NIYAT DYMOTT’S last months in Eritrea were a “living hell”. The 19-year-old wanted to go to university after finishing school but was drafted into a brutal and indefinite military service. To flee, she spent four days trekking across the western deserts to Sudan, hiding at night to avoid border guards with orders to shoot escapees on sight. At Port Sudan an uncle paid $5,000 to a smuggler to ferry her to France. From there a lorry took her, via Calais, to seek asylum in Britain. Once granted refugee status Ms Dymott (not her real name) studied in northern England and now works there as a civil engineer. In the ten years since fleeing her homeland, she has not been back for fear of persecution. Ms Dymott’s story is not unusual. Over 350,000 Eritreans, or 6-10% of the population, have escaped the country since 2000. Last year 46,750 sought refuge in Europe, up from 12,000 in 2012. Britain now receives more asylum-seekers from Eritrea than from any other country. But recently it has become inhospitable. The acceptance rate has dropped from around 90% at the end of last year to 39% (see chart), the lowest in Europe. Between April and September applications to Britain accounted for 7% of those lodged in Europe, but 49% of rejections. Why has it become so strict?

Strangely the answer lies in a country that grants refugee status to nearly all Eritreans who apply: Denmark. A fact-finding mission by the Danish Immigration Service in October 2014 concluded that living in Eritrea was much less bad than previously thought. It claimed those who left illegally and evaded conscription were safe to go back, provided they sign a letter of apology and pay a 2% tax on income earned abroad. Torture, imprisonment and executions were a thing of the past for returnees. In March Britain’s Home Office included the research in its own country reports, which officials use to make asylum decisions. Acceptance rates plummeted.

Alas, the reality in Eritrea is not so rosy. Even before Britain adopted the Danish findings, the report had been disowned by some of its contributors. Gaim Kibreab, a professor of refugee studies at London South Bank University who was quoted at length in the study, withdrew his statements, saying his words had been cherry-picked to fit the Danish officials’ account. Two of the Danish researchers on the fact-finding mission publicly distanced themselves from it, claiming their superiors had distorted the truth. In the following months the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, as well as members of the Eritrean diaspora and assorted academics and non-governmental organisations, also cried foul. Last December the Danish Immigration Service decided to disregard the findings of its own report.

If such controversy makes the Home Office’s decision to adopt the Danish findings seem odd, then the decision to stick with them is even more baffling. In May the Independent Advisory Group on Country Information, Britain’s official asylum watchdog, said the Danish study was of “dubious quality” and unreliable. The following month the UN Human Rights Council found that “systematic, widespread and gross human-rights violations” were being committed in Eritrea. Yet the Home Office’s latest reports on Eritrea, released in September, still rely heavily on the Danish evidence, which is cited more than anything else. The Home Office, which is under political pressure to reduce immigration, claims the updates take into account more recent sources, but offers no further explanation.

Judges who consider asylum appeals also seem to disagree with the Home Office’s strict new approach. Eritreans’ success rate on appealing against rejections soared to 86% in the third quarter of this year, up from 31% in the same period last year. The number of appeals lodged in the past six months is greater than in the previous six years. “What a massive waste of time and money,” exclaims Colin Yeo, an asylum lawyer at Garden Court barristers’ chambers. For people such as Ms Dymott, whose brothers still toil as conscripts in Eritrea, Britain’s groundless crackdown is a grim development.