ERITREANS FOR FACILITATING

NATIONAL DIALOGUE (EFND)               

                                                     Eritrean Global Solidarity (EGS)

Our Unequivocal Support for the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea

Under difficult circumstances, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea labored hard and issued its correct judgement of the harsh situations to which the Eritrean people are experiencing. The Eritrean people, young and old, live in an endless misery under a regime that has taken ownership of their lives in ways that slave owners enslave their chattel slaves. They young are hunted and captured for what is cynically termed “national service” which in fact amounts to forced labor. We whole heartedly endorse the Commission’s findings as irrefutable truths about the sad condition of the Eritrean people.

For more than two decades, the world stood silent as the illegitimate government of Eritrea without the rudiments of constitutional authority inflicted systematic human rights violations against the Eritrean people. During those two and half decades, the Peoples Party for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) proved to the Eritrean public and the honest world that it stood neither for democracy nor for justice. It began its oppressive career as early as 1994 when the Sawa Youth Training Camp was created as an indoctrination and training conduit for the infamous National Service system that PFDJ created to control Eritrean youth.  The calamity of destruction and dislocation in Eritrea is getting worse by the day. Life for the Eritrean people, particularly the children and the youth, is dismal and precarious, full of dangers dark misery and utter hopelessness. The Eritrean regime under the leadership of Isaias Afwerki is dead set to destroy Eritrea, humiliate the Eritrean people and leave Eritrea on the precipice of a failed state with no redemption. Unless urgent steps are taken to arrest the death march on which Eritrea is embarking, the Country will further remain a victim of the rapacious Isaias gangs.

The Eritrean regime has blood of innocent Eritreans in its hands. A sample of the regime’s cruelties are the following:

1. As early as in 1994, the regime intercepted about 300 Eritrean refugees returning from Saudi Arabia by boat. They were instructed by the PFDJ naval unites to dock at the Eritrean Port, Massawa. From there, they were sent to the rural lowlands near the infamous youth training camp known as Sawa. Many of the women and children fell victims of malaria; their fathers were conscripted to pack slave labor and their family units disintegrated. These families returned from long exile to their country that was just liberated. Instead of enjoying their liberty and freedom, an incomprehensible decision by the PFDJ leadership sent them to internal exile. They remain symbolic first victims of the realities that the repeated victimization to which the Eritrean people have been subjected,
2. In 2001, when Asmara University Students demonstrated over provocative interferences with their studies and harsh treatments, the regime sent dozens of the students to the oven-hot detention camps at the Danakil Desert between the ports of Assab and Massawa where several of them died of tortures, heat-strokes, thirst and hunger.
3. In 1994, the regime announced youth training program and sent high school students to the infamous Sawa Military Training Camp where they were subjected to endless harsh forced labor supposedly for two years, but the program became a conduit for endless national service amounting to glorified slavery. Forced labor is illegal according to the International Labor Rights laws.
4. In 1994, disabled war veterans were summarily massacred, when they attempted to hold demonstrations over their maltreatment at the Veterans’ hospital and hostels. They were disabled veterans who put their lives to fight for the liberation of Eritrea they deserved fair treatment, but they were cut down in an inhumane act for which the Eritrean people still grieve over the senseless regime cruelty.
5. The Eritrean regime has committed many more crimes. Scores of Eritrean officials, businessmen, soldiers, teachers, religious leaders, young boys, young girls, and the elderly populate the secret underground prisons, and detention and interrogation camps. Scores are taken in the middle of the night never to be seen or heard from.

The Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea spoke the truth. We Eritreans for Facilitating National Dialogue (EFND) and Eritrean Global Solidarity (EGS) whole heartedly support their report. On behalf of the Eritrean people, we send our appreciation for their speaking truth to brute power. We realize they were defamed, misrepresented, lied about, and intimidated by the Eritrean regime and its supporters. Irrespective of the challenges, they spoke what could only be ruled as right, just, truth, and correct.

Sincerely,

Eritreans for Facilitating National Dialogue (EFND)

Eritrean Global Solidarity (EGS)

June 10, 2015