BOTSWANA: Court Blocks Botswana Deporting Eritrean Footballers Seeking Asylum

A court has stopped the Botswana government deporting 10 players from Eritrea's national football team who have refused to go home following a World Cup qualifier and are claiming asylum.

A court ruled the players could stay temporarily and will have their case heard in December.

The players refused to return to Eritrea and turned themselves over to authorities on Wednesday, a day after their team lost 3-1 to Botswana to be eliminated from World Cup qualifying.

Lawyers say the players are members of the army at home and could face a court martial and treason charges if sent back.

Human rights activists say all Eritreans are forced to join the army at 17, supposedly for two years of national service, but claim many are not allowed to leave.

The government of Eritrea, a country of around six million people on the north east coast of Africa, has been accused by human rights groups of being among the most repressive in the world.

The United Nations released a report this year alleging, among other abuses, that forced and prolonged military service was common.

The players are being represented by human rights lawyer Dick Bayford, who works for the South Africa-based Eritrean Movement for Democracy and Human Rights.

In 2012, 17 Eritrea players and a team doctor went missing during a tournament in Uganda and eventually applied for asylum. It later emerged that they had been granted asylum in the Netherlands.

The entire Eritrean team sought refugee status at the same regional tournament in 2009.

BOTSWANA: 10 Eritrean Football Players Dissappear From Hotel, Seek Asylum In Botswana

Ten players from the Eritrean football team have refused to return home after playing a World Cup qualifying match in Botswana and are now seeking asylum there, officials say.

The men were detained by police after deciding not to board their plane.

They are reported to have refused to go home despite the intervention of the Eritrean ambassador in Botswana.

There have been a number of mass defections by Eritrean athletes in recent years.

One of the most noticeable was in 2013, when Uganda granted asylum to 15 Eritrean players and their team doctor after they absconded at the end of a football tournament.

A senior official at the Botswana Football Association says it has yet to establish why the players refused to leave with their team-mates.

However a report in the Botswana newspaper The Voice said that the players were distressed about the prospect of joining the Eritrean army and wanted to seek asylum despite being persuaded not to by the ambassador.

The newspaper reported Botswana Football Association vice president Basadi Akoonyatse as saying that the Eritrean players were found missing from their hotel rooms early on Wednesday morning by team officials.

"A report was made to the police who spotted them loitering around Francistown, alleging that they were in search of a Red Cross centre where they could seek assistance to be accorded asylum in Botswana," she said.

Eritrea is notorious for human rights abuses, with torture and slavery both reported by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry report to be commonplace.

The country has also been accused by the UN of forcing its citizens to indefinite national service and of killing people trying to escape abroad.

The Eritrean government dismissed the UN's findings as "totally unfounded and devoid of all merit".


Nation of six million on Red Sea - one of Africa's poorest countries
One-party state - no functioning constitution or independent media
Former Italian colony, later formed loose federation with Ethiopia
1962 - Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie dissolved Eritrean parliament, seized Eritrea
Eritrean separatists - the Eritrean People's Liberation Front - fought guerrilla war until 1991, when they captured capital Asmara
Eritrea voted for independence in 1993
May 1998 border dispute with Ethiopia led to two-year war costing 100,000 lives
Still no peace settlement - thousands of troops face each other along 1,000km (620-mile) border