ICC Note: Rights groups have called for the renewal of the mandate of the UN Human Rights Special Rapporteurs for Eritrea. Human rights violations in Eastern Africa have only continued to get worse. Eritrea is among the worst examples of repressing religious freedoms, prompting thousands to flee the country.
06/03/2018 Eritrea (World Watch Monitor) – Rights groups have called for the mandate of the UN Human Rights Special Rapporteur for Eritrea to be renewed in June.
The human rights situation in the East African country has been monitored by the UN Human Rights Council since 2012, when it appointed Ms Sheila B. Keetharuth as the Special Rapporteur. In March this year she, however, acknowledged that during her tenure the human rights violations in the country have “continued unabated”.
Father Thomas Reese, of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, told a US human rights commission in April that Eritrea remained “one of the worst examples of state-sponsored repression of freedom of religion or belief in the world”.
“The State Department estimates that between 1,200 and 3,000 individuals are held on religious grounds,” he said. Among them are several Evangelical and Pentecostal pastors who have been detained for more than 10 years.
Evangelicals and Pentecostals in Eritrea have been at particular risk of detention since a 2002 law was passed prohibiting Churches other than the Orthodox, Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran Churches, and also Sunni Islam.
“The situation in the country is only getting worse”, Dr Berhane Asmelash told World Watch Monitor.
The Eritrean pastor who was imprisoned for his Christian activities under the Ethiopian Marxist regime and moved to the United Kingdom 18 years ago, said, “We’re seeing the abused becoming abusers. They know it is wrong but it was done to them too. The government, the president, has been successful in sowing division and creating mistrust. You can’t speak in Eritrea because it might make you end up in jail at any time”.
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