The Question of Eritrea

The UN's Commission of Inquiry (COI) for Eritrea said the government of President Isaias Afwerki had committed heinous crimes since independence a quarter-century ago, including the "enslavement" of 400,000 people. Much of the abuse is allegedly linked to a harsh national service programme. The Human Rights Council said it "strongly encourages the African Union to follow up on the COI report" and set up "an investigation ... with a view to examining and bringing to justice those responsible for violations and abuses of human rights identified by the commission of inquiry, including any that may amount to a crime against humanity".

Fleeing Eritrea

Leaving Eritrea without permission is a criminal offense. There has also been a noticeable increase in controls on the Eritrean side of the Sudan-Eritrea border in the last two months. People are being intercepted and sent back. Eritrean soldiers are instructed to shoot at anyone they discover trying to leave the country illegally, a policy that hasn’t prevented thousands from fleeing across the border every month. Eritrea’s stepped up border controls may be partly related to security concerns as it celebrates 25 years of independence, but that they were also about “trying to make themselves look like a good partner” to the EU. While the majority of Eritreans remain in camps in Sudan and Ethiopia, over 70,000 applied for asylum in Europe during 2014 and 2015, according to EuroStat figures.

Authorities in Sudan have launched a crackdown on Eritrean migrants - arresting those living in the capital, Khartoum, and intercepting hundreds travelling north through the country towards Libya, the launching point for smugglers’ boats heading for Europe.

Reports that 900 Eritreans were rounded up in Khartoum on Monday and that a further 400 arrested en route to Libya have been deported to Eritrea, come amid recent revelations in the British and German media that the EU is planning to deepen its cooperation with a number of African countries, including Sudan and Eritrea, to stem migration towards Europe.

A spokesperson with UNHCR’s office in Khartoum confirmed that a number of migrants, including Eritreans, had been intercepted in northern Sudan heading towards the Libyan border. Sudan has a prior record of deporting Eritreans without allowing them access to asylum procedures, a practice that UNHCR has condemned in the past as amounting to refoulement.

The EU has increasingly sought the cooperation of African states to control the flows of migrants headed for its shores by using the promise of aid and trade agreements. Critics argue that such policies have contributed to states viewing migrants as bargaining chips to be leveraged for maximum political capital with disastrous results for their safety and human rights. Der Spiegel and the New Statesman reported on a leaked plan to increase cooperation with African countries of origin and transit for migrants. The articles alleged that the EU plans to use funding from the recently launched Emergency Trust Fund for Africa to send equipment and vehicles to help Sudan police its border with Eritrea and to assist with the construction of two closed reception centres in Gadaref and Kassala. Eritrea would be given assistance to develop or implement human trafficking regulations. Europe’s engagement with Sudan and Eritrea, and other countries along the Horn of Africa to Europe migration route, dates back to the Khartoum Process, launched in November 2014. The Khartoum process risks legitimizing the governments of Sudan and Eritrea by treating them as partners in tackling irregular migration, when in fact those countries’ own policies are a major factor in driving migration and fuelling migrant smuggling and trafficking. Sudanese officials have repeatedly been accused of colluding with or turning a blind eye to traffickers who kidnap Eritrean refugees and hold them for ransom.

http://www.irinnews.org/news/2016/05/25/sudan-and-eritrea-crackdown-migrants-amid-reports-eu-incentives

Refusing Eritreans Asylum

Refusing asylum to Eritreans on back of discredited report. Danish researchers have condemned conclusions published by Denmark’s immigration service that conditions in east African country are safe for deportees. The researchers behind a report on Eritrea which the Home Office cited heavily when claiming it was now safe to send Eritrean asylum seekers back to the east African country have publicly distanced themselves from the findings, claiming the report was unsubstantiated and distorted. The only named source in the DIS report, Professor Gaim Kibreab, director of refugee studies at London South Bank University, has also distanced himself from its findings. “They distorted what I said, quoted me out of context,” he said. “One example: they quoted me saying that I knew people who had returned back to Eritrea without problem. What I told them was I know of a few who returned who are connected to the government, who are naturalised and have English passports and Danish passports – they didn’t mention that I was talking about a few who were connected. They left out so many things. The way they did it, there was an unnamed anonymous source and then they brought in my name to support their views. It was very disingenuous,” he said. Kibreab said: “Nothing has changed in Eritrea. The Home Office is rejecting most Eritrean asylum applications even though nothing has changed on the ground. The Home Office has disgraced itself doing that.”

