Pope alerts world to hostage horror
VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI issued an urgent Advent season worldwide appeal for prayer for victims of violence and intolerance.
In his Angelus address on Dec. 5, the second Sunday of Advent, he pointed in particular to hundreds of African and Middle Eastern migrants who are being held in the Sinai desert by human traffickers and are experiencing what people familiar with the situation have described as almost unspeakable suffering.
The pope noted “the continuous attacks that occur in Iraq against Christians and Muslims,” election-related violence in Egypt and a dramatic situation in the Sinai where Bedouin human traffickers have taken hundreds of people hostage, subjecting them to torture to extract payments from their relatives living abroad.
The pope asked all to pray “that the coming of Jesus may bring consolation, reconciliation and peace.”
Vatican Radio reported that between 200 and 600 men and women refugees from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan are being held in chains, tortured, beaten and threatened with being traded to organ traffickers.
The hostages have been held in the Sinai desert on the Egypt-Israel border for more than a month, and their captors are demanding payment of up to $8,000 for their release, according to Vatican Radio.
“These are people who are fleeing persecution, for the most part,” in their home countries, Dr. Khataza Gondwe, advocacy officer for sub-Saharan Africa for U.K.-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide, said in an interview recorded by Vatican Radio.
“So they have paid these Bedouin people-traffickers to take them into Israel, where they feel it may be slightly better, since the route to Europe has been virtually closed off for them.
“They had already, with the help of friends and families, raised $2,000 to be taken to Israel but when they get into the Sinai they were detained and forced to pay $8,000 on top of this, on pain of death,” she said.
The hostages are being chained by the ankles, electrocuted, beaten, forced to drink salty water and tortured in an attempt to elicit this money, Dr. Gondwe said.
She said there have been reports that three Eritrean hostages were shot and 12 beaten after they tried to run away. She said others have been threatened with having a kidney removed to be sold to organ traffickers.
The reporter interviewing Dr. Gondwe for Vatican Radio said the accounts sounded “like something from ancient Roman times.”
Dr. Gondwe replied that “a lot of officials who could intervene frankly do not believe it.”
She said prayer and public pressure will help ease the victims’ plight.
“Those who pray, please do,” she said. “But also, in terms of taking action, if they could contact politicians within their own sphere and ask them to put pressure on their own governments – authorities that can do things if they choose to move; that would be really helpful.”
Elsa Chyrum, director of Human Rights Concern Eritrea, said advocates for the victims are grateful for the pope’s intervention. “It will assure Eritrean and other refugees that their plight is not forgotten, and will hopefully spur the international community into action,” she said in a statement published on the website of Christian Solidarity Worldwide.”
On Dec. 1, advocates sent a joint appeal to the United Nations, the European Union and the British, the Italian and the Egyptian governments for urgent intervention to aid the Sinai victims, saying “the lives of hundreds of refugees currently appear to hang in the balance.”
The U.N. refugee agency is urging Egypt to step in to secure the release of about 250 Eritreans who have been held hostage for about a month by human traffickers in the Sinai, Voice of America reported Dec. 7.
– CNA/EWTN News contributed to this story.
From December 10, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
