive. Every point along the hundreds of miles of roads and open desert is dangerous because of the threats of kidnappers and bandits. Some asylum seekers pay smugglers to guide them from their homelands to refugee camps in Sudan and Ethiopia or other places of relative safety. Yet, according to European and Eritrean researchers and activists, a significant number of those who cross the Eritrean-Sudanese border fall prey to human traffickers roaming the area. Some people are intercepted while en route to or from a refugee camp, while others are abducted from camps like Shagarab in Sudan. Still others are abducted while working in nearby agricultural fields, living in border cities like Kassala or even within Eritrea itself.
They are then held in the Sinai while kidnappers extort money from their families—often torturing them as their loved ones listen by cell phone. The ransom demanded for each captive ranges from $25,000 to $50,000, and is largely financed by family members who sell property, beg in churches and take loans from banks and friends, said Sweden-based journalist and human rights activist Meron Estefanos. When the ransom payment arrives via an international network of collaborators, some captives are released, some are sold to another trafficker and others are simply killed. Those who survive torture in the Sinai are taken by traffickers to Egypt’s border and told to run toward Israel.
Asylum seekers who escape the bullets of the Egyptian border guards and make it onto Israeli soil are stopped by Israeli soldiers. They are taken to a detention facility in the Negev desert. The first wave of Eritrean asylum seekers who arrived in Israel in 2007 were held briefly and then sent in buses to Tel Aviv and expected to fend for themselves. By 2012, Israel responded to the influx of African asylum seekers by building a fence on the border with Egypt, implementing strict immigration policies and detaining asylum seekers for at least three years without trial (since changed to a minimum of one year). The official stance of the Israeli Ministry of the Interior is that the majority of Eritreans are economic migrants who do not deserve the protection and social support afforded to asylum seekers and refugees under international law.

