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| Tesfamhret Tsegazghi (Tesfom) at our group's monthly meeting on 8 October 2019 |
Tesfamhret Tsegazghi (known as Tesfom) was the guest speaker at our group's monthly meeting on 8 October.
He comes from Eritrea, which has been described as "the worst dictatorship" and "the African North Korea".
He spoke about why people leave Eritrea. The authorities there do not tolerate protests, they imprison people for minor offences and they torture their prisoners.
He explained how people flee Eritrea - with difficulty. Getting to Eritrea's border with Sudan, getting to a refugee camp in Sudan or to Sudan's border with Libya and then to a camp in Libya are costly challenges. Many do not make it: some get arrested in Eritrea or get transported back there, some are killed and some are sold into slavery.
About 4,700 refugees (from not only from Eritrea but also war-torn Yemen, Sudan and Syria) have been stuck in appalling conditions in camps in Libya for the past three years, thanks to the policy of the European Union to prevent them from trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea by paying former people-traffickers to hold them in Libya. Rwanda gave asylum to 500 of these people. No other country took any.
Our group agreed that we will discuss what action we can take, at ...
Our Monthly Meeting in November
Our monthly meeting this month takes place on Tuesday 12 November at the usual venue - York Friends Meeting House, Friargate, York YO1 9RL. We do not have a guest speaker so the meeting starts at 7.30 pm. We finish by 9.00 pm at the latest. As always, everyone is welcome to attend.