 The Home Office updated its country advice on Eritrea in March, claiming that citizens who left the country without permission – many of them to escape its infamous indefinite military service – would not face persecution if they returned. in the Home Office guidance, the DIS report was cited 39 times, making it the most referenced source in the report by a significant margin. The next most-cited source was a proclamation by the Eritrean government outlining the national service programme, with 16 mentions. The advice resulted in the number of Eritreans granted protection in the UK plummeting from a 73% approval rate in the first quarter of 2015 to 34% in the second quarter.

But the two researchers behind the report, Jens Weise Olesen and Jan Olsen, who conducted the fact-finding mission in Eritrea for the Danish Immigration Service (DIS), have revealed that they are appalled by the report written by their department off the back of their research and have since resigned from the DIS. In an interview with the Amnesty International Denmark members magazine, the pair, who worked for DIS for more than 20 years, claim their superiors limited their questioning in Eritrea and tried to conclude the mission before they had conducted the necessary interviews. When they returned to Denmark, Olsen and Weise Olesen say there was a “showdown” and they both eventually resigned from the immigration service. They claim they have been branded “whistle-blowers and disloyal employees”. Olsen and Weise Olesen told Amnesty International that their superiors put pressure on them to deliver a specific result, saying their head of department, Jakob Dam Glynstrup, openly speculated to them several times on what kind of asylum result the government was hoping for.

“Jakob said that the last thing the government wanted in a future election campaign was a growing number of people seeking asylum and for refugees to become an [election] issue,” the men said in a written statement to the Danish ombudsman, which is investigating the issue. “I saw it as pressure to deliver a particular outcome,” Olsen said. “It was a dream scenario for bosses to present brand new information on the situation in Eritrea.”

Dr Lisa Doyle, head of advocacy at the Refugee Council, condemned the Home Office for including the Danish report as a source in its country guidance. “For it to be discredited by some of the researchers shows even more powerfully how the information cannot be relied on for making life and death decisions. If any part of that evidence is shown to be in doubt, it should be removed from the guidance immediately.”

Fleeing Eritrea

Of those migrants who crossed the Mediterranean this year, Eritreans formed the third-largest national group, behind Syrians and Afghanis. The UNHCR says 5,000 leave every month. As many as 3% of the 6 million-strong population have migrated.

Eritrea is not at war, but its first and only president, Isaias Afwerki, plays up the possibility of a return to conflict with neighbouring Ethiopia. This threat is used to justify the absence of a constitution, the destruction of the judicial system. Until the early 2000s, Eritrea had the semblance of a judicial system but for the past decade, multiple reports suggest police are simply locking people up without trial. And there is the implementation of indefinite national service that allows the government to treat each civilian as a modern-day serf for their whole life. It is a totalitarian state where most citizens fear arrest at any moment and dare not speak to their neighbours, gather in groups or linger long outside their homes. Gathering in groups of more than two is effectively banned: an invitation for the police to stop and hassle you. Citizens cannot travel freely without written permission. The government has a wide web of informants, a network so extensive that some Eritreans claim they are wary even of speaking to their friends and family about politics. “The distrust between people is very high,” one told the UN’s Eritrea commission. “You do not even trust your own brother; he could be even part of the national security.” Phones are tapped, but most people aren’t allowed them anyway. Interviewees claimed people on active military service are barred from owning a mobile. Anyone else who wants one has to apply at a government office in the capital of their province. There is no private media. The only public meetings allowed are those of Afwerki’s political party.

