The mystery of an ancient battle between two warring troops of elephants has been solved, thanks to a modern genetic analysis of the lumbering beasts.

Researchers have now found that Eritrean elephants, which live in the northeastern portion of Africa, are savanna elephants, and are not related to the more diminutive forest elephants that live in the jungles of central Africa.

That, in turn, discounts an ancient Greek account of how a battle between two warring empires played out, with one side’s elephants refusing to fight and running away, the scientists report in the January issue of the journal of Heredity. [10 Epic Battles That Changed the Course of History]

Ancient battle

In the third century B.C., the Greek historian Polybius described the epic Battle of Raphia, which took place around 217 B.C. in what is now the Gaza Strip, as part of the Syrian Wars. During these wars, Seleucid ruler Antiochus III the Great fought against  Ptolemy IV Philopator, the fourth ruler of the Ptolemaic Dynasty in Egypt, whose last leader was Cleopatra. The matchup included tens of thousands of troops, thousands of cavalry and dozens of war elephants on each side.

The elephants were the “ace in the hole,” able to trample the enemy and sow terror with their massive size.

“Elephants were considered the tanks of the time, until eventually the Romans figured out how to defeat war elephants,” in later times, said study co-author Alfred Roca, an animal scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Antiochus had easy access to Asian elephants from India, but Ptolemy didn’t. Instead, he set up outposts in what is now modern-day Eritrea to get African elephants.

Unfortunately, that strategy didn’t work out so well: According to Polybius’ account, the African elephants turned tail and ran when they saw how gigantic the Asian elephants were. Ptolemy, however, was able to recover due to missteps by Antiochus and eventually won the battle.

African elephants

In reality, Asian elephants are smaller than African elephants, so some historians speculated that perhaps the Ptolemies were using African forest elephants, which tend to be smaller, Roca said.

So Roca and his colleagues conducted a thorough genetic analysis of the elephants found in Eritrea, the descendants of the losers in the ancient battle.

“We showed using pretty much every genetic marker, that they were savanna elephants,” Roca told LiveScience. “This was contrary to some speculation that there may be forest elephants present in that part of the world.”

The team also found that there were just 100 to 200 Asian elephants left in isolated pockets in Eritrea, which could make them susceptible to inbreeding in the future.

Ancient myths

The findings suggest that Polybius had it wrong, and the African elephants got spooked for some other reason than the overpowering size of the Asian elephants.

In other ancient documents, “There were these ancient semi-mythical accounts of India, and they claimed that India had the biggest elephants in the world,” Roca said.

Polybius, who wasn’t actually at the battle, likely read those accounts and surmised the Asian elephants’ bigger size caused their opponents to panic.

In fact, until about the 1700s, when scientists actually measured the two, most people still thought Asian elephants were the larger species, Roca said. (And even now, games such as Age of Empires that recreate the Battle of Raphia depict the Ptolemaic elephants as smaller.)

Source : Original article on LiveScience.

Eritrean forces have boarded a merchant vessel that was in their territorial waters in an incident the crew initially reported as a pirate attack, maritime officials said on Sunday.

It was not immediately clear why the forces boarded the ship, the MV Marzooqah, and it was not immediately possible to contact authorities in Eritrea, one of Africa’s most isolated nations.

The container vessel had sent out a distress signal late on Saturday indicating that they were coming under attack by pirates.

Reuters data showed the vessel change direction sharply but also showed it moving towards the Eritrean coast early on Sunday, not the Gulf of Aden – the site of most pirate attacks and where one official had said the ship was headed.

“We assess this is an operation by the Eritrean forces, who went on board the vessel,” said Lieutenant Commander Jacqueline Sherriff, spokeswoman for the European Union Naval Force Somalia (EU NAVFOR) whose operational region is further south.

“We believe the vessel is now in the hands of the Eritrean forces,” she said, adding the incident had initially appeared on a system used for piracy alerts. “The crew has reported they thought they were being attacked.”

She said the latest information on the Eritrean role had been obtained from the UK Maritime Trade Operation (UKMTO), which had spoken to Marzooqah’s captain. UKMTO is based in Dubai and run by Britain’s Royal Navy.

Andrew Mwangura, secretary general of the Seafarers Union of Kenya, also said the 2,196 deadweight tonne vessel had been boarded by Eritrean forces, basing his information on regional coastguard reports. He had initially reported it was a pirate attack.

