Eritrea: Yet Another Sad Anniversary

Today is the seventh anniversary of the arrest of Estifanos Seyoum, the Eritrean prisoner of conscience adopted by AI Group 22. He was detained in 2001 along with 10 other senior officials and 11 journalists in a general crackdown by the Eritrea government. None of these prisoners has ever been charged or tried. Some are reported to have died in prison but Eritrea refuses to reveal anything about them. Amnesty International issued the following statement to mark this sad occasion:

AI Index: AFR 64/007/2008 (Public)
Date: 18 September 2008

Eritrea: Prisoners of conscience remembered on 7th anniversary of mass detentions

Seven years ago, on 18 September 2001, the Government of Eritrea detained hundreds of former government leaders, private-media journalists and civil servants. Today, as we mark the seventh anniversary of this detention, most are still believed to be held in incommunicado detention.

Amnesty International considers these detainees to be prisoners of conscience, detained for the peaceful expression of their political views. The Eritrean government has never disclosed the location of those detained, and has repeatedly failed to provide a verifiable response to allegations that a number of those detained have died in detention, in spite of persistent appeals from Amnesty International members worldwide.

The Government of Eritrea is doing all that they can to ensure that these prisoners are forgotten. They are still denied family visits. No-one has been charged or brought to court. They are also believed to be denied medical treatment and are in many cases are likely to be detained in harsh conditions and subjected to torture, or cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment.
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Award to Imprisoned Eritrean Journalist

Eritrean journalist Seyoum Tsehaye has been chosen as “Journalist of the Year 2007” by Reporters Without Borders - Fondation de France. The panel of judges sought to highlight not only the case of this brave journalist held in Eritrea’s appalling jails since September 2001 but also the catastrophic state of press freedom in this small Horn of Africa country. At least four journalists have died in prison in Eritrea over the last few years. The blame lies chiefly at the door of Issaias Afeworki, the highly authoritarian and obdurate president of the country since its independence in 1993.

Read the full press release from Reporters Without Borders here.
There's a photo of Seyoum at the AI Group 19 website.

AI Group 22 in Pasadena works in behalf of Estifanos Seyoum, another Eritrea prisoner of conscience held incommunicado since the 2001 crackdown. We hope that the publicity generated by this award might help to persuade the Eritrean authorities to improve their country's human rights situation or at least result in the release of information about these journalists and former government officials detained without trial or charges since 2001.

Visit with Senator Boxer's Staffer

On October 15 four of us from AI Group 22 met with Mr. Corey Jackson from Senator Boxer's Los Angeles office. We discussed our group's work on Eritrea prisoners of conscience, the AI special focus case of Shi Tao, and the Darfur crisis. Corey told us that input from constituents would be very helpful, so we're asking all you California folks to go to Senator Boxer's official web site and let her know that you're concerned about one or more of the three topics. For information on Eritrea POCs, see our sample letter to Boxer or visit the AIUSA Eritrea page or learn about imprisoned Eritrean journalists. Here's AIUSA info about Shi Tao, and here's the country page for Sudan/Darfur. We hope to report next month on what progress we've made toward obtaining Senator Boxer's help in these issues.

Eritrea: A Sad Anniversary

Today is the sad anniversary of the detention of hundreds of government officials, journalists and other community leaders six years ago in Eritrea. Amnesty International has a press release detailing the lack of progress in the human rights climate to date. An action is available here.

Meanwhile, instead of releasing prisoners of conscience and permitting freedom of speech and association, the Eritrean government is hosting conferences for the Somalian opposition and encouraging further destabilization of the region. The US government has taken note,

[US Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi] Frazer said that this was about more than just simply considering Eritrea as a rogue state in the region.

It was quite specifically Eritrea's relationship with recognised terrorists which could lead to its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.

This, in turn, she said would bring a change in the nature of its relationship with the US and in the ability of the US and other countries to provide assistance to Eritrea's government.

