Friends of Refugees

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Archive for the ‘Eritrean’ Category

Trying to survive the smear of false terrorism charges

Posted by Christopher Coen on May 6, 2012

Last summer three Eritrean refugees were arrested after they tried to board an airplane, at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport going to Des Moines, with a carry-on bag that contained a broken cellphone taped to a tin of helva (a sesame-paste-based food flavored with vanilla). The charges? Having a “hoax device” and “conspiracy” to obtain a hoax device. The three tried to explain that they were just trying to take candy and the old phone to friends. Authorities claimed, however – via questionable reasoning – that the three were attempting to do a trial run to see if they could get a “real bomb” through security, since this was assuredly not a real bomb (helva is not explosive, nor were there any fake wires or a fake detonation device attached). The authorities also deemed suspicious the three traveling in the month of August, being so close to the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, you see – and besides, everyone knows that cell phones are used to detonate bombs. Surely the refugees must have carried aboard a broken cell phone during this “dry run” to fool authorities into thinking that it could not be used to trigger a detonator. But what about that tin of helva, that was suspicious wasn’t it? Well, helva it turns out is an Eritrean ethnic food. Maybe they were trying to trick authorities into thinking the helva was not suspicious since Eritreans are known to eat helva. Plus, some might say it would be nitpicking to point out that federal agents, in first contacts with the Eritrean refugees, used an interpreter that did not speak their Kunama language, thus leading to faulty linguistic interpretations.

Now the three are trying to overcome the false “terrorist” label affixed to them in public opinion. This smear is now an obstacle to employment, nine months later, and months after all charges were suddenly dropped. An article in The Arizona Republic looks at the aftermath of the false charges:

Civil war drove Shullu Gorado from his home in Eritrea, a small country on the Horn of Africa, and landed him — like most Kunama — in a refugee camp in neighboring Ethiopia.

Ethiopia was no kinder to the refugees than their war-torn homeland, but the United States welcomed the Kunama people, promising safety and the opportunity for a new life to the former farmers and shepherds. In four years,Gorado rose steadily through the ranks at a local supermarket, stashing away savings and taking general-education and English-language classes as he worked toward a new future in a new country.

But after being arrested on suspicion of plotting to sneak a hoax explosive device through airport security, serving two months in a federal detention facility, then having the charges against him dropped in December, Gorado and Asa Shani are branded as terrorists in the eyes of many. Among those viewing them with suspicion, they say, are prospective employers who need only perform a perfunctory Internet search to find coverage of their arrests… Read more here

Posted in Eritrean, FBI, Phoenix, police, security/terrorism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

All charges dropped against 3 Eritrean refugees accused of carrying food paste and cell phone

Posted by Christopher Coen on March 30, 2012

All charges have been dropped against three Eritrean refugees who were accused of putting two mundane items — a cell phone taped to container of a paste-like food similar to tahini (reported elsewhere as halva) — through security at Phoenix’s airport last August. The items were apparently a gift from one refugee to another. In a case of apparent racial and ethnic profiling paired with trumped-up assumptions, sketchy logic, and a language barrier, authorities accused the three of deliberately transporting the food and cell phone to make it appear as an explosive device — albeit, strangely, without any wires, detonation-like device or any other suspicious component. An Assistant U.S. Attorney said that further prosecution would not be “in the interest of justice” — apparently a nice way of saying they put these people through hell based on false charges. And no, no compensation will be offered. The AP has the story:

All charges have been dropped against three African refugees who were accused of putting a fake bomb through security at Phoenix’s airport in a possible “dry run” for a terror attack.

U.S. District Judge Neil Wake dropped the charges against Luwiza Daman, Asa Shani and Shullu Gorado on March 13 at the request of a federal prosecutor who cited new information in the case, according to court documents obtained Thursday.

“Based on the new information, further prosecution is not in the interest of justice,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Koehler in his motion to dismiss the charges…

…Daman’s attorney, Philip Seplow, told the AP that he thinks the government simply realized the refugees were not guilty and the whole thing was a big misunderstanding, partially because of a significant language barrier.

Daman, Shani and Gorado are from war-torn Eritrea on the Red Sea in the Horn of Africa and spent years in refugee camps before getting asylum in the U.S. Gorado speaks some English, while Daman and Shani speak only their native language, a dialect known as Kunama.

“I had a pretty sympathetic and for most part factually innocent client,” Seplow said…

…Daman, Shani and Gorado had been charged with a felony count of causing what appeared to be an explosive device to go through a security checkpoint at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport on Aug. 5.