There exists an indefinite national service and through this system, the government controls almost every aspect of a civilian’s life – male or female – from the age of 16 or 17. Where you live, your daily routine, and how often you see your family – all this is decided by the government, thanks to the national service system. The government takes away almost all prospect of personal choice. Conscripts are posted where the government orders them, and remain there for months and often years without being allowed home.

“We are just like slaves for them,” said Kibrom, 24, who spent the entirety of his adult life as a conscript until his escape a few months ago. “That’s why we’re leaving. It’s become one big prison for us.” Conscripts are technically paid. Different exiles report different monthly wages, but each fell between 500 and 750 nakfas (the local currency) – a negligible pay that equates to between £20 and £30. The amount is so low that it is virtually meaningless, former conscripts say. “It is only enough for three days – so for the other 27 days I would go hungry,” said Kibrom. “To buy a chicken, it’s 600 nakfa. And that tells you everything. If I want to have a family, to marry, to have children – that 600 isn’t going to be enough.”

To help people access food, the government gives out coupons, but even then this is essentially a system of control. If you’re not in good grace with the regime, you don’t get any coupons and if you don’t get any coupons, you don’t get anything to eat.

According to Andebrhan Welde Giorgis, the former head of the Eritrean central bank, ex-ambassador to the EU, and one-time president of Eritrea’s only university, when Eritrea won its freedom from Ethiopia in the early 1990s, after a decades-long liberation struggle led by, among others, President Afwerki, the period of service was meant to last for just 18 months. The aim was both to safeguard the fragile new nation’s security, and provide a temporary workforce to rebuild its war-shattered infrastructure and economy.

“It had a military aspect, a social aspect, an economic aspect, and also a cultural aspect,” said Welde Giorgis, a one-time ally of Afwerki who became an exile in 2006, and later wrote a history of his country. “But all of that was abused when it became indefinite. When it was proclaimed in 1994, people were in their late teens – and now they’re in their early 40s. How can they sustain families? The objective consequence is the destruction of the nuclear family. If you don’t have a nuclear family, you don’t have a community, and you don’t have a society. It’s modern-day servitude.” Welde Giorgis explained: “You’re not brought before a court of law. You’re not allowed to defend yourself. Your family has no rights of visitation, they don’t know where you are, they don’t know about the physical and mental condition you are in. Once you have disappeared you have one man acting as the accuser, the jailer, the judge and the executioner.”

Conscripts describe military service as a mixture of humiliation and tedium. “It’s not just about serving, it’s about being tortured,” said Sofia, who spent four years as a conscript before fleeing to Egypt. xiles often describe a torture position known as “the eight”, whereby a conscript lies on their front, has their hands and ankles tied together behind them, and is then hoisted into the air. One victim recalled hanging like this for days on end, as punishment for scuffling with a fellow conscript. When he was finally freed, it took weeks for him to regain control of his legs.

“Another [torture method] is when they spread tea powder mixed with sugar and some water – and then spread it on you, so that it attracts flies,” Sofia recalled.

The serving part of military service often involves providing cheap labour for the government. “Sometimes they say: ‘Go to the mountains to quarry the stone,’ sometimes they say ‘Go to the forest to cut wood,’ and sometimes: ‘Go and clean the streets,’” said Omar, 27. “Everything that the government might need doing, they use the conscripts as slaves.”

Unless they escape Eritrea, the unlucky majority of conscripts will stay in this limbo for their entire life. But a minority will play out their national service in a partly civilian context. After their first year, which is spent in a mixture of army training and classroom education, Eritreans take an exam. Those who do well are trained to fill a range of roles within the civil service – as teachers, nurses, or even newscasters within Eritrea’s amateurish state television network, Eri-TV. The pay is as low as it is in the army. Some conscripts within the civil workforce say they also had to fulfil military duties by night. Mehari, 22, who arrived in Italy this summer, was assigned to be a primary school teacher. “But when I say teacher, I mean that in the day I’d work as a teacher, but at night I would wait for orders from the army.” Most of the experienced teachers had already fled the country, so the staff were largely young conscripts, whom the students had little respect for. “They know that at the end of the day they will have to go to military service. So no one wants to learn. And the teachers know that. So the teachers don’t want to teach.”

