Category

6 May 2014 – The Government of Eritrea needs to put an immediate end to the widespread practices of arbitrary arrest, ill-treatment and persecution, says an independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to look into the situation in the country.

“I urge the Eritrean authorities to immediately release, or charge and bring before a court of law, all detainees, including the members of the ‘G-15’, the journalists arrested in 2001, as well as those arrested for their opinions or religious beliefs,” said Sheila B. Keetharuth, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Eritrea.

Ms. Keetharuth welcomed the reported release of eight detainees in Eritrea, which took place in April 2014, but which has not been publicly acknowledged by the Eritrean authorities.

“Their release is a positive development, which I hope will be followed by more systematic releases,” she said, expressing the hope that “Eritrea will abide by its obligations under international human rights law more consistently.”

Since her appointment in November 2012, the Special Rapporteur has made several requests to visit Eritrea, which have so far not been granted. She has repeatedly urged the Eritrean authorities to collaborate with her mandate with a view to addressing its human rights challenges.

Ms. Keetharuth, travelled to Germany and Switzerland from 17 to 28 March 2014 to collect first-hand information from Eritrean refugees and migrants on the human rights situation in Eritrea.

The Special Rapporteur will submit her second report on the human rights situation in Eritrea to the Human Rights Council in June 2014.

Independent experts or special rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.

Ms Keetharuth expressed concern about the unknown number of Eritreans who continue to be held in the country’s secret detention centres. Thousands are believed to be detained incommunicado at unknown locations, without charge or trial.

“Those detained incommunicado and in undisclosed locations are at high risk of being tortured or submitted to other forms of ill-treatment,” she said. “I call on the authorities to disclose the whereabouts of all detainees held incommunicado and provide immediate access to their families, medical doctors and legal representatives.”

Most of those men reportedly released had been arrested in 2005-2006 in Keren, 90 kilometres north-west of the capital, Asmara. Among them were several government officials and two medical doctors. It is unclear whether reasons have been provided for their arrest in the first place, or for their release. None of them has ever been brought before a court of law to review the legality of their detention.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has appointed three new envoys to head the bloc’s missions in Madagascar, Eritrea and Lesotho, APA learnt here Saturday. Ashton announced in a statement that she had appointed Antonio Sanchez-Benidito Gaspar, Christian Manahl and Michael Doyle as the new heads of EU delegations to Madagascar, Eritrea and Lesotho, respectively.

“I am delighted to announce the appointment of these excellent candidates to head up the EU’s Delegations in Eritrea, Lesotho and Madagascar, respectively. Their talent and expertise are significant assets for the EU’s external action and I look forward to working with them in their new roles,” Ashton said.

Gaspar has previously served in a variety of foreign policy jobs in Madrid on Africa and Latin America before becoming ambassador to Ethiopia (2008-2011) and currently ambassador at Large for the Sahel.

Doyle is currently deputy head of the EU unit in charge of promoting stability and has previously served as a crisis response planner and in the European Agency for Reconstruction in Kosovo.

An Austrian diplomat, Manahl joined the European Commission in 1996 and has done a variety of
Africa-related foreign policy jobs in Brussels and was seconded to the United Nations missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia.

He is currently political counsellor at the EU Delegation in South Sudan.

When a boat carrying 500 asylum seekers sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa, it moved Michael Adonai to create the works featured in his Altona exhibition titled I did not choose to be a refugee.

Eritrea-born Adonai is a winner of his country’s top art prize. He has exhibited internationally, including at a United Nations-sponsored global art show in New York.

In 1977, aged 15, Adonai joined the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front. Much of his early work centres on his experiences of war.

Adonai, who lives in Werribee, said that his latest works paid tribute to the 359 asylum seekers who died in the sea on October 3.

“In particular, the exhibition pays homage to an Eritrean woman, seven months pregnant, who prematurely gave birth to a baby boy while drowning.

”When rescue divers pulled them from the sea bed, the mother and baby were still connected by the umbilical cord.”

Adonai’s exhibition will be at Altona’s Joel Gallery from June 14-27. The Louis Joel Arts and Community Centre is $1000 shy of the funds needed to frame Adonai’s pieces.

Centre manager Jill Bilston said it was a coup to secure Adonai’s solo exhibition.

“He has had exhibitions in New York, Washington and several European countries,” she said.

“We are so proud to have this exhibition in Altona.

“So far, the centre has received two lots of funding totalling $1500. We need another $1000 to enable all his work to be framed to a high standard.”

The exhibition is supported by Hobsons Bay council and Multicultural Arts Victoria. Adonai now works with Wyndham council to share his skills with aspiring young artists.

» [email protected] or 9398 2511

Wyndhamweekly

Eritrea is again persecuting even officially recognised religious bodies with the arrest last week of five Christians set to be ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church, according to Open Doors.

The Christian support organisation announced that security officials in the capital, Asmara, arrested Petros Yosief, Bemnet Tesfay, Aklilu Tesfay, Ermias Hadgu and Aron Mehretu. The arrests came shortly after the church announced on April 20 that they would be ordained for pastoral ministry.

“The arrests clearly show how even government recognised churches, namely the Catholic, [Eritrean] Orthodox [Church] and Evangelical Lutheran churches, are not free from government control,” said an Open Doors source on condition of anonymity.

Authorities in Eritrea, where an estimated 1,500 Christians are languishing in prison for their faith, are holding the would-be Evangelical Lutheran leaders at Police Station Number 2 in Asmara, according to an Open Doors press statement.

“The arrest of these pastoral candidates reminds us of one of the greatest challenges churches in Eritrea face,” said an Open Doors worker. “Due to the constant turnover of pastors due to arrest or threats, continuous and biblically consistent pastoral care for Christians is hampered.”

In 2005, Eritrean authorities cracked down on the officially recognised Eritrean Orthodox Church (EOC), persecuting those who supported a renewal movement within the church and who protested religious persecution. When Patriarch Abune Antonios, head of the EOC, objected to the persecution, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki arranged for him to be deposed, placed under house arrest and ultimately replaced by a government official.

It was the EOC that had reportedly urged the government to crack down on the other religions in the first place, resulting in making all other religious bodies outside of the four who registered in May 2002 illegal.

“Since then, many thousands of mostly evangelical Christians have suffered severely at the hands of a regime known for its human rights abuses, appalling prison conditions and widespread use of torture,” writes Elizabeth Kendal of the Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin. “Even teenagers are not spared and must complete military service in military training camps before they can graduate from school. Separated from their parents, religious persecution in these camps is systematic and severe.”

At its worst point, persecution in Eritrea resulted in an estimated 3,000 Christians incarcerated for their faith by the end of 2010, with most held in shipping containers in desert camps and others in underground cells, Kendal writes.

“The conditions are inhumane: Children and the elderly are amongst the prisoners sharing skin diseases, dysentery and other horrors in confined, unventilated spaces,” she notes. “Torture is routine. Amnesty International has reported on the tortures suffered by Christian prisoners. Several Christians have died in custody and others have perished in the desert trying to escape.”

In 2010, the U.S. Department of State estimated 50 percent of the Eritrean population was Muslim and about 48 percent Christian; the Pew Research Center, however, estimated at that time that nearly 63 percent were Christian and 36.2 percent Muslim.