Hmm. Maybe if the US government had put more pressure on the Eritrean government five or six years ago there would still be a viable opposition to work with?

Our Visit with Congressman Schiff

Yesterday, several members of our Amnesty chapter made a visit to Congressman Adam Schiff's district office here in Pasadena. While we will be waiting to see what actions Rep. Schiff takes as a result of our discussion, we all felt it was a very productive visit.

We spoke first about our concern for human rights in Eritrea, and urged him to contact Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice (as several other Congresspersons have already done) to ask her to inquire into the status and treatment of Eritrean prisoners of conscience, including imprisoned opposition figures, journalists and religious leaders. Rep. Schiff appeared very receptive to this request. We were happy to have informed him of our on-going interest in the human rights crisis in Eritrea as we know it is easy to overlook among the more headline-grabbing international conflict zones.

We had noted Congressman Schiff's interest in press freedom from his website. You can read a recent floor speech he gave on World Press Freedom Day here and it appears that he intends to be a leader on this issue. This is good news for our work on behalf of Eritrean journalists, as well as Russian journalists such as the late Anna Politkovskaya (Rights Readers selection Putin's Russia). But we also thought this was a great opportunity to ask the Congressman's support for the Global Online Freedom Act (H.R. 275) which would help ensure that the Internet remains an open forum for free expression in every part of the world, and help American companies resist pressure from authoritarian governments to compromise their principles. The act may help to prevent cases such as Chinese Journalist and Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience Shi Tao whose identity was revealed to Chinese authorities by Yahoo! and who subsequently received a ten year sentence for exercising his right to free speech. You can help urge the Congressman to support this legislation by taking action here.

Finally, we got ahead of Amnesty's effort to turn activists out to lobby for fair judicial proceedings for Guantanamo detainees in conjunction with the annual International Day for Survivors of Torture in late June and asked for Rep. Schiff's support for H.R. 1416 The Habeas Restoration Act. The right to challenge one’s detention in front of an independent court is one of the most fundamental protections against arbitrary detention and other human rights violations. We're all proud of our judicial tradition and these are the principles we want to export not hide from! Rep. Schiff emphasized that he opposed the revocation of habeas and was very receptive to supporting this bill, commenting that he might look into a broader approach. (Broader is good! How about we close Guantanamo?!) In any case we suggest that you urge Rep. Schiff to become a co-sponsor of the bill here.

You can also take action on H.R. 275 and H.R. 1416 at Congressman Schiff's website.

We'll keep you up to date on these actions when we get more information.

Frontline: Requiem

Opps! I went to tape the PBS Independent Lens broadcast of Race to Execution (which was quite good and I hope becomes available to activists on DVD) and realized that the preceding Frontline/World program offered a segment in which a Filipino journalist paid tribute to slain colleagues around the world such as Anna Politkovskaya and Hrant Dink. Luckily, you can view the segment, Requiem, online. Also checking out the resources at the site I learned that the Phillipines is second only to Iraq this year in journalists killed in the line of duty, so to speak. If the tribute moves you to take action, our newsletter this month featured two actions for journalists: Eritrean journalist, Fessahaye Yohannes who died in custody and whose death should be investigated, and Bangladeshi journalist Sumi Khan who has been attacked and threatened.

Eritrea Update

A must read for our on-going project to bring attention to human rights issues in Eritrea, Michela Wrong (Rights Readers Selection, I Didn't Do It for You : How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation) writes in the New Statesman about the conflicting interests of Eritrea and Ethiopia in the renewed Somalian conflict. [Link]

Good News! Helen Berhane Released

Coming into the season for giving thanks, we are grateful for the release of Eritrean gospel singer Helen Berhane (see previous post). Official Amnesty press release here. There is still much work to be done, however. Click here for an action urging the government of Libya not to return refugees to Eritrea to be tortured. Libyan authorities rounded up and detained 300 Eritrean refugees in August, including 80 women and five children between the ages of two and six. Refugees need protection, not further persecution.