Authorities had said that Daman had a suspicious item in her bag as she went through airport security intending to board a plane to Des Moines, Iowa. They said Shani had taped the items together and gave the package to Gorado, who gave it to Daman to take on the flight.

The package turned out to be a container of a paste-like food similar to tahini, with a cell phone taped to it. But authorities say it looked just like an improvised explosive device when it went through an X-ray machine, and pointed out that cell phones can be used to trigger bombs… Read more here

Posted in Des Moines, Eritrean, Phoenix, security/terrorism | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Israeli Government Ramps Up Hatred Of African Refugees Fleeing Persecution

Posted by Christopher Coen on February 24, 2012

Over the past several weeks has came news that Israel will deport southern Sudanese refugees to South Sudan, claiming that their safety is now ensured by the South’s declaration of independence last summer — even though the fledgling country is far from safe or stable for these refugees (see Haaretz article). What sense this makes escapes me since the southern Sudanese are natural allies of Israel, having experienced large-scale murderous attacks by the Islamist government of Sudan. At the same time, Israel is also ramping up hatred of other African refugees feeling persecution. (Israel has re-branded these refugees as “infiltrators” and “a threat to the fabric of Jewish society” — refusing to accept 1500 people per month, mostly African Muslims, while importing workers for cheap labor from East Asia – primarily the Philippines and Thailand.) When will we hear US refugee agencies speak out against these human rights violations? An article in Aljazeera explains the situation:

…The notion of a “Jewish and democratic state”, never a feasible reality, continues to unravel as its inherent racism is revealed in a new way. Any political discussion of refugees that are of the wrong ethnicity inevitably refers to African migration to Israel as an “existential threat”. Labelling these refugees as “threats” allows the state to criminalise and imprison them…

…State officials estimate that around 2,000 asylum seekers enter the country every month. Most of the men end up in Levinsky Park in southern Tel Aviv. At any time during the day or night, one can find young black African men sitting on the park’s benches, swings and concrete walls. In late January, a man who lived in the park died from exposure during the night.

The majority of the men who live in Levinsky Park are from Eritrea and Darfur…

…While community members and organisations have responded to the refugee-related crises developing in the country’s founding city by setting up an emergency shelter and serving warm dinners to a hungry crowd, these generous gestures are the exception in a state that fosters growing hostility to outsiders…

…”This is how the public becomes racist,” Yohannes Bayu, the director of African Refugee Development Centre (ARDC), tells me, explaining the government’s campaign against African asylum seekers, who are labelled as “labour infiltrators”…

…the media and the government has ramped up this hatred,” explains Bayu.

But Bayu adds that overt racism in Israeli society has become common, “People are attacked on the streets. People are not allowed to rent houses to African refugees.”…

…The desperate men – and some women – who leave their families and homelands behind in Africa escape torture, forced military conscription and murder. As confirmed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Eritrea and Sudan have been two of the top producers of refugees over the past two years. These states’ betrayals of their own citizens have rendered tens of thousands stateless.

Conventions and detentions

Israeli politicians’ claims that only a “drizzle” of the African immigrants are rightfully refugees is quickly belied by the fact that almost none of the men are deported. Of the approximately 17,000 asylum seekers who reached Israel in 2011 via Egypt, only 270 have been returned to Egypt. Israel is a party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees…

However, allowing asylum seekers to remain in the country without rights hardly fulfills the directions of the Convention, which was composed in 1951 after the world saw and acknowledged the dangers posed to stateless human beings.

Before reaching Israel’s borders, asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan must survive a harrowing journey across the Sinai. They routinely experience rape and enslavement, and are reportedly the targets of organ traffickers.

Whether jumping the fence or walking across the border into Israel, asylum seekers are immediately picked up by border police and taken to a detention centre where they are held for weeks or months. …immigration authorities will begin holding these men to the extent of [a] new law – three years – once [a] new detention centre is built…

…for now the scenario for these men follows a predictable pattern: They are released in less than three months and given a three to six-month visa and then bussed up to Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, where they are left to fend for themselves… Read more here

Posted in abuse, Eritrean, Jewish, left-wing, NGO's (Non-governmental organizations), safety, Sudanese, UN (United Nations), xenophobia/nationalism/isolationism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Eritrean refugee in Santa Rosa discouraged, wants to return to Africa

