ERITREA: How did a new nation’s hopes and expectations for freedom and democracy come to be so brutally dashed? And why do we particularly remember this deprivation each year on 18th September?
At the end of the war with Ethiopia, a group of Eritrean academics and professionals recognised the flawed path on which their nation found itself and wrote the ‘Berlin Manifesto’, in October 2000, addressed to the Eritrean president. In it, they made various observations and suggestions, including warning of the dangers of abandoning collective participation and the negative practices that allowed one-man leadership. A seminal moment for Eritreans also came in May 2001 when an open letter which called “for the rule of law and for justice, through peaceful and legal ways and means” was published. The letter was signed by 15 members of the Central Council of the ruling party.
But the crucial event in the loss of freedom and democracy for Eritrea occurred on 18th September 2001, when the Eritrean government arrested 11 high-ranking government officials after they called on the president to implement the ratified constitution and hold elections. We remember this date 19 years later as the undoubted beginning of the dictatorship of Isaias Afewerki and the sad end of all human rights and true democracy for the people of Eritrea. September 18th 2001 was to mark the clear break with any pretence of respect for human rights, the rule of law, or democratic practices. Isaias Afwerki had made it clear that no criticism of his leadership would be tolerated. Many more government officials and hosts of ordinary people deemed critical of Isaias Afwerki’s governance were imprisoned in the days and months following the closure of independent media.
For most of the leading political prisoners and the independent media journalists, it has been 19 years of incommunicado imprisonment without due trial, and for some, such as Bitweded Abraha, it has been 28 years. The country is now an open prison and is often likened to North Korea, owing to its repressive practices and gross human rights violations. The president has remained the same since Eritrea’s independence in 1991 and his regime is now accused, by no less than the official of the UN Commission of Inquiry, of crimes against humanity, and is recognised internationally for being one of the most repressive regimes against free speech and independent media in the whole world. The regime continues to use the population as slaves under the indefinite servitude and forced labour allowed by the National Service system. The country’s resources, and thus a great part of the population’s source of future income, are being sold in illegitimate deals with foreign companies, and the profits made are wholly unaccounted for.
So here we are on 18th September 2020. What has changed for the people of Eritrea? For their democracy and their human rights?
The short answer is: Absolutely nothing.
Indeed, under the smokescreen of supposedly necessary COVID-19 restrictions, the repression and deprivation of the people have only worsened to an extreme extent. They no longer only lack all human rights and any vestiges of democracy. They now lack the freedom to find work and food and feed their families. Restrictions on movement through Draconian military control prevent ordinary people from going to work or finding employment. And, as a consequence, anyone in the whole informal economy, and anyone who is a day labourer (a huge proportion of the population), is prevented from finding work or earning a living, with the result that every person and family dependent on such access is faced with starvation. Whether Eritreans die from torture, the appalling conditions of totally unjust imprisonment, from Covid-19, or from starvation, the end result is the same, and it is the same appalling regime which is responsible.
Things need to change radically and speedily! Human Rights Concern -Eritrea (HRCE) calls on the Eritrean Government to release all prisoners of conscience without delay. HRCE calls upon the Eritrean government to empty its vast network of detention centres and prisons before Covid-19 kills half the detainees. HRCE calls upon the Eritrean government to end all restrictions on movement and allow all its nationals the freedom to travel to work and to employ themselves in the ways in which they are accustomed to create an income.
HRCE also appeals to the international community to take note of the gross human rights violations and the crimes against humanity being committed within Eritrea. It is high time that the international community recognised the huge danger of an ever- tightening noose of mass starvation for which Eritrea’s supposed COVID-19 restrictions are responsible, and directed its efforts to helping and supporting all the victims of such atrocities in whatever ways possible.
Otherwise, on 18th September 2021, we shall be reporting the most severe death toll from starvation in one year that has ever happened in a small African country supposedly at peace.
Human Rights Concern – Eritrea (HRCE)
18 September 2020
