Authorities in Uganda are searching for five Eritreans who disappeared from
a hotel where their team was playing in a soccer tournament.
The missing players could be planning to seek asylum, which some Eritrean
sports players have done in the past while traveling abroad. Tens of thousands
of Eritreans flee their small Horn of Africa country every year, citing
political repression and lengthy military conscription.
Officials from the U.N. refugee agency in Uganda and the prime minister’s office
say they had not received asylum requests from the five players.
The five men disappeared from their hotel in the eastern town of Jinja on
Sunday after playing a match in the quarter finals of a three-week regional
tournament.
Spokesman for Council of East and Central Africa Football Association,
which organised the tournament, Rogers Mulindwa, said“The search is going on, we notified
security, they are trying to trace them,”.
Mulindwa said they had intensified security measures around the 13
remaining Eritrean team members to prevent more players from disappearing.
The United Nations says Eritrea is the world’s ninth largest source of refugees,
with at least 507,300 refugees registered at the end of 2018.