Welde Giorgis left Eritrea in 2006 because he no longer believed internal reform was possible. The average Eritrean is now “a helpless victim”, he says. “And that’s why you see these large numbers of Eritreans leaving the country at great risk to their lives. Many die from dehydration in the Sahara. Many have drowned in the Mediterranean. Many have become victim to organ harvesters in the Sinai. But nobody cares. Eritrea has become an earthly hell, an earthly inferno for its people – and that’s why they are taking such huge risks to their personal lives to escape the situation. It’s become unliveable.”

 From here 

Fleeing the Nightmares

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE

Migration and xenophobia against those seeking a better life has dominated the news about Africa in recent months.

In a speech commemorating Africa Day on 25 May, African Union (AU) Commission Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma expressed her concern about the migrants who have died in the Mediterranean. 'We must address the very circumstances that lead our nationals to leave our shores...' she said.

AU Commissioner for Social Affairs, Mustapha Sidiki Kaloko, in a recent interview with the Institute for Security Studies' Peace and Security Council Report. Kaloko says the AU realises  'We have to make the member states of the AU stable and friendly to the young people who are trekking out to the Mediterranean,' says Kaloko. 'In the 1970s, I was growing up in Sierra Leone and if you asked me to migrate to Europe, I would have said no, because my country was doing well, I was very comfortable.'

Eritrea is a small country and probably would not  attract much attention if it weren’t for the fact that Eritreans account for about a quarter of the migrants trying to reach Europe and are the second-largest group by nation, after Syrians. More than 300,000 people have fled the country since 2000 and 4,000 leave each month—incredible numbers for a country of just 6 million people, despite the government’s shoot-to-kill policy at border crossings.

The U.N. Human Rights Council released a report on abuses by the Eritrean government. The East African dictatorship’s practices, include the training of children to act as spies for the regime, an extortive “coupon system” that maintains government control over nearly every aspect of daily life, and the widespread use of gruesome torture methods against prisoners. “The commission finds that the use of torture is so widespread that it can only conclude it is a policy of the Government to encourage its use for the punishment of individuals perceived as opponents to its rule,” the report states. Isaias Afwerki’s government maintains a conscription system for government service that forces citizens as young as 15 into servitude that can be extended indefinitely. Taken together the policies are designed, according to the commission, to keep the population in a state of permanent anxiety. "It is not law that rules Eritreans—but fear,” the report concludes.

Eritrean migrants are willing to face from their own governments and from transit through war-torn neighboring countries, predatory human traffickers, and the perilous voyage across the Mediterranean. The UN report states that “to ascribe their decision to leave solely to economic reasons is to ignore the dire situation of human rights in Eritrea and the very real suffering of its people. Eritreans are fleeing severe human rights violations in their country and are in need of international protection.”

With the number of those making the perilous crossing regularly breaking records, it’s worth remembering what exactly is driving the exodus. 

Adapted from here 

Eritrea - Land of Exodus

In 2012, the entire Eritrean national football team asked for asylum in Uganda after taking part in a regional tournament. According to the UN refugee agency UNHCR, over 300,000 Eritreans fled the nation of 6.5 million inhabitants last year.

Two of the 10 most censored countries in the world are African, says the Committee to Protect Journalists. Eritrea is the worst in the world, behind even North Korea and Saudi Arabia. Ethiopia is the fourth most censored country.

