Individuals at Risk

Today is May 23.

All over the world, Eritreans are preparing to celebrate on May 24 the 15^th anniversary of formal independence, and the 17^th anniversary of national liberation. Amid the warmth of family and friends, people at home and in the diaspora will be feasting on injera, the spongy pancake bread with its delicious dabs of stew; drinking tangy sewa, a mead-like brew; dancing together in a circular cluster, shoulders shrugging to the unmistakable beat of Eritrean music; and singing contemporary and classic songs about freedom, justice, and courage in the face of oppression. There will also be the somber moment of silence in every gathering large and small, acknowledging the tens of thousands of lives that were lost, the "martyrs" who sacrificed themselves to the cause.

May 24^th, M'alti Natsinet in Tigrinya, is among the highest holidays in the contemporary Eritrean calendar. It marks the day that the victorious Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front marched into the city of Asmara, mounted on Soviet tanks captured from the Ethiopian army, ragged and tired from the three decade war. They were surrounded by a jubilant mass of men, women, and children who greeted them as genuine heroes. That moment in the 1991 marked a new era for the country and people of Eritrea. It was a time of profound excitement, when almost anything seemed possible. Eritrea appeared, in the words of a young high school student I met on my first trip there in 1995, "the shining new hope for Africa."

The memory is bittersweet. Those of us who have loved Eritrea cannot but hold onto the feeling so well expressed by that teenage boy. And on May 24^th, as words like liberation, freedom, and justice are on everyone's lips, I will not be the only one contemplating how many meanings those words can hold. For Eritrea today is not quite the place so many dreamed it would be, and especially not for the thousands who languish in police stations, military camps, and secret prisons around the country, detained for their peaceful political opinions, their religious beliefs, or their suspected dissident views. For those men and women, some of whom have been detained without charge for seven years or more, subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, M'alti Natsinet will mean something else. And for their loved ones who celebrate the holiday, their absence will be as great as if they, too, had been martyred in the long war. For many of the men and women who languish in Eritrea's prisons, from makeshift cells of shipping containers to the place known as Eira-Eiro, were themselves fighters for Eritrea's freedom. Others were barely children when liberation came, and they grew up hearing that their government stood for democracy and justice. They are people with names, experiences, memories, and lives: Aster Yohannes, a former student at Arizona State University who was arrested upon returning home to visit her three children and her husband, Petros Solomon, a former government official also imprisoned without charge; Seyoum Tsehaye, a talented young writer who pursued a career in journalism and who earned the international recognition of his peers; and Kiflu Gebremeskel, a brilliant mathematician and inspired spiritual leader, who returned to Eritrea to help found the Full Gospel Church after living for many years in the United States. And, of course, Fessehaye "Joshua" Yohannes, a beloved veteran fighter, talented poet and playwright, and children's theater director, who was as comfortable wearing a giant bunny suit as khaki fatigues. Aside from Joshua, who reportedly died in January 2007 of torture-related injuries after six years imprisonment, we do not know the fate of most of these men and women. We know that they are individuals at risk, and that their human rights have been violated by the government they helped to create. We know that, as their compatriots joyfully celebrate freedom, they will neither celebrate nor know what freedom means.

Upon independence and in the years following, the Eritrean government signed and ratified almost all of the six international human rights treaties, thereby guaranteeing their own people and the international community that human rights would thrive in Eritrea. But the government of Eritrea has not only withheld these rights from their population; they have also withheld their own domestic constitutional rights. And while the government argues that true liberation means economic and political development on self-reliant terms, it refuses to acknowledge the crucial interrelationship and mutual reinforcement of all rights and freedoms, from the dignity of economic, social and cultural rights to the civil and political rights of individuals.

This year, as we recognize Eritrean independence, let us all contemplate anew the meanings of liberation, freedom and justice. Let us remember the thousands who languish in prison without charge or trial, who suffer the pain and isolation of rightlessness and repression. Please take action to urge the government of Eritrea to finally make this coming year one of urgently needed human rights improvements, and remind Eritrean prisoners of conscience, in the classic phrase we in Amnesty International know so well: Do not be discouraged, you are not forgotten.   

Peace,

Tricia Redeker Hepner

Eritrea Country Specialist             

To take action on behalf of POCs in Eritrea please visit: www.aiusa.org/iar