In the intense search for young people to “press-gang” into the military, whole families are being made homeless by Eritrea’s security forces.

Further disturbing news is emerging from Eritrea in the context of the news that the conflict in Tigray, Ethiopia, has once again erupted into open violence.

Multiple reports are coming in by the hour of mass roundups by Eritrean security services, who are raiding civilian homes in search of young persons (male or female) to force into the military and be despatched to fight in the brutal civil conflict in Ethiopia. 

Young persons are being arrested and abducted wherever they are found, whether in prayer at churches, in the street, at their homes, or elsewhere.  It appears that, if none are at home, having fled the horrors of military training and the savagery in Tigray, their parents’ homes are immediately closed, padlocked and battened shut. Reports coming out of Eritrea suggest that entire families, including aged grandparents, are then forcibly rendered homeless due to the absence of the younger generation.

International human rights agencies have long maintained that a large number of human rights violations in Eritrea occur within the context of the limitless National Service, which is compulsory for all young people over 18, and which has caused the mass emigration of Eritreans.

Those eligible for conscription into military service have no desire to participate in a war in Ethiopia war that they do not support, especially because they know they have no chance to escaping from lifelong service. Such young people are disappearing in huge numbers to avoid conscription. Since the last year of state education for those aged 17-18 is officially completed in the Sawa military barracks, many young people never turn up to complete their education there. Unfinished or truncated education for large numbers is the disastrous result.

Their entire families are now being punished for the young people’s disappearance. This leaves the young people with an appalling choice: do they protect themselves from likely death or injury in the Ethiopian civil war or lifelong military slavery, or must they submit to military service to protect their families from homelessness and destitution?

 Human Rights Concern Eritrea (HRCE) calls upon all UN member states and all democratic governments concerned for the maintenance of the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to raise the issue of Eritrea’s current illegal treatment of its own citizens in every international forum. 

Elizabeth Chyrum, Director of HRCE, remarked: “What other country in the world deliberately renders families homeless and ultimately condemns them to starvation on the mere suspicion that their children may be avoiding military service? What legal system in the world punishes the whole family on the mere pretext that their younger generation might have avoided complying with the law? Surely it is time for international bodies such as the UN Human Rights Council and African Union to denounce Eritrea’s illegal actions.”