Human rights in Eritrea
The human rights situation in Eritrea has been described as “worrying” by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs , among others . The country is very isolated, the level of political and civil liberties was controversial in 2014, but seems very limited - numerous cases of torture and arbitrary arrests have been reported by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International .
Civil rights, political freedoms
The country is ruled by the Popular Front for Democracy and Justice under President Isayas Afawerki , who has headed the interim government of Eritrea since February 1994 and is described by Reporters Without Borders as a ruthless dictator . The regime is completely dominated by the unity party, which exercises totalitarian control .
No elections were held, and Isayas Afewerki declared in 2008 that there was no place for her in politics for the next few decades as she " vertically polarized society ". He also stated that he would stay in power as long as necessary. Regional elections were organized in 2004, but the Popular Front prevented them.
The opposition was silenced and, according to non-governmental organizations, no form of dissidentism was tolerated . On September 18, 2001, a wave of repression started. Eleven members of the Unity Party were arrested for questioning Afewerki's policies. Several political opponents were arrested in the same year, many of whom - including General Ogbe Abraha - died in fortress detention.
According to Amnesty International, there are thousands of political prisoners who have no contact with families and lawyers and who are in jail without trial.
Internment camps and military prisons
According to the report of the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) of the European Union from May 2015, people in Eritrea are arrested not only for general criminal reasons but also for political and religious reasons as well as military offenses including desertion and conscientious objection or attempted illegal departure. According to estimates by the human rights organization Amnesty International from 2013, between 5,000 and 10,000 political prisoners are detained in Eritrea without the rule of law, sometimes under precarious conditions. According to the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor of the United States Department of State , between 1,200 and 3,000 people are being held for their beliefs. Problems are reported from 37 partly secret, partly official military detention camps.
The conditions of detention in the at least 37 partly secret, partly official internment camps and military prisons are precarious. Torture, sexual abuse and violence occur. Deaths are reported.
Conditions of detention
- Some prisons are underground or in shipping containers. In these it can get extremely hot due to the climate in Eritrea;
- The cells are often so overcrowded that the inmates can only take turns to lie down or not at all;
- The hygienic conditions are bad. In some prisons, instead of a toilet, there is only a hole in the floor or a bucket. Walking in the yard is often not allowed. There is hardly any medical care;
- The food rations are small and not very nutritious, access to drinking water is limited;
- Some of the inmates are mistreated or tortured and used for forced labor;
- Relatives often have no access to the prisoners;
- Women are usually housed separately from men. However, there have been reports of sexual abuse and rape e.g. B. by guards;
- These difficult circumstances have reportedly led to recurring deaths in detention;
- Numerous prisoners (especially those arrested for political, religious or military reasons, including deserters and conscientious objectors) are in incommunicado detention: There are no criminal proceedings, the detention is not limited and relatives are not informed. Such inmates are often ill-treated or tortured. Incommunicado detention occurs, for example, in the Aderser, Tesseney and Track B prisons in Asmara.
torture
Torture is used for a variety of purposes in Eritrean prisons. This includes forcing confessions, gaining information and as a means of punishment. According to reports, detainees are tortured for criticizing the government, poor performance in national service, insubordination or for fleeing other detainees. Torture is also used against members of religious minorities (especially the Pentecostal church, Jehovah's Witnesses) when they practice their belief or to force them to give up the belief. Torture methods include shackling hands and / or feet with ropes and handcuffs (helicopter, Ferro, Otto, Jesus Christ) as well as remaining in a truck tire (Gomma) for days or even weeks. Waterboarding is also used, as is forced barefoot walking over sharp objects or very hot desert floors. In addition, there are usually blows. In September 2014, Eritrea joined the Convention against Torture.
Media and information freedom
In 2001, 13 journalists were arrested for supporting renegade ministers. Of these, Fessayahe Yohannes died on January 11, 2007 in Eiraeiro prison, in the north-east of the country. In September of the same year the private press was banned. Since then, the regime has controlled the entire media landscape in the country. Criticizing the government is almost impossible as it is perceived as damaging national security and subject to severe punishment.
Overall, the media are subject to executive power . Significant restrictions have been placed on those who work on public television Eri-TV , Radio Dimtsi Hafash (Voice of the Masses) and the pro -government daily Hadas Eritrea . Several journalists then left the country and fled across the border, mostly on foot. Foreign correspondents also had to leave the country or were expelled, so that even in the capital, Asmara, there are no longer any independent observers.
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Eritrea
In October 2012 Sheila Keetharuth was appointed Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation for Eritrea by the United Nations . Despite multiple inquiries, she and other United Nation agencies (as of February 2014) were refused access to the country.
In September 2014, it presented its latest report, in which it stated that extensive human rights violations were still driving hundreds of Eritrean citizens to flee. 32,000 of them arrived in Europe after fleeing across the Mediterranean by September 2014.
International comparison
International classifications that judge political freedom, freedom of the press or the degree of political rights and freedom of expression usually place Eritrea in the last place:
According to Freedom House's 2008 report , Eritrea is not considered free . The political rights score is 6 out of 7 (1 being the best and 7 being the worst). The state was rated 7 for civil liberties. This corresponds to the high number of Eritrean boat refugees (on the "central route" across the Mediterranean), where Eritrea, with 33,559 boat refugees and a total of 170,757 in 2014, took second place behind Syria (around 39,000) in the Frontex statistics.
- 2019 democracy index
| Worldwide classification | Overall grade | Electoral process and pluralism | Functioning of the government | Political participation | Political culture | Civil liberties |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 152 of 167 | 2.37 / 10 | 0/10 | 2.14 / 10 | 1.67 / 10 | 6.88 / 10 | 1.18 / 10 |
The Economist's 2019 report on the Democracy Index ranked Eritrea 152nd out of 167 countries surveyed.
