Evidence has emerged that the anti-Covid-19 strategies of Eritrean authorities are cutting off all food supplies for the Afar people and will lead to mass starvation unless immediately reversed.
The Afar people live in South-Eastern Eritrea, on the southern tip, bordering the Red Sea – the region historically known as Dankalia. Located in the hottest region of the world, this is an arid land with little vegetation and few sources of water, where temperatures can go up to 55 degrees Celsius. It has over 2,335 kilometres of shorelines, including the coastlines of its 350 islands.
The Afar people traditionally seafarers, they traded across the Red Sea. Fishing is their main form of subsistence, although some Afars herd goats and camels. The region lacks basic medical services.
Recent Events: In 2020, ever since the Covid-19 outbreak, the Afar people have been facing the very real risk of mass starvation, threatening the lives of all citizens across this region. But this mortal danger is the result not of climate change or disasters such as locusts, but of direct actions of the Eritrean government. Under the pretext of protecting the population from Covid – 19, the regime in Asmara has totally closed all the land and sea borders of the region, without taking any measures to ensure that food supplies could reach them.
Early in April, 2020, traditional Afar leaders notified the Eritrean government of the risk of starvation threatening all citizens in the entire region as a result of the movement restrictions imposed on them. In April and May, Eritrean government forces stopped many convoys of camels carrying foodstuffs coming from the Samoti region on the Ethiopian-Eritrean border, and camel convoys carrying foodstuffs from Djibouti to the region. Also, in May, the Eritrean security forces detained 74 camels in the Buya area of the Ghalo sub-region, cutting off supplies from that direction.
All supply routes for food by sea have also been deliberately severed. The Eritrean government has closed all ports in coastal areas. The marine authorities under the control of the Eritrean government have continued to harass any movement of shipping across the Red Sea; on May 25th, they intercepted more than 50 fishing boats and detained the crews and confiscated their cargoes in the Buri region near the Naval Transport Centre north of Afar Red Sea.
Everywhere else in the world, restrictions on the movement of people to stop virus transmission have not ended the movement of basic food supplies or prevented local fishing and food production.
It is difficult to see how this suffocating siege of the Afar people’s homeland, under the pretext of ending all movement of people to stop infection, can be interpreted other than as a deliberate attempt to cut off all food supplies and cruelly subject the people to hunger and starvation.
Human Rights Concern-Eritrea calls upon the Eritrean government to at once end all restrictions on the movement of food into the region and to instruct all marine patrols to allow local fishing to resume and not to impede the movement of fishing vessels, to return all the fishing boats it has confiscated to the rightful owners, to release the crews it has detained, and to give back all the camels it has forcibly taken from the people. HRCE calls upon the international community to put urgent pressure on the Eritrean authorities to expedite supplies of food so as to reach the Afar people as soon as possible.
Human Rights Concern – Eritrea (HRCE)
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