Category

Human Rights Council
Twenty-ninth session
Agenda item 4
Human rights situations that require the Council’s attention
Croatia,* Cyprus,
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Djibouti,*France, Montenegro, New Zealand,* Somalia:* draft
*
resolution
29/… Situation of human rights in Eritrea
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Diaspora Eritreans are set to demonstrate in front of the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. The rally is in support of a recently released UN report that detailed widespread rights abuses in Eritrea, reports Aljazeera.

Thousands of Eritreans from all over Europe, the US and Canada are expected to take part in the rally, which is scheduled to start at noon local time in Geneva.

Nagash Osman, a Sweden-based opposition figure and one of the organisers of the protest told Al Jazeera that he is in Geneva to say thank you to the Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry, which conducted the investigation.

“There are people coming by buses from Sweden, the UK, Germany, France and the rest of Europe. A few representatives are also flying in from the US and Canada.

“It is the first time Eritreans feel that the world is finally listening to us. The findings of the report are not new to us, we already know this. But it feels like the world is starting to understand our suffering,” said Osman.

The Commission of Inquiry presented their findings on Tuesday to the UN. A day earlier, a protest attended by thousands of Eritreans in the diaspora opposing the UN findings held a rally outside the UN headquarters in Geneva.

Crimes against humanity

Although the two opposing sides of Eritreans in the diaspora avoided holding their rally on the same day, some reported cyber harassment from the side opposing the report.

Salam Kidane, a human rights activist, based in the UK, told Al Jazeera that a lot of pestering has been reported on Twitter and Facebook.

Kidane arrived in Geneva on Tuesday and demanded accountability over the abuses outlined in the report.

“Crimes have been committed against humanity, and we need the Eritrean government to be held accountable. We are demanding justice, ” she said.

But Kidane’s sentiment is not shared by all. Rahel Weldeab, a Sweden-based Eritrean who rejected the UN findings, said she is opposed to the methodology used by the investigators as well as their conclusions.

“They based the report on over 500 interviews from outside the country. It’s not representative, especially when the UN claims that 5,000 Eritreans flee the country each month,” she said.

The commission had collected testimonies from more than 500 Eritreans in the diaspora and refugees, many of whom had left the country recently.

Weldeab added that she does not wish to see the type of democracy imposed in Eritrea that Libya and Iraq have today. “The report recommends foreign intervention. They UN want to bomb democracy into our country, I feel that threat is real to Eritrea.”

On Eritrea’s rocky relations with the UN, she stated: “You don’t feel that you can trust the UN, because of its history with the country since they denied us our independence in 1952. This is history and we haven’t forgotten,” said the university student, referring to the UN declaration of Eritrea as an autonomous part of the Ethiopian Federation in 1952.

Nine years later, Ethiopia began to violate the agreement. Then, in 1962, the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I formally dissolved the federation and annexed Eritrea.

“They government took away our dignity. They thought that no one would hear us and we would just take it, they can’t do that any more.

“They used to just dismiss us and label us as traitors. Well they have to deal with this new reality and stop using the old rhetoric.

“The fact that they didn’t allow the commission into the country speaks volumes of the government, they should have allowed them in,” said the Sweden-based activist.

All eyes on Eritrea

The Commission of Inquiry was established last year mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate the human rights situation in Eritrea.

The Eritrean government refused them entry to the country and the UN had to conduct their research, including interviews, in the diaspora.

When the inquiry started last year the special rapporteur on human rights in Eritrea, Sheila Keetharuth, told Al Jazeera: “I have no access to the country; there is no cooperation from the Eritrean government with my mandate.”

The Eritrean case will be referred to the UN General Assembly in October and may also be referred to the International Criminal Court.

Nasser concluded: “I hope the mandate of this commission will be extended. The momentum is here and all eyes are on Eritrea. We need to use it wisely to help our people.

“People are running away for their lives. We are tired of these images of people losing their lives in the Mediterranean.

“Eritrea is located in the fragile Horn of Africa, we don’t want to have another failed state.”

ADDIS ABABA – Hundreds of Eritrean refugees demonstrated Friday in front of the African Union headquarters demanding the regional organization push for democratic reforms in their home country. President Isaias Afewerki has been in power for 22 years, Eritrea’s only president since independence, and has been accused of suppressing dissent in the one-party state.

More than 400 protesters shouted and held banners accusing long-time Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki of being a dictator.

