Egypt has begun mass deportations of detained Eritrean asylum seekers to Asmara and plans to forcibly return hundreds more in a move Amnesty International said puts them at serious risk of torture.
Egypt, already home to tens of thousands of African migrants, has seen a surge of Eritreans arrive in recent months, including Pentecostal Christians fleeing religious persecution and others trying to avoid military conscription, activists say.
London-based Amnesty said on Friday that a first batch of 200 asylum seekers was flown back to Eritrea on Wednesday on a special Egyptair flight after being denied access for months to representatives from the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR.
Another 200 were flown to the Horn of Africa nation on Thursday night, and more flights appeared to have been scheduled to deport 1,200 remaining detained Eritreans, Amnesty said.
Egyptian security sources confirmed some Eritreans had been deported and that authorities planned to deport hundreds more.
Amnesty said asylum seekers returned to Eritrea were likely to be detained incommunicado in inhumane conditions for weeks or years and were at "serious risk of torture".
"The asylum seekers knew they were being deported and started to beg the security forces not to deport them, and even threatened to kill themselves," Amnesty activist Mohamed Lotfy said, adding that women and children were among those deported. UNHCR said Egypt had cut off access to detained Eritrean migrants in February, leaving it unable to assess any asylum claims. UNHCR said it was unaware of any deportations.
But UNHCR said it was concerned for the fate of up to 1,600 mainly Eritrean migrants it believed were being held by Egypt who had been caught slipping into its territory either by land from Sudan or directly from Eritrea via the Red Sea.