The number of attacks by Somali pirates dropped sharply in 2013. There were 176 confirmed piracy attacks in the region in 2011 and 36 in 2012, but this fell to just seven attacks in 2013 while no ships in that year were successfully seized.

EU NAVFOR, which has been deployed to patrol a region that includes the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean areas, has said the threat of piracy remains.

“Because the conditions in Somalia have not changed significantly or to any great extent … we have been saying there is no room for complacency,” Sherriff said.

Experts say the past two years or so of relative stability in Somalia after 20 years of chaos and war have offered a chance to tackle the problem of pirate gangs operating from Somali territory but say limited progress has been made.

Source: via Reuters , Sunday 19/01/2014

Six years ago, I fled to Israel from my native Eritrea, fearing for my life at home. Two weeks ago, after waiting for six years for Israel to review my application for refugee status — something it has repeatedly refused to do — I joined thousands of other Africans in a strike to force the government to recognize our basic human rights.

I am not in Israel on a whim. I had no choice but to leave Eritrea, where arrest, forced labor and indefinite military conscription are facts of daily life. In 2008, after four years in the military — which often contracted me out to private companies as an unpaid construction worker — I asked when I would be discharged. The military refused to answer.

Shortly after, I was warned that I was about to be thrown in prison. My brother had already escaped the military into Ethiopia, and though my mother had been imprisoned for six months as a result, I decided to flee as well. I left, not knowing where I would end up; I only knew that I could not stay.

I traveled with several others through Sudan, fearing that the Eritrean Army would catch us, and through Egypt, where half our group was caught by the Egyptian police and sent back to Eritrea. I was shot at by Egyptian soldiers at the Israeli border, and spent two days alone in the desert before I was found by an Israeli soldier and brought to a hospital.

I have encountered great moments of individual kindness here in Israel. If it were not for an Israeli family that took me in after seeing me homeless and injured in south Tel Aviv, my story might have ended there.

And yet the government has repeatedly denied the fundamental reality of my situation. Much of the world would consider me a refugee, and I would not have risked my life unless I thought so as well. But Israel has refused to determine my refugee status in any systematic or transparent manner, leaving me in a legal limbo, unable to work on the books and unsure of whether I will be allowed to stay.

I am not alone: More than 50,000 refugees reside in Israel, but only a handful have been given refugee status.

The Israeli government may not know what to do with us, but the Israeli economy does: We are busboys and construction workers, labor that countless businesses could not do without. While I was trained as an engineer in Eritrea, in Israel I washed dishes and worked as a cook.

Meanwhile, we live in fear of the arbitrary summons that sends asylum seekers to prison facilities, where we can be detained without trial. Israel claims that these facilities are “open,” with detainees free to leave, but they are isolated — one new facility is far out in the Negev Desert. There is nowhere to go. While I have not received a summons yet, many of my friends have been less lucky.

Instead of trying to understand our situation and work toward a solution, many members of the Israeli Parliament would rather demonize us, calling us “infiltrators” and criminals. This language has crept into the news media and become mainstream in a culture already suspicious of “the other.” Though they hardly know us, Israelis are taught to hate us, to think of us as outsiders coming to take their jobs or, worse, to harm them.

In December, about 200 asylum seekers walked out of a desert detention facility , and after two days of traveling arrived in Jerusalem to protest their conditions.

Drawing inspiration from their brave actions, a few weeks later the larger community of asylum seekers in Israel — mostly Eritrean and Sudanese — announced a general strike, demanding that Israel finally adhere to its obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention and undertake an honest, thorough determination of our refugee status. The convention, which Israel not only signed but helped write, states that those identified as refugees are guaranteed safe haven and the right to work in their host countries.

And we have done more than strike. A week ago, more than 25,000 of us gathered in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square shouting, “We are refugees!” The next day, I stood outside the American Embassy with many thousands of my fellow asylum seekers; others went before the British, Canadian, French and Italian Embassies. No one came out to greet us, but they most certainly heard our chants. Meanwhile, more than 10,000 refugees traveled from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to protest in front of the Israeli Parliament. Even more would have gone, but we didn’t have enough buses.

I do not want to stay in Israel any longer than I have to. If I could return to a peaceful Eritrea, I would. I want to see my family, and to return to my engineering job.