Bodies in the DesertMisha Vallejo

Bodies in the Desert

The Price They Pay
I began to learn about the asylum seekers’ plight as I conducted my qualitative study of the factors affecting the sexual and reproductive health of Eritrean asylum-seeking women. In addition to the interviews for my research, I volunteered as a translator at the Physicians for Human Rights-Israel Open Clinic and at the African Refugee Development Center in Tel Aviv, where I met many survivors of human trafficking and torture in the Sinai.
I translated for people who were filing legal requests for resettlement. They were demanding the release of detained victims of human trafficking or seeking services for disabled asylum seekers so they could continue living in Tel Aviv. The more I heard, the more I learned that their suffering didn’t end in the Sinai. People continued their fight to endure on a daily basis.
Every step I took getting to the clinic each afternoon became increasingly difficult. What would I hear today?
I remember one patient who watched Egyptian soldiers shoot and kill her best friend and one of her children. She had no words to describe her pain. I recall a patient who watched his wife, then eight months pregnant, raped repeatedly by traffickers while they were held in the Sinai. When they were finally released, she gave birth to a dead baby in the desert. She was hemorrhaging so they had to run towards Israel where they could seek emergency care, forcing them to leave the infant’s body behind. The husband begged the health care workers to recover his son’s body from the desert so that it could be buried.
The bullet wounds, burns and electrocution marks left on the survivors never ceased to stun me. The traffickers even electrocuted and burned people’s genitals. One patient asked me why my eyes widened every time I heard about the torture. “Ajokhee. It’s okay, halefu Tsega haftey. It has passed,” he said. I could not believe that he was setting aside his own pain in order to comfort me.
“I was so weak, the wind blew me over and even the darkness of night was too bright for my eyes,” Girmay said of his release from the torture house.
Girmay’s Story
One night I was at Physicians for Human Rights–Israel, borrowing the gynecologist’s examination room as a makeshift office. A young Eritrean man came in. Girmay (not his real name) was handsome and in his mid-20s, yet he seemed haggard, fatigued beyond his years. He quietly said that he felt obligated to share his experiences if it could help call attention to horrors experienced by asylum seekers. He spoke almost without interruption for three hours.
Fleeing indefinite military conscription in Eritrea, he crossed the border into Sudan, wearing a jelebaya (a long robe typically worn in many parts of the Middle East and Africa). Things fell apart quickly. He joined other migrants who paid smugglers to take them north, but the smugglers later abandoned them in the desert. Shortly thereafter, traffickers scouring the area for new victims abducted them.
Girmay and a group of 30 asylum seekers were stuffed into bags, thrown into a truck in Kassala, Sudan and taken to the Sinai Peninsula. He tried repeatedly to escape, jumping from the truck and attempting to camouflage himself in the sand. Each time he was returned to the truck, he and the others were beaten. The last time they smashed his head with a rock and beat him until he vomited blood. During his seven months of captivity, Girmay did not see the light of day. “They asked for a $44,000 ransom to release me. I told them to do whatever they wanted to me, because I couldn’t come up with the money. ‘We don’t kill quickly,’ they told me.”
Captives were moved from location to location. Girmay and others (including infants and children) were shackled, often naked, and kept in different torture houses. They starved. They were covered in lice.
“[The traffickers] beat us so badly. All of the scars on my legs are from them walking over my body and beating me senseless. They walk on your wounds, you know,” Girmay told me. During his long months of captivity, Girmay was burned with boiling plastic and electrocuted. It was common for women’s vaginal areas and nipples to be burned. Captives were also forced to torture others, including raping their female and male counterparts. This torture would last through the night. He recounts vividly the day that two of the traffickers raped two young Eritrean women in the adjacent room. When one trafficker pulled down his pants and asked for the virgin first, Girmay and his fellow detainees clanked their shackles and screamed for them to stop. “They were taken away and raped anyway,” he said. He recalled sadly the fate of a young Ethiopian woman who was raped and tortured, taken forcibly as a trafficker’s wife, and then, after many months, dragged by her chains to a holding cell to be raped, burned and strung from the ceiling by her arms. Girmay watched countless people murdered, even after their ransoms of up to $35,000 were paid.
To find a way to pay their ransoms, the captives dialed random phone numbers abroad. Many calls were to Israel where many survivors live. In the beginning, Girmay said, he didn’t want to call his family in Eritrea; it was a holiday and he didn’t want them to spend the time mourning for him. When they refused to call anyone for help, the traffickers beat them more, dragged them by their chains and hanged them upside-down. After one man fainted, the traffickers poured water on his face to see if he was alive. When they saw that he was breathing, they told Girmay to choke him to death. “I was horrified. I did it. I pretended to choke him. Thankfully, he didn’t die,” Girmay said. When the newly arrived captives saw those living in the torture houses they were shocked. “Our skin hung from our bodies as if we were 90 years old. I had lost all of my hair,” he said.
Girmay paused for a moment as he explained that he remained in the Sinai Peninsula torture houses until, after the seven long months, his family paid $25,000. “When I was freed, I had no strength left in my body,” he said.
The traffickers released Girmay, two men and three women at night. “These people were not as abused as I… I was so weak, the wind blew me over and even the darkness of night was too bright for my eyes,” he said. The traffickers wanted to take the women separately, but Girmay and the other men refused, knowing what would happen to them. Repeatedly, and even at the end, they tried to separate the women and rape them. Finally, a trafficker was charged with taking them all to the Israeli border.
Girmay and the others crawled under the border fences. Israeli soldiers detained them, bandaged and fed them. He and the others were put in a tent. It was January, freezing cold and raining. “Despite the harsh weather I couldn’t feel because all of my nerves were no longer working, and I felt as if all of my skin cells were dead,” he said. “To this day my nerve endings feel permanently damaged.” Finally, he was taken to a hospital and eventually to Tel Aviv.
I recount these details not to shock but to share the reality of the ongoing torture that asylum seekers experience in the hands of human traffickers.
Both Girmay and Merhawit arrived in Israel before 2012, so their detention period was short. Like many asylum seekers during that time, they had significant psychological and physical trauma, no understanding of their surroundings and no social support. Many had nowhere to go and, until they found shelter, slept in the park near the central bus station.
After my interview with Girmay, we walked together to the bus stop. I didn’t know what to say to him, other than to express the horror that I felt. I asked him what I should say to other survivors in the future, when they shared their experiences with me. He said “tsinaat nay Iyob yi habkum” or, “May the strength of Job be with you.”


