Refugees from Eritrea waiting to be screened by the Ethiopian authorities in Endabaguna town, Wednesday, July 27, 2011, 50 km from the Eritrean border. Ethiopia is home to more than 48,000 Eritrean refugees, mostly young, educated men, or soldiers who have deserted the army. About a 1,000 Eritreans risk their life every month crossing the border into Ethiopia to escape what they say must be the largest open prison in the world. AP

Shire, Ethiopia, August 30 (AFP) — In Ethiopia’s Endabaguna refugee camp, rows of gaunt Eritreans clad in rubber sandals give vent to their exasperation after days of trekking and dodging soldiers in an attempt to escape failed crops, hunger and an autocratic government. Over 12 million people across the Horn of Africa are struggling from the region’s worst drought in decades, but secretive Eritrea is the only country to deny it has been affected by the crisis. “This year I farmed, but there was lack of rain. I don’t know what’s going to happen, only God knows,” said Mehreteab, a refugee. He escaped from the army, risking death or jail if caught crossing the heavily militarized border, leaving his wife and three children behind. “There is no food and no grain in the home,” he said. “I don’t have any idea what’s going to happen to them.” Camps in northern Ethiopia receive about 900 refugees every month from Eritrea, one of the regions most isolated countries. […] According to satellite imagery from the weather monitoring group FEWSNET, rainfall in parts of Eritrea this year has been “below average” – less than 10 percent of normal levels in some areas. Aid workers admit it is nearly impossible to know just how gravely the Eritrea is affected because access to information is so limited in the country where the only media is state-run. “Its been a black hole for us, we don’t know what’s going on there,” said Matthew Conway, spokesman for the UN humanitarian coordination office in Nairobi. “But that’s not to say its not happening.” The US ambassador to the United Nations has said she is “deeply concerned” that Eritrea is facing extreme hunger, and urged the government to allow humanitarian access. “The people of Eritrea who most likely are suffering the very same food shortages that were seeing throughout the region are being left to starve,” Susan Rice told reporters in New York. […] The Eritrean authorities deny the country is facing food scarcity. “This nonsense about a hidden famine in Eritrea is utterly false,” the Eritrea’s information ministry said in an online statement last week. Instead, Asmara claims last year’s harvest was the best in a decade, while state run media heap praise on government-run food security programs. But refugee Gebrielxavier, 25, said this is not true. He left Eritrea last November because his crop failed, he could not find work and his family went hungry. “We couldnt live. We were famished,” he said. “And the government? It did nothing.” […]

Amid government denials, Eritreans flee harsh drought