{"id":4824,"date":"2015-10-17T04:38:40","date_gmt":"2015-10-17T04:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitederitreamedia.com\/blog12\/?p=4824"},"modified":"2015-10-17T04:38:40","modified_gmt":"2015-10-17T04:38:40","slug":"eritreas-soccer-team-defects-again-by-adam-taylor-october-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitederitreamedia.com\/blog12\/2015\/10\/17\/eritreas-soccer-team-defects-again-by-adam-taylor-october-15\/","title":{"rendered":"Eritrea\u2019s soccer team defects \u2026 again By Adam Taylor October 15"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"How<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\nEritrea’s president, Isaias Afwerki, listens as he meets with Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, during an\u00a0official visit<\/span><\/div>\n
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to\u00a0Khartoum on June 11, 2015. (Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah\/Reuters)<\/span><\/div>\n

Ten\u00a0members of Eritrea’s national soccer\u00a0team\u00a0are reported to be\u00a0seeking\u00a0asylum in Botswana, where the team had traveled<\/p>\n

this week to play a World Cup qualifying game. According to Reuters<\/a>, the players had refused to board their flight home<\/p>\n

Wednesday and have now\u00a0been detained by police.<\/p>\n

This isn’t the\u00a0first time that Eritrean soccer\u00a0players have used a trip abroad as a means to\u00a0abscond \u2014 in fact, it’s something of a tradition. Six players from the national team defected<\/a> in Angola in 2007. Two years later, 12\u00a0 defected in Kenya. Seventeen, along with the team doctor, escaped\u00a0in Uganda in 2012. All in all, at least 45 members of the national team have defected in recent years \u2014 and note, that figure doesn’t include players for local clubs like Red Sea FC<\/a>, at least 17 of whom have absconded, or\u00a0athletes who compete in other sports.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0decision to escape is understandable.\u00a0Earlier this year, the United Nations released<\/a> a scathing report that accused the Eritrean government of\u00a0“systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations” and said that its year-long investigation may have uncovered evidence of crimes against humanity. Huge numbers of Eritreans have risked their lives to\u00a0flee\u00a0the country in recent years, becoming refugees in a bid to escape indefinite national service, arbitrary arrests and detention.<\/p>\n

Sports\u00a0is a rare path to foreign travel in a country where few are allowed to journey abroad. According to local\u00a0newspaper The Voice<\/a>, the Eritrean players in Botswana\u00a0have said that they are\u00a0refusing to return home, as they fear they will be made to join the army upon their return.<\/p>\n

The Eritrean government won\u00a0independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year civil war. It relies on a fervent, sometimes paranoid, nationalism for support in place of democratic legitimacy and presidential elections. Repeatedly dismissing international criticism, it labeled\u00a0the U.N. report\u00a0 a “cynical political travesty” and an attack\u00a0“not so much on the government, but on a civilized people and society who cherish human values and dignity.”<\/p>\n

In particular, the government likes to point to improvements in the country’s living standards over the past two decades as evidence that criticism is unfounded \u2013 for example, Eritrea\u00a0appears to have been the only country to achieve all of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals<\/a> related to health.<\/p>\n

Eritrea’s\u00a0sporting success<\/a> is perhaps a more visceral sign that some things are going right in the country: This summer, Eritrean cyclists\u00a0Merhawi Kudus and\u00a0Daniel Teklehaimanot made history by becoming the first black Africans to compete in the Tour de France, a remarkable achievement. The high-profile defections of athletes remain an embarrassing problem for the country, however. While Kudus and\u00a0Teklehaimanot told reporters they wereproud of their country<\/a>, fears that three other young Eritrean cyclists might defect may have led the\u00a0Swiss government to reject<\/a>\u00a0their visa applications last year.<\/p>\n

In the past, the Eritrean government has sought a “deposit” from athletes traveling abroad in a bid to ensure their return. If an absconding athlete has family remaining in Eritrea, these relatives may well face government retaliation\u00a0too.\u00a0\u201cThey punish the families by pushing them to pay around 5,000 euros [almost $6,000]\u00a0and for those that have 65-year-old mothers with no money, those mothers are jailed for three or four months,\u201d\u00a0Berketeab Tesfai, an Eritrean now living in the Netherlands and working with former Eritrean national soccer\u00a0players, told the New York Times<\/a> in 2014.<\/p>\n

Dick Bayford, a lawyer representing\u00a0the Pretoria-based Eritrean Movement for Democracy and Human Rights (EMDHR), told Reuters<\/a> that because\u00a0some of the players were army soldiers, they risked being charged with desertion\u00a0if they were returned to Eritrea \u2014 a crime that\u00a0could be punishable by death.<\/p>\n

More on WorldViews<\/strong><\/p>\n

The brutal dictatorship the world keeps ignoring<\/a><\/p>\n

Why it matters that Eritrean cyclists are wowing the Tour de France<\/a><\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eritrea’s president, Isaias Afwerki, listens as he meets with Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, during an\u00a0official visit to\u00a0Khartoum on June 11, 2015. (Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah\/Reuters) Ten\u00a0members of Eritrea’s national soccer\u00a0team\u00a0are reported to be\u00a0seeking\u00a0asylum in Botswana, where the team had traveled this week to play a World Cup qualifying game. According to Reuters, the players had refused […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_ml_titleColor":"#000000","_ml_titleFont":"Roboto","_ml_titleFontSize":1.1359999999999998987476601541857235133647918701171875,"_ml_titleFontWeight":"400","_ml_titleLineHeight":1.3000000000000000444089209850062616169452667236328125,"_ml_metaColor":"#708090","_ml_metaFont":"Montserrat","_ml_metaFontSize":0.67849999999999999200639422269887290894985198974609375,"_ml_metaFontWeight":"400","_ml_metaLineHeight":0.92000000000000003996802888650563545525074005126953125,"_ml_bodyColor":"#a9a9a9","_ml_bodyFont":"Open Sans","_ml_bodyFontSize":0.84999999999999997779553950749686919152736663818359375,"_ml_bodyFontWeight":"400","_ml_bodyLineHeight":1.1999999999999999555910790149937383830547332763671875,"_ml_wooPriceColor":"#666","_ml_wooPriceFont":"Open Sans","_ml_wooPriceFontSize":0.90000000000000002220446049250313080847263336181640625,"_ml_wooPriceFontWeight":"400","_ml_wooPriceLineHeight":1.270000000000000017763568394002504646778106689453125,"_ml_headingColor":"#000","_ml_headingFont":"Merriweather","_ml_headingFontSize":2.020000000000000017763568394002504646778106689453125,"_ml_headingFontWeight":"700","_ml_headingLineHeight":1.4699999999999999733546474089962430298328399658203125,"_mlglobal_userfontcolors":{"headingColorUser":[],"titleColorUser":[],"metaColorUser":[],"bodyColorUser":[],"wooPriceColorUser":[]},"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nEritrea\u2019s soccer team defects \u2026 again By Adam Taylor October 15 - UNITED ERITREA MEDIA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Eritrea\u2019s soccer team defects \u2026 again By Adam Taylor October 15 - UNITED ERITREA MEDIA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Eritrea’s president, Isaias Afwerki, listens as he meets with Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, during an\u00a0official visit to\u00a0Khartoum on June 11, 2015. 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