Excerpt
I speak with Meron Estefanos, an Eritrean human rights activist who uses Bitcoin to save lives and free hostages from human traffickers. She explains how Bitcoin became a game-changer in her mission, helping her transfer ransom money quickly and safely. Watch to hear this powerful story!
Transcript
We’re speaking with Meron Estefanos. Meron is a human rights activist who has been supporting Eritrean refugees for a couple of years now. Many of the Eritrean refugees are being captured by gangsters for ransom. She’s supporting them and buying them free basically and pays them in bitcoin. So Meron, please tell us a little bit about your work, what you did. I think you worked a lot in supporting refugees and you used Bitcoin for that. Why did you do that, and how did that help? You know, I was dealing with refugees. I mean, I’ve been a human rights activist for 22 years almost. Somehow, you know, I was doing radio broadcasting into Eritrea via satellite and short wave, so my phone number became a hotline for refugees. So refugees started calling me from all over the world, like when they are kidnapped for ransom. I was shocked to hear that people were getting kidnapped while fleeing from their countries and being extorted for $33,000 minimum per person. And we Eritreans were very poor, you know, the poorest in Africa actually. So when I started interviewing the kidnapped, the hostages, it just, you know, I was so touched. And I, I decided, like, it became like my lifetime work kind of thing. I decided to go ahead. At first, I was contacting the US State Department, European Parliament, European Commission, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, all these big NGOs and governments saying, “This is happening to African refugees; can we stop this?” Nobody cared. So in three weeks’ time of the 28 people that I interviewed, five died because of the torture. So for me, it became like I have to do something. So I started raising funds to pay ransom. And so the more I paid ransom—I don’t know, millions of dollars I paid in ransom. And it was easy to raise money. Like in one day, I could raise up to $200,000 just using our community. But the problem was the kidnappers; they wanted the money within an hour and a half. And it’s always hard because Western Union’s maximum is $4,500. And then you have to give a reason why you’re sending this much money. MoneyGram—I couldn’t use it; they banned me. Banks, you can’t. So an 18-year-old guy died because I couldn’t make the payment in an hour and a half. And that was, like, the saddest thing, and it’s something that touched me most because I had the money, but how do you transfer $33,000 to Egypt in an hour and a half? It was not possible. And so they sent me a text and said, “Use the money for his funeral.” And yeah, so that’s when I realized getting money is easy, but transferring is the hard part. So Alex Gladstein, he always used to talk about it. Since 2013, he always spoke about the blockchain technology, how great it is for activists and things like that. It never made sense to me because I didn’t see how it could help me. But then one time, like, HRF did an activist workshop, a Bitcoin workshop for activists. And I said, okay, Alex invited me. I’m like, okay, let me go and hear what it is about. So the workshop was organized really amazingly because they had Venezuelans that were telling their stories, why they use Bitcoin and how it helped them. So I didn’t even finish the first speaker’s story for the Venezuelans. Maybe 15 minutes in, I was already sold. I’m like, this is what I need because it, it was so clear to me. For me, Bitcoin was like, I thought it’s something used in the West. I didn’t think that it could be used in Africa or elsewhere. So now, you know, when someone wants to pay ransom, I don’t train the traffickers, but I train my people to receive the money and then make the payment within less than half an hour. And the traffickers accept bitcoin? No, really, no. How does it work? I send it. If the people keeping the hostages are in Sudan, I’ll send it to my people in Sudan that I’ve already trained. And they cash it out and then make the payment whichever way the traffickers want it. So I would never teach the traffickers, of course. But of course. But it’s helping lives. At least now, when there is a ransom that we have to pay within an hour or an hour and a half, we can get it in minutes. Wow. Yeah. I mean, that makes a difference, a big, big difference. It’s saving… Bitcoin is saving lives. Exactly. So for that part, like, for me, it became clear. And, and as an activist also, a lot of countries, they consider me like an enemy. Because when you’re talking about refugees, you’re criticizing governments. Yes. So if refugees are abused in Kenya, we talk about refugees in Kenya, and then the Kenyan government will look at me like I’m an enemy. Of course. So I’m considered an enemy in many countries. So for this reason, I decided now, I just start, you know, the people that work with me, like in Ethiopia, you know, I have many researchers. So, like, whenever I have research work, I like hiring Africans to give them a chance. It used to be difficult because if I’m sending with my name, they are associated with me, and their lives can be in danger. So in Ethiopia, like, everyone that was in touch with me was getting arrested. A lot of people, about 259 people, got arrested just because we used to call each other. These are refugees that contacted me and things. So anyone that made a call to my number or received a call from my number was getting arrested. So my fear was, how do I pay my researchers? So Bitcoin became a solution. So I trained them. At that time, you know, Paxful was totally, you know, you didn’t need an ID or anything. So we were… they were using Paxful. Like, I would send it to their Paxful account, and they could get it in birr, in Ethiopian birr, or keep it in bitcoin. So it became like a great solution. And since then, you know, like, I’ve been using bitcoin for everything. Super, great. Yeah. Well, I got inspired by all of you guys. Yeah. So from that experience with Bitcoin, I mean, you have firsthand experience on how it can help people. And then you also thought this knowledge should get into the hands of more people and especially refugees? Yeah, especially. You had an idea. Yeah, being a refugee advocate, the hardest part, one thing I noticed is that when refugees flee their countries, they often don’t have ID or anything. So they depend on remittances. And the problem is they don’t have bank accounts; they cannot accept anything except Hawala. And the Hawala system takes 10% from the sender and 10% from the receiver. So they’re losing $20 on every $100 sent—you send $110, and they receive $90. So I saw this as an opportunity for refugees as well and started teaching them how they can receive bitcoin. And these refugees are amazing because now they’re teaching their relatives, “Don’t send me money through Hawala.” They’re actually orange-pilling their loved ones who live in the West. These relatives have lived all their lives in the West but have no clue about Bitcoin. Thanks to these refugees, they’re being forced to learn. The refugees say, “Don’t send me through Hawala; I need this [Bitcoin],” and it’s great.