Eritrea: Voices of Torture

Eritrea: Voices of Torture
A documentary film from Human Rights Concern - Eritrea
(Warning: graphic content!)


Read comments from the director the film here.

Please visit the AIUSA action center and act on behalf of Eritrean prisoners of conscience today!

Take Action on Eritrea Today!

The 5 year anniversary action for Estifanos Seyoum and the other Eritrean prisoners of conscience we referred to previously is now online,

Amnesty International is concerned about the whereabouts and well-being of eleven former members of Parliament and ten journalists five years after their detention without trial or charge. Call on the Eritrean government to address these "disappearances."

Please visit the AIUSA action center today!

9/18 A Sad Anniversary

Today is the fifth anniversary of the detentions without charge or trial of 11 former Eritrean members of parliament, 10 journalists and hundreds of other men and women who were arrested in a crackdown on government critics calling for democratic reforms in September 2001. They remain in detention without trial and Amnesty is concerned about reports that some prisoners may have died in custody. Read the press release detailing Amnesty's human rights concerns here. Amnesty International Group 22 urges you to take action on behalf of Estifanos Seyoum, one of the imprisoned former members of parliment. We hope to add other actions here soon, check back for an update! Update: Online action is available here,

In non-Amnesty news, Eritrean activists and supporters are converging on DC today for a candlelight vigil. We're symbolically raising our own candle in hope for the speedy release of these prisonsers of conscience.

He Didn't Do It For Them

A final post on Michela Wrong's I Didn't Do It for You (though not our last Eritrea post by any means). Here's a review article of Wrong's book, entitledHe Didn’t Do It for Them, appearing in Middle East Report, written by Eritrea expert Dan Connell, which adds another layer to her analysis of the human rights situation in Eritrea. Also, if you scroll down this page you can hear audio of Connell presenting at an Eritreans for Human and Democratic Rights-UK organized Human Rights Symposium (moderated by... Michela Wrong!).

Tags: Eritrea, Michela Wrong

Language Lesson

Language Geek alert!  I know we weren't going to let this take over the blog until November, but just felt the need to provide a few links on language in Eritrea before wrapping up our Michela Wrong-I Didn't Do It for You  thread.  Here's a map of Eritrean languages and Omniglot has more on Ge'ez and Tigrinya, including links to fonts for download (clean up those messy looking - ??? - Eritrean webpages!).  And in the interests of pure geekiness, Omniglot also has an Interlingua page.  No need to apologize if you don't recall where the book references this.  You're normal.  For those that did perk up at this bit of trivia, I know I'll be hearing shortly from you about the formation of a Tigrinya study group. Rock on.

Tags: Eritrea, language

Remembering 9/11

The odd things that one remembers. On September 11, 2001, after taking in the news early in the morning I went to work as usual.  I parked my car and walking past Los Angeles Central Juvenile Hall on the way to the office, I encountered a parent and child headed away from the building.  Looking relieved, they told me the courts were closed.  Their judgement day, maybe their own family tragedy, had been postponed by our national tragedy. Mostly what I remember though, is that our Amnesty International chapter had a letter-writing meeting that evening.  Because Caltech closed its campus, regretably, we had to cancel it.  Some of us obeyed the instinct to be in community anyway and gathered at our favorite discussion spot, Vroman's bookstore, to debrief the day's events over coffee, but I think we would have felt even better if we had been writing.  For this reason, I think I will always associate 9/11 with Amnesty letter-writing. 