"Since 1993 when Eritrea gained independence, it has had only one president, only one party. And no opposition is allowed," says Clara Braungart, Eritrea researcher at Amnesty International. President Isaias Afewerki has been in power for 22 years. Afewerki is in effect the union head of state, head of government, commander in chief of the armed forces, parliament speaker and leader of the only authorized party, the PFDJ. All forms of civil society are prohibited. Media is not independent as there is only one state-run TV and radio outlet. "Against this background, no freedom is possible," says Braungart. "We have received many reports of people being tortured. For example, they are tied up, hung by their feet or are exposed to excessive heat," says Clara Braungart of Amnesty International. For these reasons, the people would not even dare to speak out against the government.

Mekonnen Mesghena, an Eritrean and expert on migration at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, agrees. He says a climate of fear reigns and people lack any political or economic perspective. "Many people feel trapped in a permanent conflict situation."

Human rights violations have also been condemned by the international community. In 2012, the United Nations named Sheila Keetharuth as Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Eritrea. Since then she has sought to travel to Eritrea with no success. Only state media is allowed to disseminate news; the last accredited international correspondent was expelled in 2007. Even those working for the heavily censored state press live in constant fear of arrest for any report perceived as critical to the ruling party, or on suspicion that they leaked information outside the country. The last privately owned media outlets were suspended and their journalists jailed in 2001. Many remain behind bars; Eritrea has the most jailed journalists in Africa. None of those arrested are taken to court, and the fear of arrest has forced dozens of journalists into exile. Those in exile try to provide access to independent online news websites and radio broadcasts, but the opportunity to do so is limited because of signal jamming and tight online control by the sole state-run telecommunications company, EriTel. All mobile communications must go through EriTel, and all Internet service providers must use the government-controlled gateway. Access to the Internet is extremely limited and available only through slow dial-up connections. Less than 1 percent of the population goes online, according to U.N. International Telecommunication Union figures.

In 1998, a simmering border dispute broke out with neighboring adversary Ethiopia. Since then, the government justifies any repression with the argument of a "threat to national security," Mesghena says. Each spark of protest is punished with arbitrary detention and torture.

Another reason why many young Eritreans flee the country is military conscription, says Braungart. All men and women from the age of 18 must serve in the armed service for 16 months. Even students are asked to complete their final year in a military camp. "People often have to serve the military for many years with very little pay," Braungart says. If they refuse, they face imprisonment and arbitrary military service could be extended indefinitely.

The Eritrean Dictatorship

As of July last year, more than 320,000 Eritreans had fled the country, according to the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). After Syrians, Eritreans are the second most common nationality to arrive on Italian shores. Eritrea’s president, Isaias Afewerki, who has been in power since de facto independence from Ethiopia in 1991, has for decades used the threat of an outbreak of war with Ethiopia as a means of keeping his people under tight authoritarian rule.

The Eritrean government has been linked with “ruthless repression” and systemic human rights violations, including carrying out widespread detention and forcing citizens into indefinite military service, according to the UN’s first inquiry into human rights in the secretive country. Rights abuses perpetuated by Eritrea’s government, coupled with dismal economic prospects, are driving hundreds of Eritreans out of the country every day, according to an interim report by the UN’s commission of inquiry on human rights in Eritrea.

“Most Eritreans have no hope for their future,” said Mike Smith, chairman of the commission, which was formed in June last year. “National service, whether in a military unit or in a civil assignment, is the only thing that from the age of 17 they can expect to spend their life doing – paid between less than $1 and a maximum of $2 a day.”

Describing Eritrea’s culture of “pervasive state control”, Smith said a network of spies had been created that permeated the basic fabric of everyday life. “A man employed by national security might not know that his daughter is similarly employed,” he said, noting that extra-judicial executions, enforced disappearances and incommunicado detentions were commonplace. “Is it surprising that, faced with such challenges, Eritreans leave their country in their hundreds every day?”

