More articles by Brian JosepherSeeking Asylum: Past and PresentSeeking Asylum: Past and Present
The year was 1939. Hundreds of refugees arrived at the port of Havana, on board a ship called the St. Louis. The St. Louis was a German luxury liner. On this particular sailing across the Atlantic, one of the last before the Second World War broke out, the St. Louis carried Jewish refugees fleeing religious persecution. Nazi Germany, of course, was not a good place to be Jewish.
The refugees carried landing permits. Unbeknownst to them, they did not carry official Cuban visas. In fact, most of the refugees held American visas. To the refugees, Cuba was considered a way station, a safe place to wait until their American visa numbers were called.
The Cuban government turned the refugees away. The St. Louis sailed north. Off the coast of Miami, the passengers sent telegrams to high-ranking American officials, including Secretary of State Cordell Hull and President Roosevelt. Their telegrams met the cold static of executive neglect. There is no record of one high-ranking American responding to these telegrams. The St. Louis, with no place to go and provisions running low, sailed back to Nazi Germany.
You can perhaps imagine the frenzy that took place amongst the passengers. Back to Nazi Germany. For Jews, who had lived through the 1930s and the culture of rapidly disintegrating rights and growing concentration camps, these were intolerable words. Near-riots began to take place on the St. Louis. A passenger tried to commit suicide by throwing himself into the ocean. Better death than Dachau.
The story of the St. Louis did not end well. True, the Jewish passengers never went back to Nazi Germany. Fortunately, four Western European countries opened their borders. The war, however, broke out some three months later. Thirty percent of St. Louis passengers perished as the annihilation of the Jews swept from the ravine in Ukraine known as Babi Yar all the way across the continent to the hideous transit camps of Westerbork in Holland and Drancy in France.
Today, the story of the St. Louis stands as a lesson. Returning asylum seekers to their countries of origin is against international law.
Is anyone paying attention to this lesson? This past week Egypt began a mass deportation policy. Four hundred Eritrean asylum seekers were flown back to the capital, Asmara. Amnesty International warned, “Most asylum seekers returned to Eritrea are likely to be arbitrarily detained incommunicado in inhumane conditions from weeks to years. They will be at serious risk of torture or other ill-treatment.”
The Eritreans reacted like the passengers on board the St. Louis, as that ship began the journey back to Nazi Germany. According to Amnesty International, “The asylum seekers knew they were being deported and started to beg the security forces not to deport them, and even threatened to kill themselves.”
There are an estimated 1,200 Eritrean asylum seekers in Egypt. Like the passengers on board the St. Louis, the Eritreans suffered religious persecution in their homeland. In the Eritreans case, they are Pentecostal Christians. The Eritrean government, led by dictator Isaias Afewerki and his single political party, the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice, recognizes Sunni Islam and the Oriental Orthodox Church, an Eastern form of Christianity. All other forms of religion must undergo a registration process.
The euphemisms are clear. A name like the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice should be setting off your internal skepticism mechanisms. So should a registration process. The U.S. State Department considers Eritrea, “A state sponsor of terrorism.” Don’t be surprised if Eritrea joins Iran and North Korea on Mr. Bush’s Axis of Evil list. (And Cuba too, while we’re on the subject of the St. Louis.)
The Eritreans who fled their homeland for Egypt have another similarity with the passengers of the St. Louis. Egypt is their way station. Their end goal is Israel.
What’s been forgotten in the ubiquitous assault that is the Israeli/Palestinian crisis is that Israel has the most tolerant border policy among nations. Israel receives immigrants (still), non-Jews included.
In the past year, for instance, Israel estimates that 10,000 Africans have entered the country illegally through its border with Egypt. Some of these refugees have been Eritreans. Some of these refugees have been Sudanese fleeing from the massacres of Darfur. Thanks to a peace treaty with Egypt, the border along the Sinai Peninsula is porous.
Israeli reporter Sheera Frenkel described the border in the Times of London: “There’s this image of Israel’s southern border as a massive concrete barrier. But Israel’s southern border is just a barbed wire fence, some of it just five feet high.” According to Frenkel’s depiction, border patrols are rare. Excessive force, perpetrated by the Egyptians, is not.
Eyewitnesses (Israeli guards, on their side of the barbed wire) have observed numerous atrocities. They include: a 24-year-old Sudanese man shot in the back as he tried to enter Israel, a lynching of another man, and a scene in which Egyptian soldiers used rocks, stones, and pieces of wood to kill migrants. According to alertnet.org, whose mission statement is to alert humanitarians to emergencies, Egyptian police have “shot dead at least 13 migrants at the Israel border this year and detained scores more.”
What’s the Egyptian response to charges of brutal tactics? On May 26, the Egyptian parliament ratified President Hosni Mubarak’s bill to extend the State of Emergency Law for another two years. The State of Emergency Law went into effect in 1981, following the assassination of Anwar Sadat. The Egyptian Prime Minister promised that “the law would be used only to fight terrorism and to defend the citizens.”
The euphemisms are clear. A name like the State of Emergency Law should be setting off your internal skepticism mechanisms. So should martial law enforced for twenty-seven years.
What’s the American administration’s response to Egypt’s repatriation of Eritrean asylum seekers? Like the passengers on board the St. Louis, the Eritreans have experienced the cold static of executive neglect. Secretary of State Cordell Hull never responded publicly to the passengers’ predicament. Neither did Franklin Roosevelt. Is it any surprise, therefore, that we haven’t heard from Condoleezza Rice or George Bush?
The Bush legacy is clearly stated here. As long as the principle is to “fight terrorism and to defend the citizens,” anything goes.
Perhaps the real lesson of the St. Louis, and the lesson of African refugees in Egypt, is that nobody cares. Sponsored by EnterTo.com the first REAL spam free email
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