Asmara providing help to Sudan’s Darfur rebels: Eritrean opposition
By BBC Monitoring Service
KHARTOUM, Sep 4, 2004 (Al-Hayat) — Dr Muhammad Uthman Abu-Bakr, the leader of the opposition “Eritrean National Democratic Front” has accused the Eritrean government of providing military facilities to the Darfur rebels.
Abu-Bakr, who is in charge of the foreign relations secretariat of the front (which includes 12 opposition factions), said the Eritrean government gave the Darfur rebels camps in the suburbs of the capital Asmara, the outskirts of the coastal city of Massawa, and in Hikuta area on the Eritrean-Ethiopian border.
He added in statements to “Al-Hayat” that the elements receiving training in these camps come from the “Justice and Equality Movement”, the “Sudan Liberation Army” (the military wing of the Sudan Liberation Movement), and the “Democratic Federal Alliance”.
He added that Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki issued orders to all government departments and the “Popular Front for Justice and Democracy” (the ruling party) to extend every possible military, political, and media assistance to these organizations.
He added that the ruling party’s executive committee put the party’s secretary-general, Al-Amin Muhammad Sa’id, in charge of supervising the Darfur rebels’ organizations and coordinating with the government departments to ensure their continued activities.
He also supervised the conclusion of an alliance between the rebels and the “Beja Congress” and the “Free Lions” organizations – the two Sudanese opposition groups that are active in eastern Sudan, to expand their military operations in the areas bordering Eritrea.
The Sudanese government has on several times accused Eritrea of allowing the opposition to launch attacks in eastern Sudan from Eritrean territories and has lodged a complaint with the United Nations.
Uthman pointed out that “citizens are continuing to flee from Eritrea because of the repression and arrests without trials”.
“The latest dissident to leave the government is Youth Minister Muhammad Tahir Shanqab who fled to the United States in July.
“Around 600 students studying in Nigeria have also refused to return to Eritrea.”
He added that the 78 Eritreans who were deported recently from Libya and their plane forced by 15 passengers to land in Khartoum, “were not the first Eritreans deported from Libya. The Libyan authorities had returned to Asmara before then another group of 150 Eritreans who were taken directly to isolated prisons in Dahlak Island in the Red Sea. Asmara received before them another 200 Eritreans from Libya through Malta and these were taken to the frontlines with Ethiopia.”
He asserted that President Afewerki carried out recently changes in the five central Eritrean provinces (Hamasen), the north (Sanhit and Sahel), the Red Sea (Samhar and Dankalia), Akili Kozay and Sarayi and appointed five military governors with the rank of major-general for these provinces who receive their orders directly from the president and who immediately launched a major campaign of arrests among the people. He spoke about the “deterioration in the economic situation, especially as a result of the neighbouring countries’ undeclared economic boycott of Eritrea”.