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 An Eritrean woman who is claiming asylum in the UK has described the trauma of making the journey here with people smugglers.

Fyori Habtay says men and women were indiscriminately raped and beaten at holding camps in Libya ahead of a perilous boat trip across the Mediterranean. 

The 25-year-old fled from Eritrea fearing she would be punished for her husband’s disappearance from the army.

Her uncle arranged for her to be taken by the traffickers across the Sahara desert though Fyori. She has no idea how much he paid them.

She said Libya had been ”terrifying”, adding that women were raped and beaten.

”We had to stay quiet or we were beaten. We didn’t sleep because there was nowhere to sleep. They beat us and insulted us. It was horrifying to see a human being beaten by another human. They are mindless. They beat us not with wood but with metal chains.

”I cannot explain and I don’t want to remember it. It is terrifying to remember so I’d rather not think about it.”

Fyori says she walked for six days to reach Sudan from Eritrea then spent 10 days in a truck with the smugglers travelling to Libya without food and water. 

She said: ”Until the money is transferred it is relatively ok but once they had the money they beat everybody.

”Everything in Libya is bad – you only go there as a last resort.

”The worst part of the journey is until you get to the sea. In the sea it is a matter of luck. It is God’s will whether or not you survive. The journey overland is degrading and humiliating. It makes you feel dirty like a stain on your soul.”

Fyori says it took five days to make the crossing from Libya to Italy before being picked up by the Red Cross.

She said: ”First they put you in a small boat  for about an hour and we were beaten to keep us quiet because they were afraid that we would be discovered. Then they transferred us to a bigger ropey wooden boat. During the transfer one pushes you from behind and another pulls you on board. If you slip and fall that is the end of you. It’s a matter of luck.

”About a hundred are put below decks in metal compartments to keep the boat stable, they are the ones who suffer most . There are about another hundred who sit in the middle and they struggle to breathe, people die there. When they go to the edge they can fall.  

”There were 570 of us. Two days into the journey I saw a helicopter hovering above but he didn’t rescue us, so we called the Red Cross and we waited 10 hours for assistance. The Italian Red Cross came. Everything was difficult and we struggled to get on board. People were fighting for the life jackets and some children were killed.”

In Italy Fyori says she managed to hide herself on a train in order to get to France. In Calais she smuggled herself into the back of a lorry to England where she claimed asylum.

She now lives in a house in Bolton with six other asylum seekers. The government provides her with accommodation and £36.90 a week to live off.

Fyori spends most of her time in the house apart from the odd trip out for food.

She misses home and says she has no idea where her husband is, but in spite of the trauma she believes she is better off in the UK.

She says: ”In my country things are bad. Everyone is in the military, there is no administration, no peace. It is getting worse, even the old people and the young are being conscripted into the military. There is no order.

”Here I don’t know anybody, I am constantly under stress and I can’t go out. I don’t have a family to relax with. I do miss my family, but if I were to go home I would be imprisoned because of my husband. I would have spent my life in prison in Eritrea.”

:: Read an exclusive report by Sky News’ Alex Crawford as she follows the team hunting the world’s most wanted people smuggler.

A 20-year-old man from Eritrea is nursing serious leg wounds after being shot twice by people he says were Eritrean soldiers stationed near the border with Ethiopia.

”Even after I fell down, I could hear the bullets whizzing past me,” Weldab tells me from a clinic bed in Mai-Aini refugee camp in Ethiopia.

”I was lucky that I escaped. There were 10 of us in total; I don’t know what happened to the rest of my friends.”

This was the young man’s second attempt to leave his homeland.

He walked for most of the journey. Many of the refugees I met walked, mostly at night to avoid being detected.

Some told me they paid traffickers between $100 and $700 (£65 and £450) to show them the way. MORE, GO TO BBC…

ሓበሬታ!

ብስራት፡ ሓዳሽ ወርሓዊት መጺሄት ”መለይ” እንዳበለት ትመጸኩም እነሀት….

PDF: ምሉእ ትሕዝቶ….

THE first African team to ride at the Tour de France has accepted an apology and a charitable donation after one of their riders was racially abused.

MTN-Qhubeka – which is led by Scots general manager Brian Smith – complained after Eritrean Natnael Berhane was allegedly abused by Belarusian rider Branislau Samoilau at a race in Austria.

Berhane is alleged to have been subjected to racist abuse by Samoilau, during the Tour of Austria on Wednesday and the squad took his complaint to the sport’s world governing body, the UCI.

Samoilau rides for CCC Sprandi Polkowice and a statement from the Polish team said: “The rider will suffer consequences.”

The incident at the Austrian race took the shine off what should have been a historic day for the team as rider Daniel Teklehaimanot became the first black African to wear the polka dot king of the mountains jersey in the Tour de France, being held at the same time.

Qhubeka is a charity – World Bicycle Relief’s programme in South Africa – and means “To move forward”.

It is understood Samoilau will donate a month’s salary to the organisation.

Smith, from Paisley, raced as a professional in the 1990s and his career included British titles and a one-year stint with a young Lance Armstrong at the Motorola team.

Last year Smith was asked by MTN-Qhubeka, Africa’s leading team, to recruit a squad and manage it for the Tour de France.

Speaking from the team car on day seven of the famed race, he said: “It goes without saying that in this day and age, racism has no place in any sport.

“I both hope and believe it will be a one-off case.

“As far as we are concerned the situation has been dealt with, the team and rider has apologised and so the matter is settled.”

MTN-Qhubeka team principal Douglas Ryder had called the incident “outrageous”, while Sprandi Polkowice said that the rider’s actions were “unacceptable”.

A statement from Sprandi Polkowice read: “In the heat of the battle some words have been said by our rider, which were very unfortunate and unacceptable.

“We, as a team, do not tolerate that kind of behaviour and the rider will suffer the consequences.

“Before the next stage, the situation has been clarified between the two teams and the riders, but we don’t want to get into details.”

The majority of the professional peloton is supportive of MTN-Qhubeka’s efforts, but there have been unfortunate incidents, with team members Edvald Boasson Hagen, from Norway, and Tyler Farrar, of theUnited States, sometimes having to intervene.

“Some of the riders are struggling to grasp what we are doing here. They are in the minority I’m glad to say,” Ryder added.

“One of the biggest teams in the world last year in the Tour of Spain, when we were trying to bring one of our riders to the front going into the mountains, said, ‘You guys don’t belong here’.”

He revealed, though, that the team has “had massive support from the major team owners and bosses”.