Christians to show solidarity with Eritrea's prisoners of conscience

Eritrea’s 18 year anniversary of independence will be marked by Christians this weekend with events in solidarity with thousands of prisoners of conscience, including 3,000 Christians, detained under the country's oppressive regime.

Sunday 24 May will mark 18 years since Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia, following a 30 year armed struggle. After a promising start, CSW says the government of Eritrea has gradually become one of the most repressive regimes in Africa.

It reports that in Eritrea today thousands of prisoners of conscience and belief are detained arbitrarily and indefinitely in prisons, open air facilities, police cells, metal containers and other makeshift prisons "where conditions are life threatening and torture is rife".

Meetings of more than seven require official permission, and military service is often indefinite, with conscripts being used as forced labour in government development projects. Seventy five per cent of the Eritrean population is malnourished and the country is reportedly on the verge of famine, yet CSW says the government manipulates the distribution of food aid to strengthen its control of Eritrean society.

May also marks the beginning of a costly post-independence border war with Ethiopia that lasted from 1998 to 2000 and claimed around 70,000 lives. After the war, and citing continuing hostilities of the still unresolved border dispute, the government indefinitely postponed elections, suspended the constitution and, in the interests of “national security”, launched a crackdown on freedom of expression that eventually led to the indefinite incommunicado detention of key pro-reform government officials and all independent journalists in September 2001.

This weekend also sees the seventh anniversary of a crackdown on Eritrea’s churches. On 22 May 2002, the government effectively outlawed all religious practices except Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Sunni Islam. Around 3,000 Christians are currently imprisoned without charge or trial pending denial of their faith, and several are known to have died subsequent to severe mistreatment and torture.

Even authorised religious groups face mounting repression, says CSW. In 2006 ordained Orthodox Patriarch Abune Antonios was illegally deposed, placed under house arrest, and eventually replaced by an unrecognised bishop. In 2008, property belonging to the Catholic Church was seized. Also in 2008, around 40 Muslim clerics were indefinitely detained.

On Saturday, CSW, the Evangelical Alliance and Release Eritrea will show solidarity with victims of religious repression in Eritrea during a Day of Prayer to be held in Birmingham. The event will be followed next Thursday by a day of action, when CSW, RE, Church in Chains and others will protest outside the Eritrean Embassy in London to draw attention to the human rights crisis in Eritrea.

CSW National Director Stuart Windsor said: "With a looming famine, 75 per cent of the population malnourished, and continuing and egregious violations of human rights, the time for the situation in Eritrea to be brought to the forefront of the international agenda is long overdue.

"It is our privilege to stand in solidarity with the Eritrean people, and we will continue to do so until the situation in that country irrevocably improves, and all of Eritrea’s citizens can enjoy the rights and freedoms enshrined in the nation’s constitution.”