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Human Rights Watch World Report 2017 – Eritrea

After 25 years of rule by unelected President Isaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s citizens remain subjects of one of the world’s most oppressive governments. In May 2016, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry (CoI) established by the Human

After 25 years of rule by unelected President Isaias Afwerki, Eritrea’s citizens remain subjects of one of the world’s most oppressive governments.

In May 2016, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry (CoI) established by the Human Rights Council in its final report said it found reasonable grounds to believe the government has committed numerous crimes against humanity. The government’s “totalitarian practices” and disrespect for the rule of law manifested “wholesale disregard for the liberty” of Eritrea’s citizens, the CoI concluded.

In turn, the council by resolution “condemn[ed] in the strongest terms” Eritrea’s “systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations” and asked the General Assembly to submit the commission reports to all “relevant organs of the UN.” The General Assembly took no public action on that recommendation at its October 2016 session.

Indefinite Military Service and Forced Labor

By law, each Eritrean is compelled to serve 18 months in national service starting at 18 but in practice conscripts serve indefinitely, many for over a decade. Endless conscription remains a principal driver of migration. The CoI concluded that conditions of national service rise to the crime of enslavement.

Conscripts are often assigned to arduous non-military construction and agriculture projects though some serve in the civil service, education, and other service jobs. Conscripts are used not only in government-related projects, they are used in projects personally benefitting military commanders and other officials.

Treatment of conscripts is often harsh, depending on the whim of the commander. Physical abuse, including torture, occurs frequently; so does forced domestic servitude and sexual violence by commanders against female conscripts. There is no redress mechanism for conscripts facing sexual and other abuses.

Attempts to flee are sternly punished. On April 3, new conscripts trying to escape from a convoy in Asmara were shot at by guards, killing several.

Conscript pay is insufficient to support the conscript, let alone a family. An Eritrean refugee told Human Rights Watch he fled in 2015 after 18 years of service because there was no end in sight. Another said he fled after 10 years because “my family couldn’t survive.” A third said he fled after serving for 12 years because “I couldn’t see any future for my children.”

When Eritrea was discussing a large grant from the European Union in 2015, senior Eritrean officials told diplomats and foreign visitors that the 18-month limit would be applied to new conscripts, though not to those already serving far longer. In February, the government abandoned that proposal.

Instead, President Isaias announced that conscript pay would be raised. His finance minister said pay for conscripts working in the civil service would almost triple; he made no mention of increases for others. At time of writing, there is no evidence that pay had increased for most conscripts.

Repression of Speech, Expression, and Association

President Isaias rules without institutional restraint. No national elections have been held since self-rule in 1991. Eritrea has had no legislature since 2002. The judiciary is subject to executive control and interference. A constitution adopted in 1997 remains unimplemented. Public space to question government policy does not exist. No domestic nongovernmental organizations are permitted.

The government owns all media. In September 2001, the government closed all independent newspapers and arrested its leading journalists. None were brought to trial. They remain in solitary detention, with no access to family members. Former guards have reported about half have died in detention. Eleven former high-level officials who criticized Isaias’s rule were also arrested and detained since 2001. Eritrean authorities have ignored calls, including by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the UN special rapporteur for Eritrea, for their release or at least a judicial hearing.

Less prominent citizens are also subject to arbitrary imprisonment. Very few are given a reason for their arrest. Few, if any, receive trials; some disappear. The length of imprisonment is often indefinite and conditions are harsh.

Although the government issued a new criminal procedure code in 2015, requiring warrants for arrest, access to defense counsel, and other procedural safeguards, including the right to petition for habeas corpus, there is no evidence that any of these protections has been implemented.

Interference with Religious Practices

The government persecutes citizens who practice religions other than the four it recognizes– Sunni Islam and the Eritrean Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Evangelical (Lutheran) churches. The government interferes in the practices of the four religions it recognizes. Authorities deposed the patriarch of the Eritrean Orthodox Church in 2006, appointing a successor one year later. The deposed patriarch remains under house arrest over 10 years later.