Until then, however, I must make the best out of what is sometimes an unbearable situation. Until then, the Israeli government must recognize our right to live and work in this country. And until then, the international community must insist that Israel drastically shift its policy regarding refugees.

Ghirmay Birhane is awaiting refugee status in Israel. He wrote this article with the assistance of Kav LaOved, an immigrants’ rights organization.

Source : Via Limbo in the Levent – NY Times

Eritrean asylum seekers finally leave Italian island months after Mediterranean maritime tragedy that killed more than 300

Eritrean asylum seekers who survived disaster at sea only to be held in a reception centre on Lampedusa for more than 100 days have finally left the Italian island, with the UN condemning their extended stay as “not understandable and not acceptable”.

Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR, in southern Europe said the agency had sent a letter of protest last week to judicial authorities in Sicily over what it said amounted to a prolonged detention of people in urgent need of assistance.

In one of the worst tragedies of its kind in the Mediterranean, more than 300 Eritreans died when the boat carrying them from Libya caught fire and sank off the coast of Lampedusa on 3 October.

Survivors were taken to the island’s centre for first assistance (CPA), a basic and often hugely overstretched first-tier reception centre where new arrivals are supposed to spend no longer than 48 hours.

In reality, asylum seekers often spend longer there, many of them sleeping outdoors during peak times for want of space.

But observers have been particularly angered by the length of time some survivors of 3 October were kept there, given the trauma they are likely to have suffered during and after the disaster.

The seven Eritreans who left the centre on Sunday, who include an 18-year-old woman “suffering psychological strain”, were willing to give witness testimony and were waiting to be heard by investigators, said Sami. They are scheduled to be heard by a judge in the southern Sicilian city of Agrigento on Monday.

Sami said: “[The CPA on] Lampedusa should be a centre where people stay for no more than 48 hours, and it is now structured that they stay there for many months.

“But in this case it is even less understandable and acceptable that those people, who have already suffered and risked losing their lives in such a tragic way, have been basically detained for all these months.”

The letter demanded that the Italian authorities ensure the situation never happens again. Six Syrian asylum seekers who also arrived in Lampedusa in October, meanwhile, are understood to still be at the centre.

The UNHCR argues that there is no need for potential witnesses to stay in the centre, the conditions of which have received widespread criticism in recent months. But the local authorities are understood to be concerned about potential disappearances before the information is properly heard and processed.

“As far as the judicial authorities are concerned, it is very good if the asylum seekers are transferred [to another centre off Lampedusa], as long as their witness testimony is guaranteed,” the Agrigento prosecutor, Renato Di Natale, was quoted as saying last month.

Khalid Chaouki, an MP for the centre-left Democratic party, who spent Christmas inside the Lampedusa CPA, said the contrast was stark between the treatment given to the survivors of the 3 October disaster and the torrent of expressions of solidarity immediately after it.

“We cried with them, and now they are the only ones to whom we are denying liberty,” he told La Repubblica in December. “They have to be traceable, and so they cannot leave [the centre]. But this is an absurd short-circuit: we thanked them because they gave evidence, and now we’re not allowing them their freedom.”

Source: The Guardian 13th January 2014.

Eastern Sudan hosts 112,283 Eritrean refugees – 83,499 of whom live in camps and 28,784 in urban situations. The first refugees arrived in 1968 fleeing Eritrea’s war of independence with Ethiopia. Over the course of the subsequent thirty-year conflict, successive waves of people fleeing repression, insecurity, famine and drought crossed the border into Eastern Sudan.

Although significant numbers of Eritrean refugees returned home after a peace treaty was signed in 2000, ongoing deterioration in the political and human rights situation in Eritrea has again caused many to flee – in some cases for the second time – to Eastern Sudan.

This continued deterioration means voluntary repatriation  is not a viable durable solution for Eritrean refugees in Eastern Sudan. Despite the longstanding nature of the Eritrean refugee population in Eastern Sudan, prospects for local integration  are also quite limited. Sudan is a signatory to the 1951 Convention, its 1967 Protocol and the 1969 OAU Refugee Convention.

However, the Sudanese Government has a reservation to Article 26 of the 1951 Convention pertaining to refugees’ freedom of movement, and therefore has a legal basis to oblige refugees to remain in camps. Although some refugees have managed to leave the camps and find work in urban areas, these types of livelihoods are both precarious and very limited.

