{"id":6055,"date":"2015-05-06T08:13:58","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T08:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/munkhafadat.com\/en\/?p=6055"},"modified":"2015-05-06T08:13:58","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T08:13:58","slug":"why-thousands-of-asylum-seekers-are-fleeing-eritrea-and-risking-their-lives-in-the-mediterranean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/munkhafadat.com\/en\/uncategorized\/why-thousands-of-asylum-seekers-are-fleeing-eritrea-and-risking-their-lives-in-the-mediterranean\/","title":{"rendered":"Why thousands of asylum-seekers are fleeing Eritrea and risking their lives in the Mediterranean"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have become accustomed to headlines about migrants in the Mediterranean. Most recently\u00a0it was reported<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that the Italian authorities rescued nearly 7,000 migrants off the coast of Libya over one weekend. Often, tragically, we read instead of\u00a0thousands drowning<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last year more than 170,000 migrants arrived by boat in Italy last year. Many, as you would expect, are refugees displaced by the fighting in Iraq, Syria and, most recently, Libya itself. But a significant, if under-reported, group among the multitudes seeking safety or a better life in Europe are fleeing Eritrea.<\/p>\n

When, in May 1991, the 30-year struggle for independence against Ethiopia and its Russian sponsors came to a successful end and 99.9% voted in the 1993 national referendum in favour of independence, the future appeared to be set fair for Eritrea \u2013 and its acceptance in the United Nations as an independent state in May 1993 appeared to back this up.<\/p>\n

One of Eritrea\u2019s former international friends, the late\u00a0Abdul Rahman Babu<\/strong><\/a>, a Tanzanian politician and scholar, who visited the liberated areas during the independence struggle in a paper titled \u201cEritrea: its present is the remote future of Others<\/strong><\/a>\u201d, expressed his unbound sense of optimism and indicated that the Eritrean revolutionaries were setting trends which provide fresh hope for the rest of the continent.<\/p>\n

Others felt the same way \u2013 towards the end of the 1980s, the American journalist Blaine Harden\u00a0wrote in the Washington Post<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

On a continent of millionaire dictators, where broken promises of democracy dovetail with collapsing living standards and unpayable debts, Eritrea\u2019s revolutionaries hold out the possibility of an efficient, self-reliant African nation, run by Africans who have had 26 years to learn from the failures of independent Africa.<\/em><\/p>\n

These testimonies would sound incredible to anyone who is only familiar with Eritrea\u2019s current plight. Contrary to all rational expectations, in the vital areas of international relations, human rights, rule of law, democracy, justice, human security and freedom of speech and association, there is little that distinguishes the post-independence Eritrean government not only from the regimes that held Africans to ransom in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, but also from the very regime \u2013\u00a0the Derg<\/strong><\/a>\u2013 it fought for decades to get rid of.<\/p>\n

The million-dollar question is: what went wrong in a country, which most analysts and observers expected to \u201cbreak the mould\u201d? A fitting answer is difficult in such a short article.<\/p>\n

History lessons unlearned<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ironically, the sorry state Eritrea and its people are in at present is largely due to the fact that the government has dismally failed to draw lessons from Africa\u2019s past failures. The Eritrean People\u2019s Liberation Front (EPLF) \u2013 now known as the People\u2019s Front for Democracy and Justice \u2013 has broken every promise it made during the war of independence and in the immediate post-independence period. Instead of learning from the failures of African leaders, the Eritrean leadership has been emulating the failed policies and contemptible behaviour that drove the continent into abject poverty, dictatorship and indebtedness.<\/p>\n

Most of the blunders and failures that are blighting Eritrea and its citizenry are similar to those, which wrecked the lives and aspirations of their brethren in the rest of the continent in the 1960s and 1970s. It was most peoples\u2019 hope that Eritreans as latecomers to statehood would be spared from autocracy and the follies of the incompetent and intolerant post-independence African state.<\/p>\n