Security personnel raid private homes where adherents of unrecognized religions meet for prayers, arresting and detaining them. Those arrested are only released after repudiating their religious affiliations.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are especially persecuted. Three arrested 22 years ago, in 1994, for refusing military service remain imprisoned. Fifty-four Witnesses, arrested in 2014 for “unlawful assembly,” admitted guilt in March 2016 and were released with a fine of 500 nakfa (US$35); a lone holdout was sentenced to six months and fined 7,000 nakfa ($470).

Currency Confiscation

In late 2015, the government ordered all paper currency held by citizens be turned in to government banks within six weeks. In February 2016, the government decreed that payments exceeding 3,000 nakfa ($200) could only be made by check

Although the new restrictions limit black market conversions they also create new tools closely to monitor citizens’ individual expenditures and income.

Refugees

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, reported 474, 296 Eritreans globally to be refugees and asylum seekers at the end of 2015, about 12 percent of Eritrea’s official 3.6 million population estimate.

European countries continue to attempt to stem the flow of asylum seekers and migrants from Eritrea. A Swiss immigration fact-finding mission to Asmara, Eritrea’s capital, in March, however, concluded “proof of improved human rights conditions is still missing” and that involuntary returnees could count on imprisonment and perhaps torture. In October, an appellate tribunal in the United Kingdom held that Eritreans of draft age who left the country illegally and are involuntary returned to Eritrea “face a real risk of persecution, serious harm or ill-treatment”; these abuses, the decision said, violate the European Convention on Human Rights. The UK Home Office amended its immigration policy to conform to the tribunal’s holding.

In May, Sudan expelled over 400 Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers to Eritrea. Most were promptly incarcerated according to CoI witnesses.

Israel for years has refused to allow Eritreans to apply for asylum. In September, an appeals court held that Eritreans must be given individualized hearings, overruling an Interior Ministry policy that from national service evasion or desertion can never be justification for asylum.

Key International Actors

Eritrea’s relations with neighboring Ethiopia and Djibouti remain severely strained. After a bloody border war in 1998-2000, Ethiopia occupies slivers of territory identified by an international boundary commission as Eritrean, including the town of Badme where the war began. President Isaias uses the pretext of “no-war, no-peace” for his repressive domestic policies.

Eritrea and Ethiopia both host each other’s armed opposition groups. On June 12-13, border clashes, including artillery fire, erupted near Tsorona, a village just inside Eritrea. President Isaias blamed Ethiopia for the attack but there are conflicting reports of the cause, including that fighting began when armed Eritrean troops chased fleeing conscripts into Ethiopian territory and that Ethiopia responded to an attack by an Eritrea-based rebel group.

Also in March, Eritrea released four Djibouti prisoners-of-war captured in a border conflict in 2008. Eritrea had never before acknowledged holding POWs even after two escaped in 2013. Djibouti claims Eritrea still holds a dozen more.

Eritrea strengthened its relations with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2016, agreeing in December 2015 to support Saudi Arabia’s military role in Yemen, as part of what Eritrea called “broad strategic cooperation to combat terrorism.” Eritrea has reportedly allowed the UAE to deploy military jets and train Yemeni forces at Assab on the Red Sea coast, where the UAE is building a new port to support its military activities in Yemen.

The UN Security Council continued an arms embargo on Eritrea for another year after its Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea reported Eritrea has not cooperated with the group. The group said Eritrea may have violated the embargo by arming and training anti-Ethiopia and anti-Djibouti militias, using mining income and UAE payments for military purposes, and attempting to buy military equipment in Europe.

Eritrea receives substantial foreign exchange income from foreign-owned gold, copper, zinc, and nickel mining projects in which the government holds 40 percent ownership. China’s SFECO Group’s Zara Mining Share Company began gold production in January. Chinese state-owned Sichuan Road & Bridge Mining Investment planned to start operations in late 2016. Canadian Nevsun’s Bisha mine is in its sixth year.

Based on Nevsun’s experience, it is likely that the Chinese companies use Eritrean government-owned construction firms for infrastructure development, and by so doing indirectly use national service conscript labor.

After the European Union gave Eritrea a five-year €200 million (approximately $220 million) aid package in 2015, to try to stem migration, the European Parliament in March expressed its opposition and “great concern [over] the continuing deplorable human rights situation and the complete absence of rule of law and media freedom….”