Posted by Christopher Coen on October 11, 2011

A 24-year-old Eritrean refugee resettled by Catholic Charities in Sonoma County, California has found his new life so discouraging that he wants to return to Ethiopia to work and be with his wife and children. He reports that Catholic Charities Diocese of Santa Rosa gave him only clothes, and that he has no real place to live, so he shuffle’s between four houses around town because it’s too crowded in any one place for too long. An article in the Press Democrat describes his plight in Santa Rosa:

…Hadish Khassay sat on a yellow couch in his aunt’s Santa Rosa apartment on Northcoast Street with a blue, glass cross around his neck. Things are not as he’d hoped they would be.In July 2010, Khassay’s US Airways flight landed in Oakland, a night, a day and a dream away from the Shimelba refugee camp in barren northern Ethiopia.

He fled his homeland, Eritrea, when he was 15… He became one of Santa Rosa’s 160,000 residents, and one of 11 Eritrean refugees that the nonprofit social services agency Catholic Charities has resettled in Sonoma County since 2008…

…Now 24, he’s come to like America……But today he is struggling. And the two-time refugee wants to return to life as a refugee in Africa.

It’s hard here, he said. He can’t find work, mostly because he doesn’t speak English, though he is trying tol earn…

…“He thought everything was going to be OK. He would find a job and take care of his family, but it’s not working out,” Medhin said…

…“He can’t go back to Eritrea, he doesn’t want to go into the army,” Mehdin said. “He wants to go to Ethiopia. But if he had a job, he would stay.”

Khassay jiggled a key chain that had an image of Joseph on one side and of Mary on the other. He smiled, but he held his head in one hand, too.

He said he owns nothing but the clothes Catholic Charities gave him when he arrived here.

“He has his cross,” Medhin said. Khassay touched it with slender fingers.

Catholic Charities helped him get the government benefits that now have expired, leaving him broke. The agency has enrolled him in a job search and training program. It also helped him apply for a residency permit and a driver’s license, which he just obtained.

Sometimes he drives his sister’s old Toyota, though he can’t afford the gas. That, plus the fact that he doesn’t have money for buses, makes it tough to get to the English classes he signed up to take…

…He sleeps in four houses around town, sharing time with family, relatives and friends because it’s too crowded in any one place for too long.

The bicycle that he once rode around town was stole… Read more here

Posted in Catholic Charities of Louisville Inc., employment/jobs for refugees, Eritrean, housing, housing, overcrowding, language | Tagged: , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Ethiopian Community Association of Chicago opens $3m community center

Posted by Christopher Coen on February 21, 2011

The Ethiopian Community Association of Chicago (ECAC) opened a beautiful, and quite expensive, new community center last year (this sat in my files and I just got to it). Efforts to raise $3 million for the project began in the middle of the recession in 2008, according to an article in the Ethiopian Review. Perkins and Will, the architects that designed the renovation, have information on what went into the project.

…we teamed with the ECAC to develop the organizational and design intent of the renovated facility. The design creates a facility that supports ECAC’s mission & highlights the presence of the ECAC to the broader community of Chicago through architecture, cultural & environmental branding and the interior design. The completed facility incorporates up-to-date systems including mechanical, plumbing and electrical; repairs to the exterior cladding; spacial organization; finishes & furnishings and new signage. here

Of course one wonders why they raised $3 million for this capital investment/improvements project when the agency fails to give minimum required items and services to their refugee clients, as we detailed last April.

A 2007 State Department inspection report also noted the following:

  • The agency placed an Eritrean refugee family of four in a studio (one room plus bathroom) apartment, thus violating occupancy code, which only allows 3 people per room. The apartment also lacked a functional light/lamp in the main room. The family expressed uncertainty over utilities, lease, operation of the smoke detector, and their ability to pay rent and expenses.
  • The agency had not made a home visit to an Iraqi refugee family of five that arrived five months ago, though the government contract requires at least one visit within 30 days of refugee clients’ arrival.
  • The agency put a Pakistani refugee couple in a studio apartment furnished upon their arrival with a bed only. The main room had no lamp or light as required.
  • In two cases, the case notes ended abruptly about seven weeks after the cases’ arrival.

Something tells me we need to start a new category entitled “Lavish New Offices While Refugees Go without.”

Posted in Chicago, clothes, Eritrean, Ethiopian Community Association of Chicago, furnishings, lack of, household items, missing or broken, Iraqi, lavish new offices, neglect, Pakistani | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Long Wait for Refugee Health Care in City of Brotherly Love

Posted by Christopher Coen on September 22, 2010

An article in WHYY News and Information gives more information about the welcome that newly arrived refugees face in Philadelphia. Some refugees have waited as long as three months just for health screening.

