Human Rights Watch: Report 2008
Eritrea
31/1/2008
Events of 2007
The government of President Isayas Afeworki continues
to maintain
its totalitarian grip on the country. Arbitrary
arrests and detention without trial are common.
Prisoners are routinely tortured and kept for years in
underground cells in isolation or crammed into
shipping containers. Mass arrests and harassment of
members of minority religious denominations continue.
The government imposes such prolonged and repeated
compulsory military service that thousands of young
men have fled the country.
The constitution approved by referendum in 1997
remains unimplemented. No national election has ever
been held and an interim parliament has not met since
2002. No political groups are permitted aside from the
ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice
(PFDJ), of which Afeworki is executive secretary. The
last session of the PFDJ party congress occurred in
1997. No media or civil society organizations exist
outside those controlled by the PFDJ. Private
enterprise has been severely curtailed, largely
replaced by PFDJ-owned businesses.
Afeworki justifies his repressive rule by claiming
that the country must remain on a war footing until a
boundary dispute with Ethiopia is resolved. Ethiopia
refuses to accept the 2002 demarcation decision by a
Boundary Commission established under the 2000
cease-fire agreement ending the bloody two-year war
between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Suppression of Free Expression
Dissent is ruthlessly suppressed including within the
PFDJ. Eleven PFDJ leaders arrested in September 2001
for questioning the president’s leadership remain
detained without charge or trial. The independent
press remains closed—in 2001 all editors and
publishers except those who managed to flee—were
detained. In 2007, Reporters without Borders ranked
Eritrea last of 169 countries on its Press Freedom
Index. The government even cannibalizes its own media.
In November 2006 it arrested nine state media
employees after others fled the country. They were
beaten while under arrest to obtain information about
their email accounts and to discover possible escape
plans. One of those arrested, Fetiha Khaled, is
reported to have been forced to join the army. The
others were released but were placed under
surveillance and forbidden to leave Asmara. In July
2007, one of those released, Paulos Kidane, fell ill
while trying to escape to Sudan and later died or was
killed by security forces.
Government permits are required for gatherings of
more than three to five persons. No domestic human
rights organizations are allowed to exist; foreign
human rights organizations are denied entry. All labor
unions are PFDJ affiliates. In 2007, the regime
released three PFDJ union leaders who had been
arrested two years earlier after advocating for
improved working conditions.
Prison Conditions and Torture
Incarceration of suspected political opponents without
trial or rudimentary legal safeguards is routine. The
political leaders and journalists arrested in 2001
remain in solitary confinement in a secret detention
facility; nine of the 31 prisoners are reported to
have died. Many other prisoners are packed into
unventilated cargo containers under extreme
temperatures or are held in underground cells. Torture
is common, as are indefinite solitary confinement,
starvation rations, lack of sanitation, and hard
labor. Prisoners rarely receive medical care, even
when severely injured or deathly ill. Death in
captivity is common.
Prisoners are warned not to speak about their
imprisonment after release, but some details have
emerged. In 2006 one escapee, a former journalist,
told a conference in
Uganda that he had been beaten and kicked, had his
feet tied to his hands behind his back, was later
manacled, threatened with death, held in solitary
confinement in a narrow underground dungeon, and
prohibited from sending or receiving mail. He was
released after almost two years, but then was
conscripted into the army, where he was closely
monitored, before managing to escape.
Military Conscription and Arrests
Men between ages 18 and 50, and women between 18 and
27, must serve 18 months of military service. However,
as in previous years, men were rounded up in massive
sweeps and house-to-house searches (giffas) for
repeated periods of service far exceeding 18 months.
As one young Eritrean noted in 2007, “there is no end
to this service.” Conscripts are used in labor
battalions on public works and on projects benefiting
military commanders personally. Pay is nominal and
working conditions often harsh. Over a dozen
conscripts were reported to have died in the summer of
2007 at the Wia military training camp near the Red
Sea coast from intense heat, malnutrition, and lack of
medical care. Conscientious objection is not
recognized.
Refugee agencies report that approximately 120 young
men fleeing conscription arrived in Sudan each week in
2006 and 2007 and that another 400 to 500 reach
Ethiopia monthly, even though border guards reportedly
have orders to “shoot-to-kill.”
Since 2005, families of conscription evaders are
fined at least 50,000 nakfa (US $3300), a massive sum
in a country where yearly per capita income is less
than $1000. Since late 2006, some family members have
reportedly been conscripted to substitute for missing
relatives.