Sometime later, I observed that even though many felt the world changed on that day, for our then prisoner of conscience case, a Tibetan monk, nothing changed at all.  He was still in prison and the shift in geopolitics wasn't going to affect him.  We still needed to make sure he wasn't a "forgotten prisoner."  Now we have adopted a different prisoner of conscience case, Eritrean Estifanos Seyoum.  In his case, the world did change that week, but not in a way that the rest of us noticed.  He was arrested on September 18, 2001 and although never officially charged or brought to trial and he has been held incommunicado since that time. We still need to make sure he isn't forgotten. I still want to obey that instinct to connect with a wounded world and offer some small token of healing.  I can't think of anything better to do today then take action on Estifanos Seyoum's case and visit Amnesty International's Action Center for more letters to write.

Tags: 9/11, Amnesty International, Eritrea, Estifanos Seyoum

Eritrea Virtual Tour

Okay, you've just finished I Didn't Do It for You : How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation and you congratulate yourself on having learned a lot about Eritrea, but now you've got more questions. Where to go? This site is like a virtual tour of the country and provides lots of light browsing, including facts and figures, photograhs, recipes(!) and the like. If you want something with more depth, browse this collection of links provided by Stanford University Libraries.

Tags: Eritrea

Arizona to Eritrea

Here's an inspiring piece of activism for those of you travelling with us on our journey to better understand the human rights situation in Eritrea:  This summer Amnesty International activists in Phoenix put together an ambitious program of performance art focusing on the plight of Eritrean prisoners of conscience in conjunction with Amnesty's Denounce Torture! campaign.  Very impressive!  More pictures and detailed description here.  I think some of our Readers will definitely want to look these folks up in a few weeks when attending the Amnesty International USA Western Regional Meeting in Tuscon.

Tags: Eritrea, Amnesty International, events, torture

Our September Author: Michela Wrong

Here's a Fresh Air interview with Michela Wrong, author of I Didn't Do It for You : How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation.

Wrong also writes a regular column for the New Statesman.  You can check out her views on African issues here.  (Warning!  The New Statesman only lets you read one column per day without a subscription.  And to discourage you more, the article titles are rather opaque.  Worth keeping this in mind though to see her take on any new developments in Eritrea.) 

Tags: Eritrea, Michela Wrong

Your Eritrean Soundtrack

On the look out for ways to make reading a long book (I Didn't Do It for You : How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation) easier, I found some samples for the Eritrean singer Faytinga. According to the National Geographic World Music site, the songstress,

bases her music on the traditional sounds of Eritrea's Kunama ethnic group, and her songs are a reflection of her nation's struggle for independence.

Wow! Great stuff from the first a capella sample to the more syncopated grooves! I want this album!

Now for the soundtrack that isn't... One of our Esteemed Readers recalled a previous Eritrean Prisoner of Conscience case that we had taken action on last year and I went sleuthing around to find the details. The case concerns the Christian singer, Helen Berhane, who has been detained incommunicado since May 13, 2004. She is one of many members of banned evangelical churches who have been detained without charge or trial on account of their religious beliefs. This Guardian article also provides some detail on fellow muscians campaigning on her behalf and this article from Freemuse adds a bit more on the shutting down of two music stores.

By the way, I was please to discover Freemuse, an independent international organization advocating freedom of expression for musicians and composers worldwide. Check it out!

Technorati Tags: Eritrea, music, religious freedom, censorship

Intro to Eritrea

As a little incentive for our September book, Michela Wrong's, I Didn't Do It for You : How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation, I offer this gorgeous photoset by photographer Eric Lafforgue. Mostly portraits, some street scenes and a camel or three! For a preview look for the Flickr badge in the sidebar or go directly to a slideshow!

Tags: Michela Wrong, Eritrea, photography

Estifanos Seyoum, Eritrean Prisoner of Conscience

Group 22 now has a webpage dedicated to our newly adopted Eritrean prisoner of conscience, Estifanos Seyoum.  Please stop by, learn about the case and take action.  The link has also been added to the sidebar of this blog.  New actions and updates will be posted from time to time, so check back frequently.  Consider this a warm-up for our September selection, Michela Wrong's I Didn't Do It for You : How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation.

Tags: Estifanos Seyoum, Eritrea