The Philadelphia region is seeing a new influx of political refugees from the South Asian nation of Bhutan. Like other refugees, they are entitled to eight months of medical coverage. But providing that care is a challenge.

 

Jefferson Family Medicine dedicates Wednesday afternoons to refugees. Nearly three years ago, when the clinic opened, many of the refugees came from Myanmar, then a few Iraqis, some Eritreans. Now, it’s the ethnic Nepalis from Bhutan. Clinic director Dr. Marc Altshuler says one of the first steps is to make sure everyone has had their shots.

 

Altshuler: The kids cannot go to school without vaccines, and if the kids don’t go to school the parents can’t go out and get a job.

 

The Nationalities Service Center, a resettlement agency, helped launch the Jefferson clinic. Now, demand for the clinic’s services has the agency looking for other providers capable of the same type of one-stop care…

 

…Newly arrived refugees should have an initial health screen within 30 days, but it took more than three months for Bagi Adhikari and her adult son Kamal to get in to see Dr. Packer… here

So a question becomes why continue to place more new refugees in Philadelphia if health screenings are delayed so dangerously long? It’s not like the city is a particularly safe place for the refugees’ children, here. Of course resettlement agencies such as the Nationalities Service Center isn’t going to advertise to the State Department that their area has late health screenings and dangerous schools. That will have to wait until the State Department does one of its once-in-a-decade inspections. Even then, the State Dept. will simply note the problems and suggest that the Center make some attempt to correct it. In the meantime years have passed in which refugees have gone months at a time without medical care, and have also been harassed, attacked, and assaulted on the streets and in the schools. That’s how our refugee resettlement program operates.

 

The refugees can have serious health problems while they sit for months without medical care. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is also a common ailment.

…The ailments differ with each refugee group but latent tuberculosis, malnutrition and malaria are common. When the Adhikaris arrived last winter, both were a little underweight…

 

…Altshuler: We spend time asking ‘Why did they become refugees?’ cause that can help us figure out … Were they exposed? Were they beaten? But the bigger picture is, are they sometimes at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder because of what they went through? …

 

…Altshuler: We see significant mental illness and post-traumatic stress disorder. We’ve been trying to collect a lot of data on the refugees that we’ve been seeing, and I think our rates of PTSD are probably two to three times higher than the national rate.

 

All are adjusting to a new city and culture; Altschuler says some also have stubborn, decades-old hurts that resurface once they’re safe…

…The Nationalities Services Center recently hosted a training session for health providers on the medical and mental health needs of refugees and asylum seekers.

It seems as though the main reason the US refugee resettlement program resettled refugees to Philadelphia is because a national volag, the USCRI, happens to have an office there – Nationalities Service Center. Is that really a “rational plan for resettlement”? That’s what the volags have to prove to the State Department each year in their annual report (see Guidelines for Participants).

   Strategy for Site Selection

Headquarters should have in place a coherent strategy for selecting resettlement sites and placement of individual refugee cases. That strategy should show evidence of adaptability to new circumstances, e.g., influx of new ethnic groups, welfare or economic changes in any given location. Such strategy should also provide adequate justification for continued use of a site with poor employment outcomes.

But the USCRI essentially just recommends all the places where it already has affiliate offices as good refugee resettlement sites. Therefore, long after South Philly is no longer a rational place to resettle refugees, the State Department continues to let its contractor (USCRI) place refugees there.

Posted in Burma/Myanmar, Eritrean, health, Iraqi, late health screenings, mental health, Nationalities Service Center, Nepali Bhutanese, Philadelphia, PTSD, safety, State Department, USCRI | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

15-year-old Eritrean refugee boy shot to death in St. Louis – International Institute says refugees had incorrect “perception” of safety

Posted by Christopher Coen on July 15, 2010

 
 
A 15-year-old Eritrean refugee boy was murdered on June 11th at the apartment complex that the International Institute in St. Louis (a USCRI affiliate) resettled his family and other refugees to. The neighborhood the apartments are in is known as unsafe, yet the International Institute continued to place refugees there do to the apartments’ size and cost.