Eritrea has long been regarded as one of the world’s most secretive states, even drawing comparisons with North Korea. It was ranked at the bottom of the 180 countries assessed in Reporters Without Borders’ (RWB) 2015 press freedom index. “Eritrea systematically violates freedom of expression and information. It is Africa’s biggest prison for journalists, with at least 16 currently detained – some of them held incommunicado for years,” said RWB.

Leslie Lefkow, HRW’s Africa director, said: “The [Eritrean] government’s refusal to cooperate with human rights investigators is symbolic of its broader rejection of essential human rights reforms. Until that stance changes it is impossible to have meaningful impact on the domestic crisis and the massive exodus of Eritreans provoked by the dire human rights situation.”

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/mar/19/eritrea-ruthless-repression-human-rights-violations-un-commission

Eritrea's Mining Industry

The small east African country of Eritrea has started a mining industry and is doing it right. To start with Eritrea is receiving 40% of the profits generated by its first gold/copper mine.

Compare this to Tanzania where Anglo-American mining company operates one of the worlds largest gold mines and pays a whopping 4% royalty to the government.

Thanks to Wikileaks we know that the USA forced sanctions against Eritrea through the UN Security Council in 2009, not to punish Eritrea for allegedly supporting “terrorism” (i.e. Al Shabab in Somalia) but in an attempt to sabotage the start of Eritrea’s mining industry.

40% vs. 4%? Small wonder that Eritrea’s deal threatens western interests for if the rest of Africa takes note and begins to follow suit in the deals cut allowing exploitation of the continents resources Pax Americana and its vassals are facing a serious problem.

From Thomas C. Mountain who has been living and writing from Eritrea since 2006.

Read it all here

Eritrea's Tyranny

Eritrea has jailed at least 10,000 political prisoners, many in "unimaginably atrocious conditions", rights group Amnesty International said in a report. The exact figure is impossible to know.

Eritrea is one of the most repressive, secretive and inaccessible countries in the world. Anyone who challenges President Issaias Afeworki is jailed without trial.


Political opposition is banned, independent media quashed and religious minorities targeted. Reporters Without Borders lists Eritrea below North Korea as the worst country in the world for press freedom

"The government has systematically used arbitrary arrest and detention without charge to crush all opposition, to silence all dissent, and to punish anyone who refuses to comply with the repressive restrictions it places on people's lives," said Claire Beston, Amnesty's Eritrea researcher.

Underground dungeons and shipping containers are used to house the prisoners.

Life in the narrow streets of Asmara

Life in the Narrow streets of Asmara

When I travel to Eritrea, I always go to the narrow streets of Aba-Shawl, name of place in Asmara) with its muddy streets The place hasn’t improve since the days of Haile Salassie, the Derg and after independence with the current government of Eritrea today. Despite the deprivation and the squalid living standard the sense of community inter-action among its habitants is great.

In the old days, when nearly everybody knew everyone else, news travelled at the speed of light exposing the scandals of proud and pious families. While the Italians and some half-castes were born in wide street quarters, Abyssinian children saw the light of the day in the dark alleys of Abashawl (name of place in Asmara), Geza-Berhanu(name of a place in Asmara), Haddish-Addi(name of place in Asmara) etc, where by night mutant rats gave chase to unrepentant cats and by day dogs fought with beggars over leftovers.

After a quarter of a century living abroad, I visited Abashawl where the streets are so narrow and the houses so close to each other that the residents feel they are inside some sort of a boarding school or a camp for the internally displaced. As a young boy, I use to like to walk along narrow streets because they are people friendly and give you sense of security. They keep you sheltered from the establishment and all its bureaucratic machinery.

Again as you walk along the narrow streets of Haddish Addi you feel like the walls are whispering to you on every side. For every step you make you pass an open door from which people peer at you for identification. If you have a humble appearance you are one of them. If you look like a wide-street dweller, they get suspicious.

Poor quarters worldwide are inhabited by people who have learned how to laugh in the face of pain and grief, a skill that their fellow citizens on the other side of the town have failed to master. That’s why wherever I travel whether it’s in Eritrea or abroad, I prefer narrow streets and back alleys to main streets. And I feel more at ease with the humble than with the rich.

