After seeing her former countrymen dying while trying to flee their country in the Horn of Africa, an Eritrean native with a personal connection is trying to bring attention to the situation.
Durangoan Messel McHugh, who has lived in the U.S. since the 1960s and is a naturalized citizen, led a vigil Sunday evening in Buckley Park for refugees lost in recent Mediterranean Sea shipwrecks.
McHugh’s grandnephew Yohannes Abraha, a military man, went AWOL three years ago and fled to the Sudan, a common initial stop for refugees headed for Europe to work or establish a jumping-off point for further emigration.
“We saw him in the Sudan two years ago,” McHugh said Tuesday in an interview. “We said we’d try to help him reach the United States, but he rejected the offer.”
McHugh had tried to sponsor another family member years ago but failed to win asylum.
“We haven’t heard from Yohannes since,” McHugh said. She learned a couple months ago from family members that he had reached Italy.
More than 360 Eritreans fleeing the brutal dictatorship in their country drowned earlier this month when a boat in which they were trying to reach the Italian island of Lampedusa off Africa, capsized.
“We must call attention to refugees because they’re all suffering,” McHugh said. “People should be lighting candles all over the world.”
Eritrea, the size of Pennsylvania with a population of about 6 million, borders the Red Sea. Modern Eritrea began as a coalition of independent kingdoms and remnants of the Ethiopian and Ottoman empires. In 1947, it became federated with Ethiopia, but annexation by the latter triggered a revolt, which led to independence for Eritrea in 1991.
McHugh, 70, has a brother and three sisters in Eritrea.
She came to the United States in 1966 to work as a governess in New York City. She later counseled mentally challenged youths in upstate New York. She arrived in Durango in 1984.
Her husband, Neil McHugh, a professor at Fort Lewis College, also joined the short candlelight vigil Sunday evening.
“Life is difficult in Eritrea, and people are desperate to leave,” Messel McHugh said. “They are willing to risk their life.”
McHugh said her grandnephew would go anyplace that would accept him.
Eritreans who flee by land risk being robbed, kidnapped or killed, much like Latin Americans who try to enter the United States from Mexico, McHugh said.
daler@durangoherald.com
