I am firstly disappointed with your portrait of eritrean refugees as chronic liars. These people have real problems in Eritrea and that is the main reason they are ready to face tough situations in their quest to find a place of safety. Your assertion that someone told you how to lie to the authorities is questionable because indeed most Eritreans who arrive in Israel come through the Egypt/Israeli border, and I have friends who made it to Israel ,all of them through the desert and have survived much abuse by the Egyptians who wanted to extort money from them. So he way you tried to dive the message that Eritrean come to Israel through some comfortable mode of transport is a disgrace. And as with the 2% tax story I can only laugh. I agree you have spent time with Eritreans, and you have met someone from Eritrea, and I can imagine some of them might have been forced in to making a living through robbery; but to make it seem like it is an Eritrean/Sudanese thing to make a living through stealing is a low blow.
And mainly I want to remind you that "we Eritreans know our own" and there is no chance that you will wear those unbecoming sandals and cut your Rastafarian hair, inorder to pass as an Eritrean. There is more to being an Eritrean than what you have had to do. You can sleep in the park as you wish to study their situation but no Eritrean can accept you as one of us,let alone the representative of the community. And note that the fat rats you mentioned do to belong to toes refugees, they must have been there long before. At last it's true that Eritreans pay ax the 2%you mentioned,but it's a misrepresentation to say that the embassy collects money from those who sleep in the park. Firstly those people run from Eritrea, and there is nothing conceivable the ambassador can do for them. And Eritrean government institutions do not ask the tax amount from unemployed refugees. Being a refugee myself, I had never had to pay anything, I was never asked to pay anything, and there is no danger whatsoever to my relations at home due to failure on my side to pay this tax.
Sent from my iPad
Received on Fri Jun 22 2012 - 23:54:57 EDT
