NEWS

 Campaign against slave trade secures release of 32 refugees

 

Rome / Arish, December 25th, 2011. Hundreds of sub-Saharan refugees have been released by the smugglers and allowed to reach Israel following the campaign against the smuggling of migrants and human organs in the Sinai, led by Everyone group, New Generation Foundation for Human Rights, ICER, Coalition for Organ-Failure Solutions, Eritrean Concern and other NGOs, and following the CNN documentary "Death in the Desert", which was broadcast for the first time on November 5th, 2011. 
 
A result so encouraging it led the CNN to start the Freedom Project (with the collaboration of the entire network of NGOs working against human trafficking) and to support the humanitarian work of activists with even greater conviction.

Meanwhile EveryOne Group and its partners have filed fresh complaints to the Egyptian and international authorities against the traffickers, and supplied details of the traffickers and their hideouts. Since the majority of the smugglers are Palestinian and prominent members of terrorist organizations - Abu Khaled, Abu Ahmed, Abu Mahmoud, Abu Abdallah and others - the complaint has also been sent to the Palestinian authorities.

At the same time, several prominent members of the Bedouin tribes have begun, together with the police and the Egyptian military, to combat the trafficking, freeing several groups of sub-Saharan migrants and causing some traffickers to stop their criminal activities. On December 22nd, a well-known chief smuggler of the Sawarka family, harassed by the authorities and the Bedouin security force, has decided to release 32 young prisoners, mostly Eritreans, without the payment of a ransom.

The group is now in Israel. According to the New Generation Foundation for Human Rights, there are still three prison camps in Sinai being run by Bedouin smugglers. According to the same organization, in the early months of 2012 the last camps will also be dismantled and the most important Bedouin tribes will act as guarantors of the end of slavery and trafficking in human organs in the Sinai.

EveryOne Group and the network of NGOs working against trafficking, however, is completing a report that identifies the traffickers still active, those responsible for dozens of murders, and episodes of violence, rape and brutal acts against migrants.

The main perpetrators of these atrocities are Abu Musa and Abu Abdullah. The report will accompany a complaint for crimes against humanity initiated by EveryOne Group and its partners to the Egyptian, Palestinian and international authorities, as well as the International Criminal Court.