Two Oromo Women Refugees Die; Ten Others Wounded Due to Brutal Actions of Human Smugglers in the Sahara Desert
October 2, 2014 (Cairo, Egypt) – On September 10, 2014, about ten
Oromo refugees were terribly loaded on a Toyota pickup to flee Khartoum, a city where the
Ethiopian government thugs abduct anybody they like at any time. When they had started their journey from Khartoum, the
refugees had a dream to reach Cairo safely, at least to get some security relief and enjoy a better life. Unfortunately, what happened to them in the middle of the Sahara Desert on September 14, 2014, turned their dream untrue.
According to the information obtained from the survivors, the human smugglers, who were illegally transporting the poor
Oromo refugees, turned extremely violent for an unidentified reason, just after crossing the Sudanese-Egyptian border. They tried to
rape the women
refugees, but the men
refugees who were on the same vehicle opposed this attempt and combated the transporters, showing a relentless bravery.
It was in this scary situation that an unidentified police vehicle suddenly emerged from behind and the transporters managed to escape hastily. They were driving with the highest speed furiously in the terribly windy and hazardous rocky desert, and finally, the vehicle carrying the
refugees tipped over. The result was so sad, in which two of the
refugees, namely Fatuma Mohammed Hundesa and Nahira Abamacha, died instantly, and about eight others were seriously wounded. Those who died were never buried properly, the report added.
A number of sources confirm that hundreds of women
Oromo refugees have been raped, beaten, tortured, infected with diseases like
HIV/AIDS, and finally died, over the last five years alone, while they were trying to find their way from different areas of
Oromia to Khartoum. In last April, just in an area where this fresh sad incident happened, about eight
Oromo refugees were captured by the Egyptian police, detained for four months, and finally deported back to
Ethiopia.
Currently, due to the tight diplomatic relations between the governments of
Ethiopia and
Sudan,
Oromo refugees residing in Khartoum are experiencing daily and nightly hunts by
Woyane security agents. Fearing not to be abducted by these brutal thugs, they are forced to flee further to Egypt, daring the harsh clandestine trans-Sahara journey.