At the narrow streets, in some city quarters of Asmara, you meet all types of people. They range from people who smile at and greet you, to children who call you mummy and daddy, to dogs, cats and chickens that acknowledge you presence by getting up or moving away proudly to let you pass.

Some old and dilapidated houses in Haddish-Adi and Abashawl still remain a mystery to architects and an enigma to engineers. Pre curiously slanted, they seem to beat the Leaning Tower of Pisa in a tilting contest. Most of the narrow streets of Asmara are in Haddish Addi. Not only are the alleys constricted but some of the houses are so small that the doors are always left open for light, oxygen and for legroom. Life in such quarters assumes a different dimension since the Italians administered Asmara.

Suwa houses (traditional ale houses), are not uncommon in the narrow streets of Asmara with infrequent small shops here and there, and if you walk long enough you spot a beauty parlour and start to wonder. Deep inside almost all narrow street girls dream of becoming wide street girls.

Although in many quarters prostitution on the wane, one encounters now and then vintage harlots whose faces have been ravaged by the winds and gales of time. Poverty is painful. You can see it in the faces of some girls who at a tender age are forced to sell their feminine virtues to keep their bodies and souls together. No one is going to blame the women when they sell their bodies for cash, because they have no other property to sell.

While I was on holiday in Asmara, one day I walked passed a pitched tent in the narrow streets of Abashawl; I heard weeping and wailing, while I was taking pictures there. “Who is the deceased person?” I asked. “An old suwa house owner”, answered a young boy who seemed the least concerned about the event.

When someone dies among the people of the narrow streets, it’s as if a part of the neighbourhood went crumbling down in ruins. With the lifeless body of the departed carried along the narrow alleys to its resting place, a page or a chapter or even a book of the history of the neighbourhood is buried with it.

Health in Eritrea

Health and living conditions in Eritrea

The treatments of diseases are by both native and modern medicine. The native medicine involves herbs in drink, powder, cream or other forms. They can be applied externally or taken orally. Most common diseases are infectious and or preventable, such as dysentery malaria and typhoid. Prevention is not always easy. Neither is it successful because of a lack of information and education about the diseases and also a lack of proper hygiene.

In case of pregnancy, mothers often meet complications at birth, such as excessive bleeding or still birth. Some people have real fear of surgical operations, fearing they will die in the process. The treatment service is not easily accessible to the poor, who always face the problem of payment of the fee that are now changed in most health institutes. Some get medical help when it’s already too late. Often, ailments are caused by poor diet and feeding habits.

Numerous families use pit latrines in overcrowded town slums and villages. There are always associated sanitation problems, as people rarely cooperate to maintain such facilities.

Water to drink and for household use is always brought from streams and wells, which also service domestic animals. Such water is always drunk without having been boiled, again because of education and fuel problems such as firewood, the main source of heating but which is becoming scarce. Consequently, there are many opportunities for water born diseases.

Rarely do people undergo any medical examinations except when compelled to do so, when they are going abroad. But then why does this all happen? It is because most people do not have a proper understanding and education about the world we live in, which presently is capitalism, a system based on competition, class struggle and conflict. Some women can have as many as 12 children simply because they are ignorant of family planning services or because of these services and even because of superstitious and religious beliefs.

This results in overcrowded families Homes (houses) are built of wood, mud and grass thatching or some similar plant thatching. Most of these grass thatched houses do not have ventilators. This accelerates health problems. Because of poverty on the side of the patients, medical workers are more often than not compelled to handle only the symptoms of the diseases not the disease itself for this may be all the patients may be able to afford. It’s also common to find people living with domestic animals such as sheep, goats and hens, all under the same roof. The level of development in medical technology is adequate enough to provide decent healthcare to everybody living on Earth. But this does not happen, since access to healthcare is based on the ability to pay. In Eritrean rural or urban life is in stark colours.

