UN human rights experts say arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances have continued with impunity in Eritrea since 1991 and may amount to crimes against humanity.
UN independent human rights experts on 30 October expressed "grave concern" about continuing arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances in Eritrea, which they said had been occurring with impunity since 1991, in a statement issued in Geneva by the UN human rights office (OHCHR) and republished by Mirage News and The National Tribune.
"For over 35 years, Eritreans have faced arbitrary arrests and detentions, often without charges or trial. They have been denied access to family, legal counsel, and judicial protection," the experts said. "In hundreds of cases, the fate and whereabouts of persons deprived of their liberty remain unknown."
Emblematic cases
The experts highlighted Bitweded Abraha, a veteran of the independence movement and former senior government official. "He was first arrested on 6 October 1991 and reportedly continues to be arbitrarily detained 35 years later," they said. In 2018 the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found his detention arbitrary and called for his release and reparations in Opinion No. 80/2018.
They also cited the former senior officials known as the G-15 and journalists, including Seyoum Tsehaye and Dawit Isaak, held since September 2001 and whose fate is still unknown more than 25 years later. Hundreds of Muslim religious leaders were forcibly disappeared in 1991–1997, 2005–2006 and 2013, mainly in the Gash-Barka and Northern Red Sea regions, among them Judge Mohamed Maranet. Seven Christian leaders, whom the experts named, have been held incommunicado and without charge for more than two decades.
"The widespread or systematic use of prolonged arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, and religious persecution may constitute crimes against humanity," the experts said, as Devdiscourse also reported.
Demands on Asmara
The experts called on the government to "promptly and unconditionally" free everyone arbitrarily detained and to disclose the fate and whereabouts of those reported as disappeared. They also asked it to give families and lawyers access, and to carry out independent, impartial and effective investigations with remedies and reparations for victims. "Hundreds of families live with the agony of uncertainty," they said.
No response from the Eritrean government had been reported at the time of writing. The statement came as President Isaias Afwerki was in Moscow, where he held talks with Vladimir Putin after the Russia–Africa summit. The case of Bitweded Abraha has also been documented by the diaspora group Human Rights Concern – Eritrea.
Photo: Placards calling for the release of the journalist Dawit Isaak at a demonstration in Stockholm marking 5,000 days of his detention, 2015. Frankie Fouganthin, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.