Most Eritreans inside and outside the country are unanimous in who is responsible for the woeful state the country is in. Every Eritrean blames president Isaias Afwerki and his tightly knit inner circle. Not only has the EPLF and its successor, the PFDJ, and the government, betrayed the endless promises made during the war of independence, but also the two multi-party elections that were promised\u00a0never took place<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and no explanation was given. The ratified constitution was\u00a0suspended with no explanation<\/strong><\/a>and now it is declared dead and buried by the single utterance of the president.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s anti-civil society stance and its undemocratic and intolerant nature have\u00a0driven aid agencies and NGOs out from the country<\/strong><\/a>. Despite the fact that about 66% of the population lives below the national poverty line and the country suffers from recurrent droughts, the government\u00a0stopped the distribution of food aid in September 2005<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0on the alleged grounds that food hand-outs undermine its misplaced policy of self-reliance.<\/p>\n

The private sector\u00a0has almost collapsed<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0due to hostile policies and the ruling party\u2019s dominance of the economy. The private sector\u2019s suppression has stifled the development and of the middle class and businesses owned by members of the ruling party dominate the fragile economy of the country. The civil service has been dismantled to pave the way for non-institutionalised patrimonial administration based on patron-client networks in which the positions of government officials and employees depend on political loyalty to the president and his arbitrary rule.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0nationalisation of land<\/strong><\/a>, the stifling of the private sector and the phasing out of food aid have undermined the livelihood systems of the majority of peasants, pastoralists and the rest of the population.<\/p>\n

Armed camp<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eritrea is one of the most militarised societies in the world. Most able-bodied citizens between 18 and 50 \u2013\u00a0including women<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0are conscripted into the open-ended Eritrean national service<\/strong><\/a>. In 2012, the government introduced the people\u2019s army comprising citizens between the ages of 50 and 75 years old. National service conscripts receive subsistence pay, people\u2019s army nothing at all.<\/p>\n

After the disastrous outcome of the\u00a0border war against Ethiopia<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(from May 1998 to June 2000), a reform movement under the leadership of some ministers, high-ranking military officers and their followers demanded that the president and the leaders of the central office of the PFDJ account for their follies. After initially appearing willing to compromise with the Group of 15, many of whom were important figures in the independence struggle, Afwerki\u00a0rounded up the group<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and their followers in September 2001 using the excuse of 9\/11 for his actions.<\/p>\n

He also\u00a0closed down all private newspapers<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and detained all the journalists who worked for the papers. Since September 2001, thousands of citizens have been held incommunicado in detention without being charged. Nobody knows whether those who were detained in September 2001 and after\u00a0are dead or still alive<\/strong><\/a>, languishing in the thousands of dungeons in the country.<\/p>\n

Available evidence\u00a0suggests there are about 10,000 prisoners in the country<\/strong><\/a>. Prisoners are subjected to torture and inhuman treatment. One former detainee in an underground cell in Wi\u2019a told Amnesty International:<\/p>\n

We couldn\u2019t lie down [in the underground cell]. It\u2019s best to be standing because if you lie down, your skin remains stuck to the floor. The floor is terribly hot.<\/em><\/p>\n

His is only one of many such reports. It makes for deeply distressing reading.<\/p>\n

Disaster unfolds<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"epa04342625<\/a>
Long way from home: Eritrean migrants in Calais in 2014. EPA\/Etienne Laurent<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

The national service whose duration was originally 18 months has become open-ended. The government\u2019s justification is Ethiopia\u2019s\u00a0refusal to be bound by the Algiers peace agreement<\/strong><\/a>, arguing that in view of Ethiopia\u2019s intransigence, war may break out at any time and hence Eritrea cannot take the risk of demobilising its conscripts.<\/p>\n

Contrary to all expectations, post-independence Eritrea\u00a0has become one of the region\u2019s major producers of refugees<\/strong><\/a>. The indefinite national service \u2013 which has over time degenerated into forced labour, savage repression of political dissent and free speech and the collapse of the public service and the private sector coupled with the nationalisation of land, are driving Eritreans in their tens of thousands to seek refuge.<\/p>\n

The UNHCR reported<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0recently that 22% of boat arrivals in Italy were Eritreans \u2013 some 34,000 people. While the UN and the wider international community sits by and does nothing to put pressure on this is developing into a full-blown humanitarian disaster.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: Academic Conversation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have become accustomed to headlines about migrants in the Mediterranean. Most recently\u00a0it was reported\u00a0that the Italian authorities rescued nearly 7,000 migrants off the coast of Libya over one weekend. Often, tragically, we read instead of\u00a0thousands drowning. Last year more than 170,000 migrants arrived by boat in Italy last year. 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