Eritrea - A Personal Experience

Michael Ghebre was on holiday in Eritrea . Below is an account of what he saw in this relatively newly ‘independent’ country.

Everybody is afraid to talk politics in the coffee bar. The man sitting down opposite our table had heard that I was interested in talking about freedom and politics in post-independence Eritrea. Eritrea was liberated from Ethiopia some 15 years ago in 1991. Some of the people whom I spoke to were friendly but frightened in case someone from the state security heard them. Others were very suspicious of me. I do not know why they felt that way. I felt like a stranger in my native country.

Even the person I was talking to was also very scared because Eritrea is a police state and it is not uncommon to be arrested and imprisoned without any trial. There is no rule of law in Eritrea and if you are imprisoned you will be there most likely until you rot. It is even worse than the Dergue in Ethiopia. The people I approached to talk to did not like my questions. The social interaction between the government and the people is getting worse; the people are living under siege.

Outside the coffee bar, as I was going back to my place, I saw many kids walking on the street without any adult accompanying them. Nearly half of Eritrean population are children. Millions are orphans. They are economically very active and most of them work more hours than a full-time adult worker. They look after their little brothers and sisters; sometimes even their mothers. The majority of the children who live in the towns and cities are fatherless - their fathers killed in conflict. The government does not give out any money to these orphans. The kids are dependent on the goods they sell. But the police are not very kind to them. The police can often be found rounding up homeless kids in the capital. Any young adults who appear to be above 16 years old are also rounded up for conscription into the national service scheme (Sawa), which is compulsory for every Eritrean one they reach the age of eighteen.

Most children help themselves and their mothers by selling lottery tickets, tissues, chewing gum, and cigarettes and also by working as shoe-shine boys. The situation is desperate as there’s no help from the government or any other charity organisations. Some young girls are forced to sell their bodies for cash.

The Eritrean government doesn't accept any kind of charity from the donor countries. They adopted the system of self-reliance even when they were guerrillas during the war for freedom from Ethiopia. Today, no NGO is welcome into Eritrea; the government is very suspicious of any foreign aid. At the moment Eritrea is suffering from economic and political uncertainty. Many Eritreans are now living behind bars. The arbitrary detention by the government is common in every part of Eritrea. No one between 18 and 40 years is allowed to move from one place to another without an ID card.

Eritrea is the only country in the world that doesn't have any independent newspapers and no freedom of expression. For the last three years the Asmara University has been closed bringing higher education to a standstill. More than 30,000 students have been migrated to neighbouring countries, the majority of them to Ethiopia.

Thousands of people are arrested on suspicion of evading military conscription and held at Adi Abeto army prison. Conditions in this military holding centre are harsh, with severe overcrowding, little food and appalling sanitary conditions. Many detainees have reportedly been forced to sleep outside in very cold weather, with no blankets or shoes. Prisoners have no access either to their families or to lawyers; my cousin Mengisteab is one of them. Such unfortunates are thought to be at the risk of torture and ill treatment. Many prisoners have reportedly been shot dead. Eritrean security forces in the capital, Asmara, indiscriminately arrest thousands of youths and others suspected of evading military conscription. The arrests take place in the streets, shops and offices, at roadblocks and in houses.

From the days of the war with Ethiopia (1998-2000), national service has become full military service and has been extended indefinitely. Those who completed national service and pre-independence fighters are subject to recall as reservists or on special duties.
There is no exemption for conscientious objectors. Many young people have tried to evade military service and thousands have fled the country or deserted after being conscripted. The usual punishment for evading or escaping from military service is torture by beatings, being tied in painful contorted positions for days and indefinite detention without trial or charge. The pathetic irony it that for the millions of underprivileged in Eritrea, it is not enough that they live lives of abject misery – the government insists that they must defend with their lives their right to live in such wretchedness.

MICHAEL GHEBRE