海角大神

Two years ago when Peter moved here from nearby Eritrea, things looked pretty good: South Sudan was a new country getting international help. The city of Bor, where Peter opened a general store, was along a major corridor of emerging oil wealth and prosperity.

South Sudan was in fact a refuge, politically and religiously freer and less repressive than Eritrea. Peter, who will not give his real name for fear of reprisal, could escape what has become Eritrea鈥檚 notorious forced conscription policy, where the government is grabbing men up to the age of 50 for indefinite Army service. Plus, getting across the South Sudan border was not too difficult. 听

But now he finds himself caught in South Sudan's brutal civil strife. A听slight man with a short, shaggy Afro, he is living in a refugee camp of 10,000 people in the capitol of Juba. And at this point he just wants to leave this place and find some safer haven.听

Peter is one of several hundred Eritreans who, as foreign refugees, take a place on the bottom rung of the dispossessed 鈥� and are the forgotten among the already forgotten local South Sudan refugees, in a country now at war for three months.听

He shares a tent of plastic sheets with eight other men who, like him, fled the bloody tribal violence that erupted suddenly in mid-December between loyalists to South Sudan President Salva Kiir and troops led by his political rival, Riek Machar.

鈥淚t鈥檚 very bad In Bor,鈥� Peter says of the city on the White Nile where he settled in 2012 and had to flee in late 2013 when violence broke out. 鈥淓verything was destroyed. 听But how can I return to my country? 听If we return, we鈥檒l be imprisoned or killed.鈥�

Like South Sudan, which formally broke from Sudan in 2011, Eritrea did not live up to the bright promise of its own 1993 independence from Ethiopia, which also followed a brutal and prolonged insurgency.

Conditions in Eritrea and the out-migration of its people is not much noticed 鈥� though their plight did get headlines last fall after some 300 Eritreans drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to reach Europe. 听

Today Eritrea is one of the most repressive regimes in Africa. Since 1993, it has had one president, Isayas Afewerki, and no presidential election. The government allows little free assembly or media, and thousands sit in jail without trial. There are reports of torture and the disappearance of dissenters.
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听鈥淚n our country we don鈥檛 have rights,鈥� says Peter. 听鈥淲e don鈥檛 have democracy, we don鈥檛 have religious freedom.鈥�
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听But the biggest issue for Peter is the government policy of indefinite military conscription. 听The International Organization for Migration in Nairobi estimates that of the 21,000 Eritreans who flee their country every year, the majority are young men escaping national service.

Peter is one of them. 听He says he spent nine years in the Army before getting out. All eight of Peter鈥檚 tent mates say they also left to escape the military.
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听The nine men spend their time chatting and lounging on a few thin mattresses, waiting for food aid. 听But even with so much time to talk, they鈥檝e made a pact to not speak in detail with each other about their 鈥減ersonal problems鈥� back home. They may be in a safe UN camp. But they worry about informers who could carry information back to Eritrea where it could be used to punish their relatives.
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听Yet when separated from each other, some of the men will speak. One said he left Eritrea after refusing to follow orders from a superior.听Another said he鈥檇 been persecuted for his evangelical faith, which isn't one of Eritrea's four officially recognized religions.
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听Nor are the Eritreans the only foreign refugees. 听There are over 300 Somalis, and 160 Ethiopians, says ACTED, the NGO organization running the camp. 听Some fear returning home due to violence and political persecution, too.
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听鈥淚 ran away from Ethiopia because of problems. Now in South Sudan there are problems,鈥� says one Ethiopian in his mid-twenties who comes from a family opposed to the ruling party. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know where I can get my human rights.鈥�
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听South Sudan may seem an odd destination for refugees. The health care, schools, and security conditions here were dismal even before the current fighting.

But Yonas, as he gives his name, the chairman of the Eritrean community in the Juba camp, says that South Sudan was the least bad option available 鈥� better than sitting in an Ethiopian refugee camp, or risking run-ins with Eritrean agents in Sudan, or signing up with brutal human traffickers to get to Israel.
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听Undeveloped South Sudan, Yonas says, offered a place to lay low and start over.
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听鈥淲e selected South Sudan because it is comparatively better,鈥� he says. 听鈥淲e don鈥檛 have any documents. 听We don鈥檛 have any visa. 听But we can go freely in South Sudan.鈥�
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听Getting here wasn鈥檛 easy. Peter says Eritrean border guards shot at him when he first dashed across a dry riverbed to Ethiopia in 2006.

Mary, who lives a few tents away in the Juba camp, speaks of walking for weeks from her hometown in Eritrea to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, before bribing her way to South Sudan. She boils tea next to a smoking pot of incense, and says she came last year to join her husband who fled Eritrea鈥檚 national service five years earlier. She waits on tables and her husband ferries goods with a motorbike. The couple had started saving money to send home to her parents. In early December, she became pregnant.
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听Then came the war.
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听鈥淢y first child will be born in this,鈥� Mary says, becoming emotional as she describes the possibility of giving birth in the cramped, unsanitary camp. 听鈥淚 need a safe place. I want to be a good mother.鈥�
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听Mary, like Peter and the others, says she just wants peace. And a real place to call home.