Meron Estefanos

Meron Estefanos (born 6 January 1975) is a Swedish-Eritrean human rights activist and journalist. She first became known in the Eritrean refugee community in 2011 for helping people who had been kidnapped and tortured by human traffickers on their way to Israel in order to extort ransom money from their relatives, exemplified in the 2013 documentary film Sound of Torture. After the migrant and trafficking routes changed to Libya, her efforts continued and uncovered criminal networks reaching into Europe. As of 2022, Estefanos deplored that no traffickers had been brought to justice, with little interest from national governments and international organisations.

Early life and education Meron Estefanos was born in 1974 in Ethiopia. Her father was a political activist; when he found out he was about to be arrested, he fled to Sudan, and eventually made it to Sweden. She and her mother stayed behind in Eritrea, but in 1987, could leave Eritrea, as her father had found work in Sweden. She calls herself privileged because she acquired the status of Swedish citizenship through her father and could leave on Ethiopian Airlines to Sweden. In 2011, Estefanos published a report which showed that organ trafficking was part of the trafficking of Sudanese-Eritrean asylum seekers in Egypt, primarily on the Sinai Peninsula. The 2013 documentary film Sound of Torture showed her work helping refugees from Eritrea, who had been kidnapped and tortured on their way to Israel in order to extort ransom money from their relatives. After the 2013 Lampedusa migrant shipwreck disaster she helped people track down missing relatives. In 2015, the Toronto Star estimated that she had helped save 16,000 refugees with her phone. In October 2020, court proceedings in Addis Ababa began without any foreign observers. Judges did not call local, nor international witnesses. According to the prosecution, there was one Zoom video meeting with Dutch prosecutors, no request for extradition, and that with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Europe had not shown interest in the case. As of 2022, Estefanos deplored that no traffickers had been brought to justice, with little interest from national governments and international organisations. "If the victims were white people, yes, then things can happen."

Estefanos has been a regular writer for the exile Eritrean news site Asmarino and been active in the human rights organization Eritrean Movement for Democracy and Human Rights.

Personal life As of 2014, Estefanos was a single mother of two boys, aged thirteen and five. Engel-duTertre Prize from ACAT Foundation, 2015.