Religious Persecution
Only Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran, and Orthodox
Christian churches and traditional Islam are permitted
to worship in Eritrea. Although four other
denominations applied for registration in 2002, none
were registered as of late 2007. Members of
unregistered churches, especially Protestant sects,
are frequently persecuted. Some 2,000 members of
unregistered churches are incarcerated at any one time
in shipping containers, underground cells, and
military outposts. Many are beaten and otherwise
abused to compel them to renounce their faiths. Some
are arrested and released after a month or two but
others are held indefinitely.
Even “recognized” religious groups have not been
spared. In 2006, the government engineered the removal
of the 79-year-old patriarch of the Eritrean Orthodox
church and placed him under house arrest after he
refused to interfere with a renewal movement within
the church. In May 2007 he was evicted from his home
after a replacement patriarch was “unanimously”
confirmed by church authorities; his whereabouts are
currently unknown. Members of the renewal movement
have been arrested and abused in the same fashion as
members of non-recognized churches.
The government has also interfered with the Catholic
Church. In late 2006, the government demanded that
Roman Catholic Church schools, health clinics, and
other social service facilities be turned over to the
Ministry of Social Welfare. In November 2007, it
expelled 13 Catholic missionaries by refusing to
extend their residency permits.
Relations with
Ethiopia
Tensions with Ethiopia remain high. A September 2007
Border Commission meeting with the two countries to
obtain agreement to demarcate the border ended in
failure. Ethiopia subsequently announced it might
terminate the armistice agreement altogether. In 2002,
the commission had designated the border and directed
that it be demarcated accordingly. Although Eritrea
accepts the commission decision in full, Ethiopia
refuses to permit demarcation of portions of the
border that would award the village of Badme, the
flashpoint of the war, to Eritrea.
An international peacekeeping force, the UN Mission in
Eritrea Ethiopia (UNMEE), maintains 1,700 troops and
observers in a 25-kilometer wide armistice buffer
between the two countries. Since 2005 Eritrea has
infiltrated thousands of troops into the buffer zone,
and has prevented UNMEE from patrolling large parts of
it and from engaging in aerial observation, all in
violation of the armistice agreement. Eritrea ignores
repeated Security Council resolutions demanding
withdrawal of the troops and cooperation with UNMEE.
As a result, heavily armed troops of both countries
are within meters of each other. In March 2007, the
government expelled the program manager of the UNMEE
Mine Action Coordination Center, one of a series of
expulsions of UNMEE personnel over the years.
Since 2006, Eritrea and Ethiopia have been engaged in
a proxy war in neighboring Somalia. Eritrea allegedly
provides logistical and military support to insurgent
groups fighting with the Islamic Courts Union (ICU)
against Ethiopian forces and the Somali transitional
government. In 2007 it provided refuge to ICU leaders.
A United Nations team monitoring the arms embargo on
Somalia in July 2007 accused Eritrea of providing
“huge quantities of arms,” in late 2006 to the ICU. In
April 2007 Eritrea suspended its membership in the
regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development
(IGAD) because of the organization’s support for
Ethiopian intervention in Somalia.
Key International Actors
Relations with the United States, already strained,
worsened in 2007. President Afeworki harshly
criticized the United States for failing to pressure
Ethiopia to comply with the boundary commission
decision. In August 2007, the US threatened to place
Eritrea on its short list of “state sponsors of
terrorism” because of its alleged military support to
the ICU and for sheltering ICU leaders whom the US
labels terrorists. The US also ordered Eritrea to
close its consulate in the US—in California—in
response to interference with operations of the
American embassy in Asmara.
Since the government ordered the USAID office to shut
down in 2005, the US has provided no development
assistance to Eritrea. For economic assistance,
Eritrea now relies on China, Arab states, and the
European Union, and remittances from the Eritrean
diaspora. In 2007, China partially cancelled Eritrea’s
existing debt. It also agreed to provide assistance
for construction of a college in Adi Keyih. China’s
Export-Import bank agreed in 2007 to lend the
government US$60 million to purchase a large minority
interest in a gold mine project by a Canadian mining
company at Bisha in western Eritrea. Still, currency
flows remain decidedly in China’s favor. In 2006, the
last full year for which figures are available, China
exported almost $38 million worth of goods to Eritrea
and imported only $720,000-worth.
The European Union is in the final year of a US$119
million five-year development grant. In September, the
EU expressed concern about “severe violations of basic
human rights” by the government.
In July 2007, two British Council employees, were
arrested, one of whom was released shortly thereafter.
A visiting British diplomat was expelled for allegedly
trying to install communications equipment without
authorization at the council