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Review overview
18 COMMENTS
  • andom January 16, 2017

    Once Crimes are committed, they remain committed untill legally resolved. They do not fade away like a inscripts written with Pencil, nor can they be erased with eraser. Our unelected leaders blood soacked hands can not be cleaned. They know that if the rule of law prevail they will pay the price and for that reason they will never allow that happen while they are alive.

    • eri January 17, 2017

      It’s true Andom no crime must be forgotten but legally resolved, but to resolve it you need a legal proof for what you insinuating, no proof has been found for all the imaginary crime comited in eritrea.
      That why the world has decided to reject the finding. It was a pack of lie dictated by the criminal TPLF regime to undermine eritrea and it fail again.
      The only country that comited crime against humanity is the TPLF regime in ethiopia and we don’t know why the world is looking away this moment

      • andom January 18, 2017

        Keeping citizens behind bar with out charges and trial for over a decade is crime. Only higdef and korakurs like u try to ignore it. If another force come to power and put u behind bar incommunicado without trial, will u cry for justice?

        • eri January 18, 2017

          They have been judge and condemn for the crime they committed by backstabbing their government and their people in the time of great danger, when eritrea existence was in peril, when everybody was fighting to death against a huge invasion they were doing their dirty work by contacting THE TPLF AND GIVING INFORMATION TO THE ENEMY
          So you can call them whatever you want but if they took power they would be chaos today.
          Anyway those are only 15 person who has been part of the government and alife, in prison but compare with the criminal TPLF WOYANE regime who killed thousands of innocent in cold blood pfdj is a saint .
          Soon we will see the end of blood thirsty TPLF amen

          • Dewoch January 19, 2017

            If you do not want to be Smashed and rooted out by the Gallant Weyane, your only safety is to shut up pray that Weyane would not shatter you for good. No second chance now! is not business as usual!

    • koubrom January 17, 2017

      It’s true Andom no crime must be forgotten but legally resolved, but to resolve it you need a legal proof for what you insinuating, no proof has been found for all the imaginary crime comited in eritrea.
      That why the world has decided to reject the finding. It was a pack of lie dictated by the criminal TPLF regime to undermine eritrea and it fail again.
      The only country that comited crime against humanity is the TPLF regime in ethiopia and we don’t know why the world is looking away this moment

      • andom January 18, 2017

        Stick to one name, eri or kubrom!! Do not be nefahito!

  • Thomas January 16, 2017

    What is the point and use of human rights watch world report for every year with no action on PFDJ
    and its gangsters who are committing huge crimes against Eritreans year in year out?
    This so called human rights watch world report is an insult to the so many injured, abused Eritrean people.
    It seems like the outside Western world would only bother to help black Africans who are loaded with oil money.

  • Sol January 17, 2017

    Thomas,
    If we remain for any international organization or foreign country to take an action against the fascistic regime in our beloved country then the regime will stay in power for long time. The only side that has to take an action is we, Eritreans and as it is obvious due to many factors we failed to take action to uproot this cancerous group from the shoulder of our people.

    • andom January 18, 2017

      Sol
      U are right. Could not agree more.

  • Yared January 17, 2017

    Human rights watch is using Eritrea, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Al-Assad and few other true dictatorial regimes as a cover up to disguise its true evil mission of disrupting the progress being registered by developing and under develop nations world wide but with particular focus in Africa. Human rights watch is a promoter of riot and disorder and violence in third world countries to keep them under develop and let the way for the exploitation of their mineral resources to feed Western industries. human rights is based in New York in the USA, a country who is responsible for the chaos in the Arab and Moslem world. If we ignore about the crimes and atrocities committed on the people of Vietnam and focus on the Arab, world, we will discover that the fire of countless death, chaos and destruction that is currently active was set alight buy George W. Bush senior in the name of liberating Kuwait, and was repeated by his son George W. Bush Junior., Then AL-Quaida was born and there after that ISIS and Bako-Haram and other countless extremist groups world wide flourished. The children and women that perish and still perishing in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya,Yemen are in many millions. This what is called Human rights Watch never speak a hint, legitimizing the US millions of women and children atrocities and crimes against humanity world wide we see it focused on North Korea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Egypt, etc.. etc where inhumanity is far below the Imperialist level. The number of US citizens that die daily by gun violence, by police or other wise far exceeds the daily number of soldiers killed in major opposing army engagement say the 1998-2000 Ethio-Eritrea war. and it is safe to say that the USA is at war with itself. That is where Human right watch yearly budget and operational philosophy being forged. and I would say to readers that we need to revoke the cover up “human rights” from this Organization and rename it a Human misery promoter watch. It must be told shut up must deal with its own USA crimes against humanity first before it points its fingers on others! having said that we must all work in unison and with full force to do our own job, that is to force and compel our African leaders to promote democracy and to rule by the rule of law and not by the rule of the Jangle! .

