Re: Urgent Appeal

Your Excellency:

Please accept our warm greetings.

This is to draw your attention to the predicament of numerous innocent Eritrean refugees in Libya who are threatened to coercive deportation to Eritrea.

It is only in 2002 our Eritrean brothers and sisters in Malta were forcefully deported to Eritrea where they still face torture, suffering and ill treatment. This has being a serious issue and the international community is making a debate out of the situation, which has led to the establishment of a commission of inquiry in Malta. Unfortunately, this would not be very help full to the victims. Yet, it is supposed to be a lesson to the international community.

According to the information we have received, a number of Eritreans currently jailed in Libya are to be deported to Eritrea in accordance with the arrangement reached between the governments of Libya and Eritrea. From our experience, we are very well acquainted with such kind of tricks of the Eritrean government by which coercive deportation is done secretly even without the knowledge of the authorities concerned. As a result, we are of a strong opinion that a close follow up must be done by respective regional and international bodies prior to the possible deportation of such innocent and defenceless Eritrean refugees currently sojourning in Libya.

It is our testimony that such hastily arranged deportation is one of the merciless tools of the current regime in Eritrea by which it suppresses descent and political disobedience. As a result, we strongly oppose the possible deportation of the innocent and defenceless Eritrean refugees in Libya.

Your Excellency, it is of importance to highlight the fate of these individuals if they are deported to Eritrea; no matter of their political background, as this is proven on the case of deportees of Malta, they will face torture, incarceration and ill treatment. According to the regime in Eritrea, the fact that those people flee their own country is a crime enough to get them tortured or even executed extra-judicially.

It would be of no meaning to go into inquires and commission of inquiries once these helpless Eritreans are put in the death raw. Eritrean Students and Refugees in South Africa, therefore, strongly urge your Office to interfere on the matter and save the lives of these defenceless Eritrean refugees in Libya; and help them to get an opportunity to defend themselves in accordance with due process of law. We believe this is the only means by which the government of Libya can avoid the repetition of the same mistake that took place in Malta.

Thanking you in advance,

Eritrean Students and Refugees in South Africa

Interim Committee

CC:

UNHCR, Pretoria and Geneva

African Union, Addis Ababa

Amnesty International, Pretoria and London

Human Rights Watch, Washington