Bodies in the DesertMisha Vallejo

Bodies in the Desert (continued)

"Tell Everyone"
Merhawit declined to talk about the month she was held by traffickers in the Sinai. I can only imagine what horrors she endured in the torture houses. Instead, she continued her narrative after she made it across the Egyptian-Israeli border.
She spoke fervently for more than an hour, and often seemed unable to register the questions that I asked her. As she shared her story with me, she cried. She told me she feels vulnerable, depressed and anxious and often dreams of her sister. Now a young mother in her early 20s living in Tel Aviv, with a husband in detention, Merhawit struggles to raise her child without support.
I did my research and translation work in Tel Aviv from November 2012 until September 2013. After my interviews and translation work ended every day, I would walk or bike the seaside route home. I always felt sad, angry and anxious. What could be done to break the trafficking chains in the Sinai and elsewhere? My feelings were heightened by the knowledge that such atrocities would not be tolerated if the victims were citizens of a nation that advocated effectively on their behalf.
Throughout my time in Israel I was constantly reminded that so much of what I have is based on timing, immigration policies and the geographic location of my birth. Luck. This struck me often when I saw asylum seekers, my age or younger, sweeping streets, working in restaurants and at construction sites. I often ran into community activists whose intellectual vitality rivaled that of people I had met in the most prestigious universities in the U.S.—and they were cleaning toilets to earn money to survive. When our eyes met and we greeted each other with “Selam,” pangs of guilt flooded me.
“Tell everyone. Tell everyone.  
I am expecting you to do so. Write it online. Write it everywhere.”
Memories of these encounters still keep me up many nights.
Once, while I was in Tel Aviv, I was talking with a young friend whom I will call Gebre. He told me about his hopes for the future. When he said he wanted to open a bar, I told him that it was a dangerous line of work for a teenage boy like himself. He gave me the strangest look that said, “Do you know what I have been through?” He showed me his wounds, where he had been burned in the torture houses. At work every day he is insulted because he is African. His boss and co-workers tell him, “You are stupid and black. You are dirty.”
Gebre is a tall and thin 18-year-old, but with the persona of a grown man who is as hard as a rock. He has no choice. To survive, he has to be hard. Then he started to talk about his mother, whom he hasn’t seen in years. In that moment he looked vulnerable, like a little boy. “Before the desert, I was different. I don’t recognize myself now,” he told me.
I am back in the U.S. now, working on my dissertation, but I am not the same. I too have been transformed. The experiences that so many asylum seekers shared in interviews, in conversations, in late night phone calls broken by sobs—they are a part of me now. What do I do with these narratives?
The narratives illustrating the many barriers faced by asylum seekers clarified for me the importance of contextualizing behavior within the wider political, economic and historical framework in which people live. I have resolved to complete the study about access to reproductive health care and to disseminate my findings. I hope my work will serve as an evidence base for improving female asylum seekers’ access to reproductive health services. But I also want to do more. I must speak out about the atrocities that they continue to face. African migrants, including those seeking asylum, continue to be tortured in the Sinai today. It is now, more than ever, essential for my life and work to advance human rights. I will find a way to join researchers and activists who are working toward dismantling this human trafficking chain—and calling attention to the circumstances that force people to take risks that can lead them into the hands of traffickers.
Merhawit’s words during one of our conversations come back to me.
She exhorted me to do something, to use the skills, knowledge and resources I have to make a difference. She told me she didn’t know how to use a computer and that I did, that I could reach many more people than she ever could. This is your responsibility, she told me. Then crying, she said, these words:
“Tell everyone. Tell everyone. I am expecting you to do so. Write it online. Write it everywhere.”

Tsega Gebreyesus is a doctoral student in the Social and Behavioral Interventions Program in theDepartment of International Health. She wishes to thank the people who made her research possible: Samuel Vidal, Emma Williams, Dena Feldman, Britt Fremstad, Laurie Lijnders Tikue, Kidane Isaac, Azezet Kidane, Habtom Mehari, Zebib Sultan, Mutasim Ali, Nadav Davidovitch, Nora Gottlieb, and Peter Winch. And all of those who shared their experiences with her.

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