{"id":7110,"date":"2021-06-19T08:46:13","date_gmt":"2021-06-19T08:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.munkhafadat.net\/?p=7110"},"modified":"2022-01-19T08:51:44","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T08:51:44","slug":"5-human-rights-crises-in-eritrea-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.munkhafadat.net\/index.php\/2021\/06\/19\/5-human-rights-crises-in-eritrea-2\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Human Rights Crises in Eritrea"},"content":{"rendered":"
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500,000 Refugees, \u2018Slavery-like\u2019 Compulsory Service, No National Elections, Border Conflicts & Secret Prisons: 5 Human Rights Crises in Eritrea<\/h1>\n

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A still image from the new documentary \u201cEscaping Eritrea,\u201d of a refugee camp along the border with Ethiopia. The ongoing exodus is one of several human rights crises in the east African nation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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by<\/span><\/p>\n
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Lila Hassan<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Isolated from the world by President Isaias Afwerki\u2019s 30-year authoritarian rule, the east African nation of Eritrea remains intentionally unknown.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s impossible, or very difficult, to get an accurate picture, because the government has closed the country so effectively that even those who have successfully fled the country are afraid to speak publicly, out of fear for what could happen to their families,\u201d said Adotei Akwei, an Amnesty International deputy director who specializes in sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n

In the new FRONTLINE documentary\u00a0Escaping Eritrea<\/em><\/a>, filmmaker\u00a0Evan Williams<\/a>\u00a0explores the human rights landscape of one of the world\u2019s most repressive regimes, from compulsory conscription to the ongoing exodus of refugees. The Eritrean government declined to respond to FRONTLINE, other than to say they\u2019d seen many fabricated stories before. Here is an introduction to five of Eritrea\u2019s biggest human rights crises.<\/p>\n

No national election has been held since Eritrea\u2019s 1993 independence from Ethiopia. There is no independent legislative or judicial branch and no free press.<\/h3>\n

After a 30-year war, Eritrea achieved independence from Ethiopia in 1993, led mainly by the People\u2019s Front for Democracy and Justice. The PFDJ became the ruling party in Eritrea, and an unelected assembly named PFDJ\u2019s leader, Isaias Afwerki, president until national elections could be held.<\/p>\n

But those elections never came. Scheduled for 1997, when a new constitution was ratified, they were postponed due to a border conflict with Ethiopia.<\/p>\n

Today Eritrea remains a one-party state. Regional elections for the National Assembly, as well as some local races, are held periodically but are \u201ccarefully orchestrated by the PFDJ and offer no meaningful choice to voters,\u201d according to\u00a0a 2020 report<\/a>\u00a0by Freedom House, a U.S.-based human rights nonprofit.<\/p>\n

In 2001 Afwerki banned all non-state media and imprisoned several PFDJ officials, known as the G-15, after they wrote a letter to the president, urging him to hold open elections. As of today, the government has not disclosed the whereabouts of any of the officials nor provided proof of life.<\/p>\n

Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based press-freedom watchdog,\u00a0named Eritrea<\/a>\u00a0the most repressive of 180 countries in 2020, worse than North Korea and Turkmenistan.<\/p>\n

Dissent is rare, but in 2017, students at a K-12 private Islamic school in Asmara, Eritrea\u2019s capital, protested a government plan to ban headscarves and to halt religious education.\u00a0Al Jazeera<\/em>\u00a0later reported<\/a>\u00a0that security forces opened fire, killing 28 and injuring 100 others.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands have fled Eritrea, making it one of the world\u2019s largest countries of origin for refugees, according to the United Nations.<\/h3>\n

The most recent\u00a0global report<\/a>\u00a0from the United Nations Refugee Agency, or UNHCR, ranked Eritrea among the top 10 countries of origin for refugees, with a total count of 505,100. In\u00a0Escaping Eritrea<\/em>, Williams reported that thousands of those were unaccompanied children who are at risk of being sent back, due to 2020 changes in Ethiopia\u2019s asylum policy,\u00a0according<\/a>\u00a0to Human Rights Watch.<\/p>\n

Experts said that Eritrea\u2019s compulsory national service, which conscripts thousands every year, is the primary reason people flee. \u201cThe main way to escape the system is to escape from the country. It remains the main factor which is driving people out,\u201d said Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch.<\/p>\n

But Amnesty\u2019s Akwei said there is a long list of other human rights abuses that fuel the refugee crisis, including restrictions on freedom of expression, movement and religion. The Eritrean government recognizes only four faiths \u2014 Sunni Islam, Eritrean Orthodox, Roman Catholicism and evangelical Christianity \u2014 and adherents of any others, such as Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses, are persecuted.<\/p>\n

Eritrea\u2019s compulsory \u2014 and often indefinite \u2014 national service violates human rights law, according to the U.N.<\/h3>\n

