Over 5,000 Eritreans leave their country each month due to severe human rights violations committed by the government. Isaias Afwerki's one-party state exerts control over the media and the judiciary and uses torture, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances to repress its own people. One in every 11 Eritreans are refugees.

At 3am, two weeks after he spoke out in a meeting against members of the ruling Popular Front for Democracy Party, security forces entered Mohamed’s house, beat him up in front of his mother and his wife and accused him of trafficking people out of Eritrea.