Eritrea: UN Experts Call for End to Decades of Arbitrary Detention and Enforced Disappearances
UN experts expressed grave concern on October 30 about ongoing patterns of arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances in the East African country of Eritrea, which they said have occurred with impunity since 1991.
For over 35 years, the experts said, Eritreans have faced arbitrary arrests and detentions, often without charges or trial, denied access to family, legal counsel and judicial protection; in hundreds of cases the fate and whereabouts of those detained remain unknown.
The experts highlighted the case of Bitweded Abraha, a veteran of Eritrea's independence movement and former senior official first arrested on October 6, 1991, and reportedly still arbitrarily detained 35 years later; the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled in 2018 that his detention was arbitrary. Since September 2001, former senior officials known as the G-15 and journalists including Seyoum Tsehaye and Dawit Isaak have been detained, their fate unknown more than 25 years later.
Many others have been detained for their faith, including seven Christian leaders held incommunicado without charge for more than two decades. The experts said the widespread or systematic use of prolonged arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and religious persecution may constitute crimes against humanity, and called on Eritrea to free all arbitrarily detained people promptly and unconditionally and disclose the fate of the disappeared.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 照片：厄立特里亚首都阿斯马拉街景，Clay Gilliland 摄，Wikimedia Commons，CC BY-SA 2.0 授权 / Photo: Asmara, Eritrea, by Clay Gilliland, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