Naturalisation is in principle available to long-term residents. However, living in Sudan as a refugee and being recognized as such by the authorities does not constitute ‘legal residence,’ making it impossible for Eritreans to be naturalised through formal means. Some Eritreans have accessed

Source: via European Resettlement Network  

Sweden agreed to take dozens of Eritreans in response to a special request by the UN REfugee Agency (UNHCR)  (UNHCR) and to include them in a resettlement plan, due to their special circumstances.

The Interior Ministry said the migrants left for Sweden in the context of a government incentive scheme and were granted $3,500 each upon departure. They are encouraged to leave Israel voluntarily and to promise not to return.

An attorney dealing with residence and migration issues criticized Sa’ar’s announcement. “Asylum seekers who were sent to Sweden did not leave as part of the Ministry’s voluntary departure process, but as part of the efforts of the UNHCR to resettle people who qualify as refugees,” said Oded Feller, who heads the division dealing with residence status and migration in the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

“It’s not clear what the Interior Ministry take pride in. Sweden only resettles people with refugee status who are not afforded adequate protection in countries they find themselves in. The fact that Sweden took in 50 refugees proves yet again that Israel is the only country that doesn’t recognize Eritrean asylum seekers as refugees, and that other countries feel that Israel is not fulfilling its obligations under the Refugee Convention,” Feller said.

Sa’ar chose to make his announcement in the midst of the strike, despite the transferral to Sweden having occurred a few weeks ago. The announcement stated that “several dozen infiltrators from Eritrea have left for Sweden over the past few weeks, as part of a process of voluntary departure. This is the first time infiltrators were sent to Sweden. Their departure was coordinated with the Swedish government after an agreement between Interior Minister Sa’ar and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The infiltrators left voluntarily with the assistance of the Population and Immigration Authority, getting $3,500 each.”
The ministry spokesman said that in 2013, 2,612 migrants from Africa left Israel as part of this voluntary departure process. Of those, 1,955 were from Eritrea and Sudan.

The Swedish embassy declined to respond to queries by Haaretz. Nor was there a response from the UNHCR.

Continue reading Sweden accepts dozens of Eritrean asylum seekers →

An Eritrean refugee who calls himself Mulugeta is speaking out for the first time since he arrived in Tel Aviv after surviving a torture camp in Sinai – one of hundreds of refugees who managed to pay his way out.

Mulugeta is a quiet man. His voice is low and his eyes are sad, but he is pleasant as he forces a smile under his thin mustache. He works from dawn until dusk as a janitor. He lives in a men’s shelter in Petach Tikva, just a short distance from Tel Aviv, and he prays for the safety of his daughters.

It had taken nearly two weeks for Mulugeta to come forward but now he is ready. He is one of hundreds of refugees who managed to get out of a Bedouin torture camp in Sinai.

The African Refugee Development Center (ARDC) in Tel Aviv reports that tens of thousands of refugees have come to Israel from Eritrea and Sudan. Those coming from torture camps in Sinai are more difficult to calculate. Arriving outside the compound where Mulugeta lives, Wuldu, a translator, leads us to a nearby bench where we can sit and talk.

Mulugeta is from Eritrea. In 1987, at the age of 15, he entered the army and would go on to fight for freedom and for his country. Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1991. He is 40-years old now, and last year, in July, when his daughters turned 15 and 17, he decided he wanted to take them out of the country. He hoped for a better life and education for his girls; he had hoped to take them to Europe.

Mulugeta’s wife, Lemlem, stayed behind to care for their six other children. Within days, they reached a North Sudanese camp. Hours later, after their arrival, he stated, soldiers came into the camp and traffickers followed. He was beaten, his legs were sliced and cut, and he, his two daughters and a group of other refugees were taken to Sinai. For 15 days, they crossed the desert, with little to no food or water. When they arrived at the camp, Mulugeta was forced to the ground, his face in the dirt while iron chains were roughly locked around his ankles and wrists. He was beaten over and again. He told me he watched another man next to him die from all the beatings and malnourishment.

Continue reading Anguish for Eritrean refugee over daughters’ Sinai fate →

An exiled Eritrean political organisation, the Red Sea Afar Democratic Organization (RSADO) on Friday called on Yemeni authorities to stop deporting Eritrean political refugees.

