Eritrean Team Seeks Asylum in Kenya

		<a href='http://ads.truthdig.com/banners/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a9cd87eb&cb=1748895904' target='_blank'><img src='http://ads.truthdig.com/banners/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=1&cb=1748895904&n=a9cd87eb' border='0' alt='' /></a>	February 12, 2012 Log in / Register
			Text Size

Past Events Upcoming Events

More About the Man Bankrolling Santorum

White Nationalists Share Spotlight With GOP at CPAC

A 'Queer History' of Rick Santorum and Proposition 8

Contraception and the Cost of Culture Wars

Single-Payer Contraception

Contraception and the Cost of Culture Wars
By E.J. Dionne, Jr.

White Nationalists Share Spotlight With GOP at CPAC
By Joe Conason

Will Mortgage Settlement Avoid Repeating Obama’s Foreclosure Failures?
By Paul Kiel, ProPublica

The Right’s Boon in Knox v. SEIU
By Bill Blum

More About the Man Bankrolling Santorum

Critical, Reluctant and Desperate

Frightening Charts From the Senate Inequality Hearing

Arab League Calls for U.N. Mission in Syria

More Senior Journalists of Murdoch’s Sun Arrested

Syrian General Killed by Gunmen in Damascus

A ‘Queer History’ of Rick Santorum and Proposition 8

‘Left, Right & Center’: Birth Control Concession

Contraception and Campaign 2012

Morris Berman and the Decline of America

Tumbrils and the English Language

‘Crazy Horse’: A Study in Erotic Abstraction
By Richard Schickel

Political Divide
By Thomas Byrne Edsall

And Now, This Presidential Appraisal From Scarlett Johansson

The Questions Education Reformers Aren’t Asking

Dig led by Mike Rose

Financial Meltdown 101

A Dig compiled by the editors of Truthdig

Conservatives Without Conscience

By John W. Dean
$18.16

Jazz

By Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux
$26.37

Eritrean Team Seeks Asylum in Kenya

Wikimedia Commons

The stadium in Asmara, Eritrea, where the national soccer team plays its games.

You know things are bad when your national soccer team flees the country. That’s what happened to Eritrea, whose national team absconded while in Kenya for a regional soccer tournament. The athletes later reappeared in the capital city of Nairobi, seeking asylum. —JCL

The Washington Post:

Eritrea’s entire national soccer team is seeking asylum in Kenya, joining tens of thousands of compatriots who have fled one of Africa’s most repressive governments.

The team absconded after traveling to Nairobi for a regional tournament. Eritrea, with only about 4 million people, was the second-biggest source of asylum seekers in the world last year, and the missing players are probably the highest-profile defectors since the country won independence in 1993.

The 11 players and one substitute were reported missing over the weekend when the team plane returned to Eritrea without them after a match against Tanzania.

Read more

More Below the Ad