{UAH} Pojim/WBK: In Eritrea, the dream has turned into a nightmare - Comment
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In Eritrea, the dream has turned into a nightmare
By L. Muthoni Wanyeki
Posted Saturday, June 13 2015 at 13:09
How things change. In the early 1990s, Eritrea was the poster-child romanticised by the pan-African left.
For contributing to the end of the Derg in Ethiopia. For achieving independence in a trade-off with its erstwhile partner in revolution. For doing so on the back of voluntary contributions from Eritreans all around the world. For — unlike the rest of us — refusing to accept external development funding, instead relying on that same voluntary spirit to build itself up.
A decade and a half into the new millennium, the romance is over. We've just been presented with a report that confirms that Eritrea has become a totalitarian state.
In the words of the just-issued report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea, mandated by the United Nations Human Rights Council: "The initial promises of democracy and rule of law, incarnated in the never-implemented Constitution of 1997, were progressively suppressed and then extinguished by the government."
There have been no elections since Eritrea's Independence. Forget about third-terms: Isaias Afewerki has been in power for 24 years.
Like those born at the start of the Daniel arap Moi's regime here, there is a whole generation of Eritreans who have never known anything but the rule of Afewerki and the EPLF, now the People's Front for Democracy and Justice. Afewerki is worse than Moi; we at least had a parliament. Eritrea has a parliament in name only: it hasn't sat since 2002.
This is now: 2015, a population "rule[d] by fear." The CoI documents the mass surveillance of Eritreans, both at home and in the diaspora, not only by the security services, but also the party.
Arbitrary arrests and illegal detention are rampant. Incommunicado detention is common, there is neither habeas corpus nor due process. Placing detainees at risk of torture, enforced disappearance and extrajudicial execution, all of which were also documented by the CoI.
Then there is National Service. Which is indefinite, amounting to forced labour, in which Eritreans are abused, exploited and enslaved. So much for romanticised notions about the population's voluntary contributions to the country's self-sufficiency.
Freedom of movement is severely constrained, in the name of ensuring Eritreans submit to National Service. Eritreans need travel permits and exit visas to leave.
Yet, the CoI notes, an estimated 5,000 Eritreans are leaving every month, courtesy of smuggling and trafficking rings who move them across the Maghreb or the Sinai into the Mediterranean and then Europe.
Between six and 10 per cent of the population are in this sort of exile — a veritable exodus, though not to the promised land — and the CoI refutes recent arguments from some European governments that these are economic migrants: "Eritreans are fleeing severe human-rights violations in their country and are in need of international protection."
What happened between then and now? It is hard to fathom how any state, in this day and age, could treat its citizens like this.
L. Muthoni Wanyeki is Amnesty International's regional director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes
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