 

Sahele Wodede

[Sahele Wodede] and his family were in search of a stable life, a place to rebuild. After Sahele’s father was killed in their home country of Eritrea, the rest of the family fled to a refugee camp in neighboring Ethiopia. When the family relocated to St. Louis in 2007, safety was foremost. So much so that the family picked up and moved when Sahele’s mother felt their apartment on Hodiamont Avenue was too dangerous.

But it wasn’t enough.

On June 11, one week after finishing his sophomore year, Sahele was gunned down at the same apartment complex his family had abandoned.

The 15-year-old had returned to the apartments often to visit one of his good friends and soccer mates, Jujuba, who came to the U.S. 10 months after Sahele. The boys were from the same refugee camp. They loved their new American life but talked fondly about their homeland.

Sahele and four other teens were dropping off Jujuba at his home June 11, after a day of soccer practice at Tower Grove Park. As the teens walked to the front door, a white car drove by. Several shots were fired from an automatic rifle. An 18-year-old took a bullet to the chest. Sahele was shot twice in the head, with the second bullet traveling down his back. He collapsed in Jujuba’s apartment, where eight family members were at home, terrified but unharmed after bullets came through a front window. Sahele died at a hospital a short time later. The 18-year-old is recovering.

The shootings have set the small Eritrean community in St. Louis on edge. here 

The International Institute’s chief executive officer claims that the problem lies, not with her agency for placing the refugees in a dangerous area, but with the refugees who just don’t understand how dangerous the city is. Plus, they trained the refugees to be streetwise.  

Anna Crosslin, chief executive officer of the International Institute of St. Louis, said that the agency worked with police and neighborhood groups and that refugees were trained to be streetwise. 

“We struggle with the whole perception of what is safe and what isn’t,” Crosslin said. 

Refugees think of the city as safe harbor from the atrocities they faced in their home country. 

“They say: ‘I’m safe, I’m safe. I’m free.’ Until something like this happens, they don’t realize (crime) is real,” she said. 

Yet, the refugees do indeed seem to have understood the dangers facing them in the neighborhood, contrary to Anna Crosslin’s claims. 

When the family came to St. Louis, they moved in next to refugees from Somalia, Nepal, Iraq and Cuba. All sought the roomy and cheap accommodations of the apartment complex on Hodiamont Avenue. 

Sahele’s family felt uneasy there, in a neighborhood that did not always welcome outsiders and is known for its violence. One of Sahele’s brothers was beaten. So the family moved to another part of town after only a few months. 

Teachers who work with refugees in the St. Louis Public Schools say the students have complained about the Hodiamont apartments. The neighborhood is not walkable to the schools refugees attend or to most of the services they need. 

“The kids are constantly harassed, their bikes get stolen. Car windows get broken out,” said teacher Sarah Natwick, also with the English language program at Roosevelt. 

Ms. Crosslin goes on to claim that her organization just can’t find large enough apartments with landlords who are willing to take refugees with no credit or work history. 

An ongoing challenge, Crosslin said, is finding large apartments with cheap rent. The agency must abide by city occupancy permits, which restrict how many people can live in a residence. Most refugee families are large. 

“The ability to find three- and four-bedroom apartments is a woeful problem,” Crosslin said. 

Most landlords require credit ratings and work history — two things refugees don’t have. 

“We work with landlords who will take them on faith,” said Crosslin. 

Yet, do landlords really ask for work histories as Ms. Crosslin claims? I asked a few people in our group and none of us have ever been asked for this when applying for an apartment or helping refugees to apply. They do ask for one’s current employer in order to verify income, although any source of income is usually acceptable. As to credit histories, many landlords do not ask for this as so many people on the market for inexpensive apartments have poor credit histories. Most landlords are more interested in whether or not someone has an eviction on their record or not. 

Of course even if landlords in St Louis are asking for work and credit histories as Ms. Crosslin claims, does that mean that refugees must be resettled to dangerous apartment complexes? It is the International Institute in St. Louis, in partnership with the State Refugee Coordinator, Sandra Nelson, who is recommending St. Louis as an appropriate resettlement site for international refugees. If we are to believe that the only place to resettle these refugees is to Hodiamont Avenue apartments in which their property and lives are in danger, then is St. Louis really a good site for them? 

I think that if refugee resettlement officials also risked paying with their lives for these decisions, just like the refugees do, that we would quickly see a sudden change in how they conduct refugee resettlement in this country.

Posted in children, Cuban, dangerous neighborhoods, Eritrean, housing, International Institute in St. Louis, Iraqi, Missouri, Nepali Bhutanese, safety, Somali, St. Louis | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments »

 
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