Eritrea urged to implement reform, release all journalists
June 25, 2013 (ADDIS ABABA) – Press freedom organization, Reporters Without Borders, has urged the government of Eritrea to respect the legitimate rights of the Eritrean people and to release all journalists being held indefinitely without charge.
Reporters Without Borders made the calls in a report it submitted to United Nations Human Rights Council, on the ever worsening human right situation in Eritrea.
United Nations Human Rights Council is set to examine the country’s human right performance during the 18th Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session to be held in January and February of 2014.
The UPR session is used to review the human rights performance of many repressive countries and, when necessary, remind them of their responsibilities.
Eritrea’s performance was last reviewed in 2009.
The report reveals continued serious human rights violation in Eritrea and questions why the east African nation stands last in the rank of Reporters Without Borders press freedom index for the past six years consecutively.
It also condemns the government’s total control of news and information since 2001, when the government carried out crackdown against privately-owned media and arrested dozens journalists who wrote an open letter to the president calling for political reform and democratic dialogue.
The Eritrean government has since then been engaged in censoring and jamming independent broadcast media – international and exile radio and TV stations.
Eritrea which is Africa’s foremost jailer of journalists has little tolerance for criticism.
Currently around 30 journalists including four arrested in 2001, remain detained in Eritrea without charge or without being brought before court.
Another Seven journalists committed suicide while in prison.
11 former senior political figures including former vice-president and two foreign ministers also remain imprisoned since 2001 after similarly calling for reform.
In its report, Reporters Without Borders recommended that Eritrea implements the recommendations it previously accepted, to accept visits by UN special rapporteurs, to end censorship, mass surveillance and all forms reprisals and harassment of news providers.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Eritrea, Sheila B. Keetharuth, last month called on the international community to keep Eritrea under close scrutiny until tangible reforms is evident.
The UN right expert was deprived to get access to the country so she was forced to do her investigation from neighbouring countries.
(ST)