Tedros, a 36-year-old refugee, fled Eritrea with his family 6 months ago. He paid $10,000 to cross the border illegally. He is one of the organizers of the protest.

”We demonstrate today to support the report of the UN-mandated commission on human rights in Eritrea. We support the report,” he said. ”We can’t speak. We can’t write. We can’t believe whatever we want in religion.”

The United Nations Commission of Inquiry released a report Wednesday on Eritrea’s human rights situation. Despite U.N. investigators being denied entry to the country, the 500-page report warned that the Eritrean situation can no longer be ignored.

The report highlights widespread and systematic human rights violations under Afewerki, who has been in power since 1993 when Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia.

The refugees here want the African Union to take action.

Henok, 31, has been in Ethiopia for four years. He hopes that one day he can go back to the family he left behind. But he said life is too difficult for him in Eritrea right now.

”Especially guys like me, people like me from 18 years old, we are soldiers, unlimited time. We can do nothing, even if we are a married man,” he noted.

There are more than a 100,000 Eritreans in Ethiopia. It is estimated that 200 people cross the Ethiopian-Eritrean border every single day.

Luam, 24, was caught the first time she tried to leave, and for that she had to spend three years in jail. Undeterred, she tried and succeeded a second time.

Luam said she wants to pursue her singing career. She felt repressed at home so she wanted to leave Eritrea to sing and live her dreams.

About 5,000 Eritreans flee the small country in the Horn of Africa every month trying their luck in neighboring countries such as Ethiopia. But many also try the often deadly crossing of the Mediterranean Sea by boat to make it to Europe.

Eritreans seeking asylum in Europe are the second-largest group after those coming from war-torn Syria.

The Commission of Inquiry into the UN Eritrea today asked the international community not to ignore longer repression and systematic violation of human rights to which are subject Eritreans, forcing them to flee en masse from their country.

The commission was established in June 2014 by the Human Rights Council of the UN to prepare a report on the situation in Eritrea, which today appeared before this entity.

”Instead of being based on the law and order country, Eritrea is a defined by repression and fear country,” said the committee chairman, Mike Smith, introducing the study.

”Since independence, power has it remained in the hands of a person and of a governing party with arbitrariness and impunity,” he added.

”The commission has found that massive, widespread and systematic violations of human rights have been and are being committed by the Government of Eritrea and there is no accountability,” the report said.

”The Commission also considers that the violations in the area of ​​extrajudicial executions, torture (including sexual torture), conscription and forced labor may constitute crimes against humanity,” he said.

However, the commission could not investigate the evidence of crimes against humanity because they are outside their mandate.

That is why experts today called for the Security Council to refer the situation in the country to the International Criminal Court, so that these atrocities can be investigated.

Despite repeated requests to the Eritrean Executive, members of the commission could not enter the country, so they had to base their work on more than 160 written testimonies and interviews with 550 Eritreans living in eight countries.

”Fear of reprisals including Eritreans living in third countries was one of the main challenges”, specifies the text.

The commission describes a totalitarian state controls its citizens through a vast security apparatus that has permeated all levels of society, including a network of spies citizens must control their neighbors.

”As a result of this surveillance, Eritreans live in constant fear that their behavior is monitored by security agents and they may be arbitrarily arrested and subjected to torture, disappearance or death,” he said.

Experts agree that ”torture is so common that you can only conclude that it is government policy that exalts as a way to punish people perceived as opponents.”

The text states that the judicial system in Eritrea is totally corrupt and that detainees are treated in a brutal, with many held and others disappear permanently incommunicado.

Moreover, the report claims that the Government undertakes to compulsory military service and conscripts are subjected to slave-like conditions, especially women, many of them forced into sexual exploitation.

In this situation, experts believe that over 400,000 Eritreans decided last year to leave their country and seek to be recognized as refugees in other nations.

”The fact that 5,000 people monthly leave such a small country should raise the alarm about a situation of systematic violation of human rights that can not be ignored,” Smith warned.

The Eritrean government faced renewed pressure over allegations of crimes against humanity on Wednesday, as UN investigators repeated their call for an international criminal probe into abuses.

In a high-level report compiled for the UN Human Rights Council, chief investigator Mike Smith detailed systematic and widespread alleged abuses against civilians in the Horn of Africa nation.

Mr Smith said that in the absence of an independent judiciary in Eritrea to provide justice for victims of abuse, the only option was to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court.