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05.06.2013 Africa

Eritrea rights crackdown forcing thousands to flee: UN

By Nina Larson
A group of young Eritrean refugees is pictured on August 28, 2011, at Endabaguna Camp in northern Ethiopia.  By Jenny Vaughan AFPFileA group of young Eritrean refugees is pictured on August 28, 2011, at Endabaguna Camp in northern Ethiopia. By Jenny Vaughan (AFP/File)
05.06.2013 LISTEN

GENEVA (AFP) - Brutal government repression in Eritrea, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and torture, is leaving its citizens with no option but to flee, a UN expert said Wednesday.

"The human rights situation in Eritrea is dire," Sheila Keetharuth told reporters in Geneva, where the UN's top human rights body was debating the situation, noting that thousands have fled despite a shoot-to-kill policy for those trying to cross into neighbouring Ethiopia or Sudan.

Keetharuth, the UN's first special rapporteur on the rights situation in the autocratic Horn of Africa country, called on the international community to engage directly with Eritrean authorities and urged African nations especially to explore how they might be able to help improve the situation.

But her report was swiftly denounced as unfair by the Eritrean ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council.

In a report to the rights council, Keetharuth said rampant violations of citizens' rights in Eritrea were "triggering a constant stream of refugees".

Decades long conscription and "excessive militarisation" are leaving Eritreans with little option but to risk leaving, with more than 4,000 fleeing every month, she said.

The UN refugee agency has registered more than 300,000 Eritreans refugees in neighbouring countries, she added.

"Even children as young as seven or eight years of age are crossing borders unaccompanied, citing dysfunctional family circumstances caused by the absence of one parent or even both as a result of conscription, detention or exile or forced military training as the reasons for flight," her report read.

"Severe curtailment of freedom of movement, opinion, expression, assembly, association and the right to freedom of religion" were also among the reasons people chose to leave the country.

Keetharuth said she was also particularly concerned that prisoners in Eritrea were often held in secret locations with no information given to their families for long periods of time.

"Incommunicado detention for prolonged periods appears to be the norm and not the exception," she said, stressing that this constituted a serious violation of international law.

Swedish-Eritrean journalist and author Dawit Isaak is perhaps the most famous such case.

He was arrested in September 2001 along with nine other journalists and 11 opposition politicians in a draconian purge by Eritrea's authoritarian leader Issaias Afeworki.

Despite efforts by Sweden, the EU and others to ensure his release or at least receive assurances that he is still alive, the diabetic journalist has been held incommunicado since then, accused of spying but never charged or sentenced.

"He is somewhere, but I don't know where," his brother Esayas Isaak told AFP on the sidelines of the human rights council, pointing out that a number of other journalists arrested at the same time as Dawit were known to have died in custody in recent years.

He said he believed his brother was still alive, "and that is probably only because of the international attention."

He called on the international community to "exert more pressure on Eritrea," insisting: "This just can't go on year after year."

Eritrean ambassador Tesfamichael Gerahtu meanwhile blasted Keetharuth's report, which he described as having "less to do with the essence of the matter in the promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms, but more so a tool for political pressure for extraneous objectives."

Eritrea has also released a weighty report to counter the UN accusations, which it called "disinformation manufactured and circulated over the last decade by the sworn historical enemies of the Eritrean people".

Keetharuth was not been permitted to enter the country to investigate the situation, instead relying mainly on interviews with "survivors of human rights violations".

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