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ID SR on Human Rights in Eritrea 34th Meeting, 31st Regular Session Human Rights Council

European Parliament resolution on the situation in Eritrea

PDF:European Parliament resolution on the situation in Eritrea

Award for Seada Fekadu comes as number of Eritreans granted protection in the UK plummets

A young Eritrean woman who fled to the UK after her father was arrested for his political activities in her home country will receive an award for helping and inspiring other migrants and refugees.

Her award comes as the number of Eritreans granted protection in the UK has plummeted after a change in Home Office advice on asylum requests from the repressive east African country.

At 16, Seada Fekadu’s world was turned upside down when her father was arrested for his work with the opposition in Eritrea. Fearing for her safety, an aunt paid for Fekadu to escape the capital, Asmara. Fekadu took a boat to neighbouring Djibouti, caught a plane to Paris and made her way to Calais, where she and others were smuggled in a lorry to London’s Waterloo.

Fekadu went to a nearby police station, was handed over to social services and was granted refugee status by the Home Office after three months. Five years on, Fekadu speaks about her dangerous voyage as if describing a commute to work.

“In Calais, they put you in a truck, you don’t have a choice. ‘You have to take this one,’ the agent said. I didn’t know where I was going. The truck dropped us near a police station, they found us a translator and after two hours, social services came,” she said.

In a sense she was one of the lucky ones. Fekadu arrived in Britain before the current migration crisis currently engulfing Europe. Getting to the UK in the back of the truck was relatively easy in 2011. Since then, Fekadu has built a new life. She is studying for her BTec – physics is her favourite subject – and has offers from four universities to study biomedical science.

“I want to become a doctor to help people, it’s about saving lives. I’ve wanted to be a doctor since I’ve been a child,” she said.

She has also been volunteering with Young Roots, a charity that helps young refugees. A social worker put Fekadu in touch with Young Roots soon after she arrived and she is now returning the favour by helping recent young arrivals referred to the charity.

“Young Roots helped me gain confidence. Now it’s my turn to help others,” she said. “I’ve been in their situation so I can understand them and I’m happy to help. They are young, I am young, we are like friends.”

Fekadu, now a trustee at the charity, takes youngsters to museums, to play football, to swim and for trips outside London. In recognition of her work, Fekadu will receive an award recognising women with a migrant or refugee background who provide inspiring leadership.

“So much of our time is taken up with communicating negative stories, we wanted to show the hopeful and positive work being done,” said Laura Padoan from the UNHCR, the UN agency for refugees, a joint organiser of the Women on the Move awards with the Forum, a migrant group. The event is on Friday at the Royal Festival Hall.

“She certainly stood out for her maturity and resilience despite what she went through. It’s really remarkable,” said Padoan, one of the judges.

The timing of Fedaku’s flight from Eritrea was fortunate. The Home Office last March advised that people from the country were no longer at risk of persecution if they returned home. The updated advice said citizens who left without permission – many of them to escape its indefinite military service – would not face persecution if they returned.

Yet the researchers behind the report, which the Home Office cited heavily, publicly distanced themselves from the findings, claiming the report was unsubstantiated and distorted. In June, the UN issued a damning report which concluded that the Eritrean government’s systematic use of extrajudicial killing, torture, rape, indefinite national service and forced labour may amount to crimes against humanity.

The UNHCR estimates that 5,000 people leave Eritrea every month and Eritreans account for the largest group of people applying for asylum in the UK, with 3,729 applications in 2015, a 48% increase over 2014. Eritrea also had the highest number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children last year at 694.

As a result of the Home Office advice, the proportion of initial decisions allowing Eritreans to stay plummeted to 48% in 2015 from 87% in the previous year. Meanwhile, the number of appeals from Eritreans soared from 172 in 2014 to 1,718 in 2015. Eighty percent of those Eritrean appeals determined in 2015 were allowed (which means refugee status for five years), an increase from 44% in the previous year.

Asked whether she misses Eritrea, Fedaku says: “Sometimes I miss my friends, but I don’t have much time to think about home, I have to study and the friends around me are like family, like home.”

By: The guardian

When a small Vancouver mining company struck gold in a remote corner of Africa, it started with so much promise. In remote Eritrea, Nevsun built a mine that was generating $700 million in profits in its first four years of operation. But it was also generating a lot of controversy – because Nevsun was partnered with a brutal dictatorship that runs the country and controls 40% of the mine. That has led to allegations by the UN and Human Rights Watch that the regime has used conscripted military labour in the mine. The Eritrea government has also been accused of funnelling arms to the terrorist group al-Shabaab.

Nevsun denies the allegations of human rights abuses and insists it is a “template for responsible international business.”

What is the price of doing business with a dictator? Mark Kelley investigates.

Professor Mirjam van Reisen has not acted unlawfully by the former chairman of the Eritrean movement YPFDJ to characterize in an interview as ”central intelligence Eritrea whose center is in the Netherlands. This particular the Amsterdam District Court Wednesday.

Van Reisen was sued by the Dutch-Eritrean Meseret Bahlbi for libel and slander. Bahlbi recognized himself in the decision of the Eritrea-expert and professor at the University of Tilburg, although they did not mention his name. He speaks of a ”criminalization accusation ’that has not been substantiated in fact. Since the verdict would have damaged his reputation, Bahlbi demanded in a lawsuit rectification and compensation of 25 thousand euros.

That requirement Wednesday showed off the court. The professor has claimed the court did not have information on specific actions or actions of Bahlbi for the intelligence of Eritrea. But she has adequately demonstrated that the YPFDJ Bahlbi which is an active member, can be regarded as the ”long arm” of the regime in Eritrea and ’to be provided to the regime the information from that organization. ”

According to the judge’s clear that Bahlbi ’affiliated actively supports the regime in Eritrea and the ideas of this regime’

The judge concluded that the YPFDJ ’support for the regime of dictator Afewerki’ aims and that members’ work as informants ”for the regime. It is clear to her that Bahlbi as (former) president of the Dutch branch of the YPFDJ, visitor sessions of this party and participant training in Eritrea, ”is linked to the regime in Eritrea and the ideas of this regime actively supports.

Radio interview
The Van Reisen decision falls under the right under freedom of speech

The professor made the statement last May in an interview for BNR. The program asked her reaction to an article in the magazine about OneWorld Eritrean supporters of the regime that would work as an interpreter for the IND. Two of those interpreters, according to OneWorld’s brother and sister of the (then) president of the YPFDJ in the Netherlands. This youth movement is linked to the only authorized party in Eritrea dictator Afewerki.

In the interview, Van Reisen says there is strong evidence that such an interpretation information by playing on asylum-seekers to the regime in Eritrea. ”The brother of the two in question is the hub of the intelligence service of Eritrea whose center is in the Netherlands and that’s a fact.”

No proof
That statement is in accordance with the court under the right to freedom of expression enshrined in the Constitution. The professor must publicly critical, informed, opinionated and able to express warning about abuses affecting society, according to the verdict.

Lawyer Q. Meijnen of Meseret be Bahlbi says ”very pleased” that the court states that there is no concrete evidence that Bahlbi in the Netherlands spying or intelligence is passed on to the Eritrean regime.

Counsel for Mirjam van Reisen, Ph van den Biesen, states that the professor in the interview was not to do Meseret Bahlbi. She called his name. ”It was her for the abuse that in Eritrean refugee matters is interpreted by interpreters who are linked directly or indirectly to the dictatorship in Eritrea.”

Volkskrant