{"id":3041,"date":"2021-12-08T14:20:26","date_gmt":"2021-12-08T14:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.munkhafadat.net\/?p=3041"},"modified":"2021-12-08T14:21:01","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T14:21:01","slug":"they-fled-hundreds-of-miles-to-escape-war-in-ethiopia-but-they-fear-it-wasnt-far-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.munkhafadat.net\/index.php\/2021\/12\/08\/they-fled-hundreds-of-miles-to-escape-war-in-ethiopia-but-they-fear-it-wasnt-far-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"They fled hundreds of miles to escape war in Ethiopia. But they fear it wasn\u2019t far enough."},"content":{"rendered":"
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By\u00a0<\/span>Rachel Chason<\/a><\/div>\n

\u00a0and <\/span><\/span>Rael Ombuor<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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NAIROBI \u2014 They watched friends die in the mountains of Tigray. They survived imprisonment. They paid bribes and suffered from injuries as they fled the civil war devastating Ethiopia.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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When the four Tigrayan asylum seekers made it to Nairobi this spring, at first they felt safe. Living in a one-room apartment more than 1,000 miles from the fighting, the friends \u2014 three medical workers and one journalist \u2014 said they were reassured to be in Kenya, a democracy and one of the region\u2019s most stable countries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

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But it was not long before their sense of security dissipated. Rumors abounded about intelligence officers surveilling Tigrayans on behalf of the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Then, late last month, in an incident that sparked an outcry in Kenya and\u00a0attracted international attention<\/a>, two men dragged a prominent businessman of Tigrayan descent out of his Bentley and into a Subaru as he sat in Nairobi traffic. A traffic officer appeared\u00a0in a widely shared video\u00a0<\/a>to be holding the door of Samson Teklemichael\u2019s car open to assist his captors. Teklemichael could be heard pleading for bystanders to\u00a0record his capture<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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More than two weeks after Teklemichael was taken, it is not clear who was responsible or what their motivation was, said Kenya police spokesman Bruno Isohi Shioso. Police are still investigating, he said, and seeking tips from the public.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mulugeta, one of the four Tigrayan friends living in Nairobi, was so shaken he did not leave the apartment for two days.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI felt free,\u201d he said. \u201cBut now my hope is lost.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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For more than a year, Ethiopia has been engulfed in a civil war that has claimed thousands of lives and\u00a0put hundreds of thousands at risk of famine<\/a>. The fighting between Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed\u2019s government forces and rebels led by the Tigray People\u2019s Liberation Front (TPLF) began as a political power struggle and is now increasingly driven by ethnic rivalries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Human rights groups warn that Teklemichael\u2019s disappearance is an ominous indicator of the long reach of Abiy, who just two years ago\u00a0won the Nobel Peace Prize<\/a>. He has referred to leaders of the TPLF, which dominated the country\u2019s politics for three decades and is resented by many non-Tigrayan Ethiopians, as \u201ccancer\u201d and \u201cweeds.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Abiy\u2019s spokeswoman Billene Seyoum declined to comment for this story. Another government spokesman, Legesse Tulu, did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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U.S. special envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman\u00a0said during a news conference\u00a0<\/a>that he would look into the alleged abduction, adding that reports of police in Addis Ababa going door-to-door arresting Tigrayans were alarming. The United States, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom\u00a0on Tuesday condemned<\/a> reports of mass detentions of Tigrayans by the Ethiopian government, saying arrests without charges \u201clikely constitute violations of international law and must cease immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe brazen daylight abduction of Mr. Teklemichael on a busy Nairobi street has left many people shaken,\u201d said Ir\u0169ng\u0169 Houghton, executive director for Amnesty International Kenya. \u201cThe collapse of the rule of law that we have seen in Addis Ababa, with thousands of Tigrayans being arrested on the streets, that chaos, that lawlessness, must not be allowed to show up in Kenya.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Teklemichael\u2019s wife, Milen Haleform Mezgebo, said in an interview that she had not heard from her husband since he was taken. Fearing for the safety of their three children, she pulled them out of school.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Rebel advance to within 200 miles of Ethiopia\u2019s capital puts the city and wider region on edge<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mulugeta and his three friends limit their interactions with new people. When they see other Ethiopians on the street, they wonder if they are spies. Citing security concerns, they spoke on the condition that they be identified only by their second names.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The men are part of what analysts say is likely a large network of Tigrayans living illegally in Nairobi, unrecognized by the Kenyan government or UNHCR, the United Nation\u2019s refugee agency. There were only 168 refugees from Tigray officially registered in Kenya in 2020 and 2021, said UNHCR spokeswoman Eujin Byun, and they have been transferred to Kakuma, one of Kenya\u2019s refugee camps, per the government\u2019s policy. The pandemic has contributed to a backlog of processing requests, Byun said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Ethiopian asylum seekers must come through Kakuma to complete the refugee registration process, said Joseph Kotolo, Kenya\u2019s head of refugee status determination. But the men in Nairobi said they worry about their health and safety at Kakuma, where nearly 200,000 people live in often bleak conditions. They believe the thousands of Ethiopians living there could pose a threat, although spokespeople for UNHCR and Kenya\u2019s refugee agency said they had not heard reports of any attacks targeting Tigrayans at Kakuma.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The four men acknowledged, though, that their legal limbo contributes to their fear. They have repeatedly called the U.N. hotline, trying to secure status as legal refugees.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Teklemichael was \u201ca businessman and a legal person who had been living in Kenya for a long time,\u201d Mulugeta said. \u201cI am not a businessperson. I am not a legal person. I have no money. \u2026 If he was abducted, what about us?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Getting out<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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After fighting broke out last November in Ethiopia\u2019s mountainous north, each of the men experienced a different version of the terror that forced them to leave.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mulugeta, who was in Addis Ababa, said he was repeatedly punched by a police officer and dragged to a makeshift prison where he was detained for 40 days.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Hailay and Kahsay, who worked together in the Tigray region\u2019s health department, said they watched bombs kill two pharmacist colleagues in the hills of Abiy Addi in December. Hailay, 28, and Kahsay, 26, tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate the men, who had been walking dozens of feet ahead of them. There was no time to bury the bodies, they said, because more bombs were coming. They alleged the bombs were dropped by the Ethiopian government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Teklemariam, 27, a childhood friend of Hailay, said he ran from Eritrean soldiers who repeatedly shot at him after taking control of his hometown, Enticho. Soldiers looted his family\u2019s farm, he said, taking grain, shoes, clothes and cooking supplies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When he traveled to Tigray\u2019s capital last winter to pick up his paycheck, he called Hailay. With Kahsay, they devised a plan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe only choice,\u201d Teklemariam said, \u201cwas to escape from that horror.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Teklemariam, 27, walks through a door in his Nairobi neighborhood. (Rachel Chason\/The Washington Post)
\n.Read more – washingtonpost.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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