Torture, beatings, detention rife in Eritrea: US report

NAIROBI, Feb 29 (AFP) — Torture, beatings, and detention of political opponents were some of the alleged abuses in the east African state of Eritrea catalogued in a US State Department report issued on Internet.

“There were numerous reports that police resorted to torture and physical beatings of prisoners, particularly during interrogations,” said the report on the situation in the country during last year:

“During the year, police severely mistreated and beat army deserters, draft evaders, and members of particular religious groups,” it continued.

There were also reports that “several hundred followers of various non-sanctioned churches (mostly Protestant) were detained or harassed,” the State Department said.

The former province of neighbouring Ethiopia officially proclaimed its independence in 1993 after 30 years of armed struggle, and the only authorized political party is the ruling Popular Front for Democracy and Justice. There were no opposition parties active domestically, the US report noted.

The Eritrean government had not made the transition to a democratically elected government, and national elections, originally scheduled for 1997, were never held, it continued.

There were “numerous politically motivated detentions of those who were seen as critical of the government,” it said.

“Only the four government-sanctioned religious groups in the country — Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Catholics, and members of the Evangelical Church of Eritrea (which is affiliated with the Lutheran World Federation) — were allowed to meet freely during the year,” the document charged:

“The private press remained closed and most independent journalists arrested remained in detention or had fled the country, which effectively prevented all public and much private criticism of the government.

“All private newspapers were banned, and the ban remained in effect at year’s end.”

US rights group Human Rights Watch last month described Eritrea as a police state in which political opposition and almost any independent organisation is stifled.

“Eritrea has remained a police state in which dissent is ruthlessly suppressed,” the group said.

“Non-governmental political, civic, and social institutions are largely forbidden to function,” it said.

The report said that in September 2001, 11 members of the PFDJ calling for democratic reforms ended up in prison, as did journalists working for independent newspapers, which have now been banned.

“Those arrested in 2001 and many of those arrested since have been held incommunicado in secret detention sites,” the report says.

The Eritrean authorities say private media in the country have not been banned, but only “suspended” and referred to those arrested as “traitors” and “spies.”

Last month the State Department expressed Washington’s concern about the possibility of another war between Ethiopia and Eritrea like the two-year conflict settled by a peace accord in Algiers in 2000, which committed the two to accepting as final and binding the ruling of a border commission.

Ethiopia has rejected the commission’s decision because it decided a disputed town was part of Eritrea, a poverty-stricken country of 3.3 millions.