Denmark controversy 2014
The Government of Denmark's Immigration Service carried out a survey of Eritrea in 2014 to look into issues relating to the granting of asylum and the return of asylum seekers in Denmark from Eritrea to their home country, and published the result in November 2014. Most of the asylum seekers reported not to be able to return because they had left the country illegally and therefore feared reprisals if they returned. Because of the increase in the number of applicants from the country and the fact that all reports, including those from human rights organizations, were based mainly on hearsay rather than on-site investigations, the Danes decided to do their own research. Your research group asked numerous local actors for their assessments. The report concluded that there was widespread freedom of movement within the country, that international channels such as the BBC and CNN could be freely received, and that many residents were using cell phones. According to the assessment of the Western embassies surveyed in the country, they saw the sometimes long compulsory service for the state and the low income opportunities as the main reasons for young people to leave the country. Although people are arrested and detained for political reasons, there is no general climate of fear. Another message said that political repression is not the reason people are fleeing, but that economic considerations are paramount. Returnees who had previously left Eritrea had to pay an additional income tax of 2% and sign a letter of apology in an Eritrean embassy abroad before they were allowed to return. Whether and, if so, what kind of punishment would be imposed on returnees was controversial. Whether refugees who had previously deserted from compulsory state service would be punished on their return was also controversial between the embassies in the country and interviewed human rights activists in Western nations. The latter assumed severe penalties.
The case of the flight operator Fly Olympic from Sweden was exposed, in which 400 Eritreans who had previously received asylum in Sweden and had now received Swedish passports were stranded in Eritrea when the airline went bankrupt. The people had traveled to Eritrea even though they had previously reported in Sweden that they had fled from the compulsory state service in Eritrea. Still, they were all able to leave the country after replacement tickets were obtained. In contrast, Professor Gaim Kibreab from London, who was interviewed as an expert, had stated that the regime did not recognize new citizenships for native Eritreans.
Human Rights Watch sharply criticized the Danish report, insisting that the Danes' methodology was useless and that, unlike the Danish study, interviewing asylum seekers was one of the main sources of information about Eritrea. The human rights activists called on European states to continue to grant asylum to citizens from Eritrea.
The UK- based organization “Human Rights Concern - Eritrea”, unlike Human Rights Watch, did not complain about the methodology of not interviewing asylum seekers, but mainly criticized the lack of freedom in the country being adequately recognized in the report. It is not enough to be able to live peacefully in Eritrea as long as one cannot openly oppose the government. The human rights activists also concluded that the Danes' observations were too subjective. From the free availability of Western media for some residents of the country, one cannot conclude that every citizen has these opportunities.
In the refugee crisis from 2015
In June 2016, Switzerland changed its procedure for dealing with refugees from Eritrea. If the individual assessment in Switzerland shows that a person only became a refugee when they left Eritrea, i.e. did not flee from compulsory state service, they will be expelled from Switzerland. According to a press report, the background should be that the sentence in Eritrea for illegally leaving the country is significantly less than the five years in prison that had previously been assumed. A landmark ruling by the Federal Administrative Court in February 2017 confirmed this practice.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Page "politique intérieure Érythrée" du site France diplomacy
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Fiche pays: Erythrée sur le site de Reporters sans Frontières. ( Memento of November 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: rsf.org
- ↑ a b c d Rapport de Human Rights Watch sur l'Érythrée (PDF; 77 kB)
- ↑ a b Report de Freedom House sur l'Érythrée
- ↑ a b c Report 2008 d'Amnesty International sur l'Érythrée
- ↑ Eritrea: 20 years of systematic human rights violations. In: Amnesty.de
- ↑ a b c d European Asylum Support Office (EASO): Country Focus Eritrea - State Secretariat for Migration. Retrieved February 7, 2017 .
- ^ Amnesty International - Map of Secret Prison Network in Eritrea Pinpoints "Infrastructure of Repression". Retrieved February 7, 2017 .
- ↑ Le prigioni del dittatore amico dell'Italia. Retrieved February 7, 2017 .
- ↑ European Asylum Support Office (EASO): Country Focus Eritrea - State Secretariat for Migration. Retrieved February 7, 2017 .
- ↑ No Progress on Key Human Rights Concerns. In: amnesty.org , February 2014
- ↑ Dire human rights situation in Eritrea persists, UN Special Rapporteur warns. In: ohchr.org , September 2014
- ↑ Carte de Freedom House sur la liberté dans le monde en 2008. In: freedomhouse.org
- ↑ Anna Reimann: Refugees in the Mediterranean: Who are the refugees? Where are you from? In: Spiegel online. April 21, 2015, accessed July 19, 2015 .
- ↑ Democracy-Index 2019 Overview chart with comparative values to previous years , on economist.com
- ^ National Service and the Possibility of Return: "Eritrea Drivers and Root Causes of Emigration". November 2014, accessed January 7, 2014 .
- ^ Danish Eritrea Immigration Report Deeply Flawed. In: hrw.org. December 17, 2014, accessed December 20, 2014 .
- ↑ Elsa Chyrum: Open Letter to the Danish Immigration Service. In: hrc-eritrea.org. Retrieved January 11, 2015 .
- ↑ Heidi Gmür :: The practice is being tightened up a little. In: NZZ.ch , June 23, 2016
- ↑ UN rapporteur criticizes asylum practice for Eritreans. In: NZZ.ch , February 18, 2017