Hundreds of Eritrean refugees, who most are from Afar ethnic minority, are detained at Yemeni prison facility and are at imminent danger of deportation, according to Eritrean activists.

“We call up on Yemeni government to avoid deportation of Eritrean Asylum seekers and instead to provides them legal protection,” said Abdu Sheik, head of RSADO’s political department.

The opposition official told Sudan Tribune that if the refugees are returned they could be punished by death or sent to prison were they will be subjected to regular torture and molestation.

He alleged that dozens have died in prisons over the past few years as a result of torture and inhuman treatment by prison guards.

The group called on Yemeni authorities, particularly the gulf nation’s security officials, to refrain from cooperating with the Eritrean embassy in Sana, which the group alleged was behind a conspiracy to deport Eritreans.

The group argued that resettling the refugees to a third country is the best solution.

Eritreans who flee the Horn of Africa nation are considered as traitors by the regime in Asmara and forcibly deporting them would mean “handing the refugees to a brutal dictatorial regime to be subjected for a cruel and inhuman treatment,” said the opposition official.

Every month thousands of young Eritreans flee to neighbouring countries to escape political repression and also to avoid national military service, which is mandatory for all adults.

National service officially lasts for 18 months but refugees in Ethiopia say that in practice it can be extended indefinitely.

Human rights groups say that forcibly returning the Eritrean asylum seekers contravenes the principle of non-refoulement and the UN’s Refugee Convention.

Among those slated for deportation are 13 children, the group alleged.

The group called upon the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the international community to intervene to avoid their forced expulsion.

Eritrea, which is described as “a giant prison” by Human Rights Watch (HRW), currently has an estimated 10,000 political prisoners locked at the country’s appalling secret detention centers.

Source:Sudan Tribune

Every year around 20,000 Eritreans aged between 17 and 50 years are forced to enroll in national service to serve the country’s political regime. Citizens are required to work for unspecified periods, in slave-like conditions, or face incarceration in Eritrea’s notorious prison system, where detainees are seldom released.

The, Stop National Service Slavery in Eritrea Campaign launches today (January 1st) in Sweden, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, UK and Italy. The campaign links Eritrean born activists across Europe and will call upon local governments to recognise the oppressive regime in Eritrea, which is responsible for the mass exodus of 18,000 citizens, who risk their lives trying to escape.

The campaign will last six months and will culminate in Geneva in June, where the group will appeal the UN Human Rights Council to intervene in Eritrea. Organizers of the campaign state:‘ we have seen the boat disaster in Lampedusa in October, we continue to be devastated by the heinous acts committed against our brothers and sisters in Libya and the Sinai Desert, in Tel Aviv and the refugee camps across the region in the Horn of Africa young Eritreans continue to suffer, all this is because they can’t live freely in their own homes, we want the enslaving of young Eritreans to stop and we appeal for the world to recognize the National Service as the slavery it is’.

Elderly people, or those of ill health who are unable to leave Eritrea, have little means to support themselves. Family members who remain in the country are penalized for their relatives escape, and left financially destitute. Those who are unable to pay the extortionate fines face imprisonment.

Campaigners believe that understanding the root cause of the exodus, is key to resolving the refugee crisis which claims the lives of thousands of Eritreans every year. The campaigners come from six European countries and will be lobbying their respective governments before heading to Geneva in June. Speaking of some of the activities involved coordinators said: ‘we will obviously involve traditional lobbying techniques such as, letters, face to face meetings with officials, but in reflection to our diverse backgrounds we have also got plans to utilize social media and arts to drive our message home’

Source: Indepth Africa 

The Italian Navy said Thursday that it had rescued 233 migrants from an overcrowded smugglers’ boat in rough seas south of Sicily. The navy said one of its frigates transported the migrants — who were from Pakistan, Eritrea, Nigeria, Somalia, Zambia and Mali — into a Sicilian port on Thursday. They were initially rescued by another naval vessel on Wednesday night about 80 miles south of the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa. Each year, thousands of African, Asian or Middle Eastern migrants attempt risky voyages across the Mediterranean Sea in unseaworthy boats, and hundreds die on the way. Unless they are eligible for asylum or have families or jobs in Europe, they risk expulsion by Italy.

via  NYTimes.com.