European Union High Representative

Ms. Catherine Ashton

Brussels

Honorable Catherine Ashton

We are pleased to learn that the European Union has taken a decisive action against the Government of Eritrea which has continued abusing human rights through various mechanisms under its disposal. The regime far from mellowing down due its isolation from the community of nations has continued to detain people without due process of law, muzzle the free expression of citizens and intensified its shot to kill policy for any person attempting to cross the border for freedom.  The abuse are too many to list here but goes beyond the arbitrary detention of people for expressing dissenting views perceived inimical to its oppressive policy. The abuse extends to the point of depriving the peasants and the agro-pastorals from pursuing their time tested long developed adverse coping mechanism by expropriating their produce and most tragically alienating the only means of production under their disposal, the land. It has been common practice of the regime to uproot people from their ancestral lands deemed important for its self aggrandized projects with little or no benefit to the victims. These, therefore are the primary cause for the sudden and massive influx of refugees unprecedented in the history of the region.

The case in point is the story of 12 villages in the ones fertile region of Hazemo at areas known as Itaro and Akran were peasants forcibly removed and relocated to the western lowlands of Gerest. Unaccustomed, to living in agro-ecologic zone unfamiliar to their natural settings many of the displaced succumbed to malaria epidemics where tens of them died. The sad part in this episode is that they were made to settle in areas that were formerly inhabited by people who still exist as refugees in the Sudan. Moreover, many of the strategically important grazing grounds where pastoral population employed during the lean years are now converted into large scale farms some supplemented with irrigation water. Most are owned by individual army generals who are not accountable to the ‘state of Eritrea’.

It is also important to mention here that the mining operation currently underway are affecting the pastoral population through the cordoning of large tracts of land normally reserved for grazing and  by competing for water resource already deficient in the area.

In conclusion, the International Commission on Eritrean Refugees would like to reiterate its satisfaction with the measures taken by the EU regarding the region in general and its resolve to addressing the refugee problem in particular. The appointment of Mr. Alexander Rondos as EU special representative for the Horn of Africa clearly shows that the organization is in the right direction to help us address some of our pressing problem, the refugee question. The ICER along its sister organizations has been in the forefront advocating for the welfare of the refugees and in educating them from undertaking perilous journeys across the desert or taking  the treacherous sea route where they may fall victims of human traffickers and organ harvester. ICER also strives to improve their living condition while sheltered at refugee camps through input intervention such as building schools, digging water holes, and granting scholarship for the college bound young at universities in Ethiopia and Sudan.

It is however, important to remind EU that if the measures that intend to take is worthwhile the efforts and sincere at best, it needs to partner with organizations like the ICER who are at the forefront of the struggle.

Respectifully,

Yebio Woldemariam, Ph.D

President, International Commission on Eritrean Refugees

Cc

Nicholas Westcott, EEAS Managing Director for Africa

Alexander Rondas, EU Special Representative for the Horn of Africa

Judith Sergant   MPE