Introduced in 1995, national service is compulsory for all Eritreans between the ages of 18 and 50. By law, it\u2019s supposed to last 18 months, but it often extends for over a decade, according to\u00a0Human Rights Watch<\/a>. Many conscripts spend their final year of high school at a military training camp. Students are then either forced into military service indefinitely or are sent to some form of continuing education.<\/p>\n

National service can range from administrative work to construction to advanced military training. \u201cNone of them have any choice in the matter whatsoever,\u201d said Bader, of Human Rights Watch. \u201cThe whole civil service system in Eritrea \u2014 teachers, doctors, everyone \u2014 are conscripts,\u201d who are not paid livable wages, Bader said.<\/p>\n

A 2015 U.N.\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0called Eritrea\u2019s forced labor, among other practices, \u201cslavery-like\u201d and violations of international law. Vanessa Tsehaye, a Horn of Africa campaigner at Amnesty International whose family is from Eritrea, said Eritreans call national service \u201cnational slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2018, when President Afwerki and Ethiopia\u2019s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed signed a peace deal, officially ending the conflict between the countries, Eritreans hoped indefinite military conscription would end, but the system has remained unchanged.<\/p>\n

Evading national service, trying to flee the country and getting caught, or expressing dissent lands Eritreans in a highly secretive prison system.<\/h3>\n

\u201cIf you evade national service, then you can be detained,\u201d said Tsehaye, of Amnesty. Eritrea requires exit visas for citizens, which are difficult to obtain. Those caught escaping without documentation are systematically detained, imprisoned and often channeled back into military service.<\/p>\n

Sources put Eritrea\u2019s total prisons at around 200, although many say that\u2019s a conservative number. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights spent years\u00a0investigating<\/a>\u00a0the prison system but was never allowed inside the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnything to do with facts and figures and actual statistics is very difficult to get in Eritrea. It all goes to the opaqueness of the system,\u201d Sheila B. Keetharuth, the former U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Eritrea, said in\u00a0Escaping Eritrea<\/em>. \u201cAny official prison system should be in a position to have a list of all those in their custody. This is not possible in Eritrea.\u201d<\/p>\n

The number of prisoners is also unknown, although human rights groups said they\u2019re in the thousands, many indefinitely detained without trial, charges or access to family or lawyers.<\/p>\n

Eritrean troops are currently fighting in Ethiopia\u2019s Tigray region, potentially committing war crimes and fueling a humanitarian crisis.<\/h3>\n

In November 2020, Ethiopian Prime Minister Ahmed launched a military offensive in the Ethiopian region of Tigray, aiming to eliminate the Tigray People\u2019s Liberation Front, a political foe. Eritrea joined the war shortly after it began, as an ally of Ahmed.<\/p>\n

Alice Wairimu Nderitu, a U.N. special adviser on genocide,\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0in February of the \u201cescalation of ethnic violence\u201d against Tigrayans, an ethnic minority in Ethiopia. In March, Human Rights Watch\u00a0documented<\/a>\u00a0a massacre in which Eritrean forces \u201cfatally shot and summarily executed several hundred residents, mostly men and boys, over a 24-hour period\u201d in Tigray.<\/p>\n

Sexual violence has been used as a tool of war by both Ethiopian and Eritrean forces, according to hundreds of allegations by women and girls collected in an April\u00a0investigation<\/a>\u00a0by Reuters. Doctors told Reuters it was more common for women to report sexual violence by Eritrean than Ethiopian forces.<\/p>\n

In January, a Tigrayan official announced that at least 2.2 million people had been displaced by the conflict. As of March, the conflict\u2019s death toll had reached nearly 2,000, according to\u00a0researchers<\/a>\u00a0at Ghent University in Belgium. By April, 4.5 million people in the region were food insecure, according to the U.N.<\/p>\n

Ethiopia originally denied any Eritrean presence in Tigray, but on April 16, Eritrea told the U.N. Security Council that its troops were present in the region but that they would be withdrawing \u2014 a move not yet confirmed to have happened.<\/p>\n

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Source:
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500,000 Refugees, \u2018Slavery-like\u2019 Compulsory Service, No National Elections, Border Conflicts & Secret Prisons: 5 Human Rights Crises in Eritrea   A still image from the new documentary \u201cEscaping Eritrea,\u201d of a refugee camp along the border with Ethiopia. The ongoing exodus is one of several human rights crises in the east African nation. by Lila …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-7110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-reports","tag-5-human-rights-crises-in-eritrea"],"yoast_head":"\n5 Human Rights Crises in Eritrea -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/en.munkhafadat.net\/index.php\/2021\/06\/19\/5-human-rights-crises-in-eritrea-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"5 Human Rights Crises in Eritrea -\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"500,000 Refugees, \u2018Slavery-like\u2019 Compulsory Service, No National Elections, Border Conflicts & Secret Prisons: 5 Human Rights Crises in Eritrea   A still image from the new documentary \u201cEscaping Eritrea,\u201d of a refugee camp along the border with Ethiopia. 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