    • Amanuel January 17, 2017

      Dear brother, you seem to have your own grievances with USA. It does not matter where this organisation is located or who funds it. What should matter above all is ‘Is what they are reporting really happening or not. The nations you have mentioned all are hell on earth to their citizens. It is very paradoxical when you actual enjoy the justice system where you are living and hate the nation that preaches and upholds it. Besides as the saying goes ‘Do as what the Priest (Qeshi) says but do not do what he does’ if you think he does not practice what he preaches. What happened after a dictator is toppled is obvious what do you expect after tiring a bloated corpse’s abdomen, that would sure happen in the Arab world, African or anywhere not America or others to blame.

    • AHMED SALEH !!! January 17, 2017

      Hi , Yared
      I second with your stance to show our national obligation and work in unison for
      the benefit of our common interest . Western organizations including U. N , never
      heard the cries of our people in revolution era and do not expect otherwise .
      To stop injustices perpetuated on civilian population inside Eritrea depends on
      the will of our people to be responsible and do the required job .
      Since 2001 we observed political race at the expense of forgotten innocent victims
      but nobody tried to confront wrongs except the unsung courageous heroes in FORTO
      operation , We Eritreans are only entitled to held responsible for matters that concern
      the well being of their people .

  • eri January 17, 2017

    Human right watch it’s just a tools to harasse developing country who do not allow any western countries to meddle in their internal affairs. If it real what it happening in ethiopia was beyond all evil ,the massacre in day light with world watching and witness all this genocide against innocents amhara and oromo and other ethnic group ,human rights watch was silent,
    It’s a shameful organisation with corrupt employees.
    Eritrea don’t give a shite about them
    We the people love issayas afeworki, he is unique to all Africa
    You guy must worries about the only cancer criminal tplf regime in your country leave our president to us

    • Seare January 17, 2017

      Stupid stone head eriman guy your tplf weyane of Esayas, Hagos kisha and Yemanes are the cancers of Eritrea that should worry you and they are also pregnating your stupid sisters to make the next tplf weyane Eritrea state. Your unique man has been raping Eritrea badly.

  • hidat January 17, 2017

    HUMAN RIGHT WATCH………….NGO:::::::::::::HAKAIM BZEI DOB(SHIH )HAKIMOM MILLIONT ZIKETLU TETABEKTI GAZETENATAT:::::::::ZITEREFUN KEMZI MODA NAY KIDAN GIZIEUU ZEHILIF KEMUU GIZIEOM HALIFUS HIZBI ALEM BIZEBA ZOM TIKALAT MIZIRAB KAB ZIGEDFO KINDEY KOINU ALO………………MODA NAY KIDANSEQUU NEIRU NEIRU YIMILES ZITEFESHU TIKALLAT MIBALOM YIHAYISH.

  • k.tewolde January 17, 2017

    HR watch is just like its name it is a watch dog,it is doing its job.It is not a fighting tool,it doesn’t manufacture AK-47s and RPG’s either.We don’t need to be told what is happening back home,it is happening to us,our family,and our people and we know exactly what it takes to resolve it.The rest is shenkolel and it is getting old like the skittish tyrant and his buffoons..

  • koubrom January 17, 2017

    Koubrom eri
    M same
    Why you blocking me every time
    Are afraid for what I have to say ?????

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