Published: Sep. 9, 2016

Two Eritrean Ministers are in Germany at the start of a campaign to breach European opposition to doing a deal with a government the UN labels “a serial abuser of human rights”; the UN says 5,000 people leave Eritrea every month.

Eritrea, politically isolated for years, and often called the ‘North Korea of Africa, is the biggest source of asylum seekers in Europe relative to its population, at 2.13% (Syria, by contrast, is 1.25%).

Eritrea is a “Country of Particular Concern” for the US State Department due to severe violations of freedom of religion. Many Christians who leave it via neighbouring Sudan, Ethiopia, and Egypt, have become easy prey for human traffickers, especially in the Sinai desert. Some of them were caught and beheaded in Libya by Islamic State. Still many have made it to Europe by boat: the percentage of Christians is hard to estimate, but to visit camps in, for example, Calais in France, it is clear that the Christian proportion is high.

Despite this, the German government is welcoming representatives of the Eritrean government for discussions. Talks in November 2015 laid the groundwork of how European institutions would co-operate with African partners to fight “irregular migration, migrant smuggling and trafficking in human beings”.

This aim, says Martin Plaut, former BBC Africa Editor who’s visited the country several times “is laudable enough. But consider the implications through the eyes of a young refugee struggling to get past Eritrea’s border force, with strict instructions to shoot to kill, or to escape from the clutches of the dictatorship of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir”.

Under the plan Europe would offer training to “law enforcement and judicial authorities” in new methods of investigation and “assisting in setting up specialised anti-trafficking and smuggling police units”. The plans envisage Sudan receiving a range of computers, scanners, cameras, cars and all the necessary training at 17 border crossing points.

Germany has felt the consequences of the mass exodus: in 2015, 25,000 Eritreans sought asylum there.

Source: Martin Plaut

Good afternoon,                                                                                        

Please find below an update from the APPG on Eritrea.

The recent APPG meeting discussed the economic impact of indefinite national service in Eritrea. Daniel Nelson, News and Special Reports Editor at One World, who was in attendance at the meeting, wrote a summary outlining the contributions of the speakers and the dire economic and social impact of indefinite national service in Eritrea. The full article is available here

Charlotte King, senior analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, provided an analysis of the Eritrean economy, highlighting the dominance of party-controlled, State led firms, stifling any private sector enterprise. Professor Gaim Kibreab, research professor and course director of the MSc Refugee Studies at London South Bank University, discussed how the initially useful nation-building policy of national service was now producing terrible economic and social effects and is the prime reason for many Eritreans fleeing their homeland.

In other news, this August, the Home Office updated its guidance on asylum seekers from Eritrea -including those fleeing indefinite national service- following mounting pressure and criticism from various human rights groups and the Home Affairs select committee. The full guidance report is available here

Jim Shannon MP asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth affairs what discussions he has had with the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea in reducing conflict in border areas between those countries, availablehere

Lord Hylton asked what action the Government and the UNHCR planned to take to protect Eritrean and Somali families now in Ethiopia, the Sudan, or South Sudan without legal status, availablehere

The APPG is currently planning its next meeting, and will be in touch soon with more information.

Thank you all for your continued support.

eRITrea

Eritrea is often called the North Korea of Africa. Tens of thousands of people flee the country each year. This week an Eritrean delegation is set to visit Berlin for political talks.

The trip to Germany is important to Eritrea's government. Two ministers and the influential presidential advisor, Yemane Gebreab, are part of the delegation. The agenda: an economic forum, a panel discussion and a meeting with German parliamentarians.

"The visit is the result of talks that were held in December 2015 when a delegation from the German development ministry, headed by minister Gerd Muller, visited Asmara," a spokesperson from the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development told DW.

Eritrea has been politically isolated for years. The small state was once a beacon of hope in the Horn of Africa. In the early 1990s, after a 30-year-long war, it declared itself independent from Ethiopia. In 2007, Germany stopped its remaining development aid to Eritrea. The United Nations have repeatedly accused Eritrea's government of committing crimes against humanity in its detention camps and military facilities, including torture, enslavement, rape and murder. "Eritrea is an authoritarian State. There is no independent judiciary, no national assembly and there are no other democratic institutions," said Mike Smith, chair of the UN's Commission of Inquiry, in June.

Eritrea was once a beacon of hope for the Horn of Africa. Today many young people want to leave

Stopping the exodus

All that has, however, not deterred Germany from extending its feelers towards the north African country. In December 2015, development minister Muller set the ground for political dialogue. The Eritrean government needs to improve its human rights situation and start political reforms, Muller said during his visit. "We can support Eritrea in stopping the exodus of its youths, by improving living conditions for the people on the ground," he added.

Germany has felt the consequences of the mass exodus from Eritrea. Just last year, 25,000 Eritreans sought aslyum in Germany. Approximately 200,000 refugees are currently estimated to be in neighboring Sudan and Ethiopia. Many young people flee because of the infamous compulsory "national service". Officially, the service is branded a military service, but human rights organizations have compared it to forced labor because the recruits have to work in state run companies for several years.

"We have to take care that the talks between Germany and Eritrea don't just prevent the migration to Europe and change nothing about the human rights situation in Eritrea, warned the German Green Party parliamentarian, Kordula Schulz-Asche. The German government needs to be clear about that, added the lawmaker who is also the deputy chairperson of the German-East African group in the Bundestag.

"What is important, is that the Eritrean government allows an investigation into the human rights situation before the two governments speak to each other," argued Schulz-Asche. To date, Eritrea has not let independent observers into the country. The UN report, for instance, relies on testimonies from Eritreans who have fled the country.

Ethiopia and Sudan receive many of Eritrea's refugees. Human rights groups have, however, also complained about the deplorable conditions in some of the camps

'The approach is naive'

Experts, however, fear that precisely this issue could be undermined in the current talks between Europe and Eritrea. "From the European side, there is the hope that if they invest money in the country, people will no longer be forced into this long military service and as a result, will not want to flee. That is simply naive," argued Nicole Hirt, an expert on Eritrea at the GIGA institute in Hamburg. "I don't see any motivation from the Eritrean side to change their policies. I think that Europe should rather put more pressure on Eritrea before putting money into it."

The European Union's recent actions, however, point to a different approach. In May and June, media reports suggested that the EU was seeking a stronger "border protection" cooperation with eight African states. Eritrea was one of them. Additionally, Brussels promised to pour 40 million euros ($44.9 million) over the next three years into itsTrust Fund for Africa.

In Eritrea itself, a policy change in its national service sector has not been a topic of discussion. And the most recent tension between Eritrea and Ethiopia, make a change in Asmara's forced recruitment policy very unlikely.

Source=http://www.dw.com/en/germany-and-eritrea-defending-human-rights-or-curbing-migration/a-19532224

DW RECOMMENDS

Martin Plaut / 10 hours ago 07/09/2016

Eritrea remains one of the most repressive countries on earth, but the government of President Isaias Afewerki has attempted to downplay this reality.

No international media are allowed to have a correspondent based inside the country.

But in the run-up to the 25th anniversary in May this year the international media were invited in for carefully staged tours. Eritreans from the diaspora came to join the celebrations.

But the image of a country celebrating its freedom, happy and contented with its government is in sharp contrast to the tens of thousands who flee – only to have to be rescued in the Mediterranean.

Now photographs and film have been smuggled out of Eritrea by the Freedom Friday network, which is encouraging resistance to the regime.

The material portrays a much stacker reality.

They also show underground opposition, with resistance graffiti sprayed on walls – only to be covered up by government agents.

These are translations from Tigrigna, from the top. Most refer to the May celebrations.

1. 25 years of suffering and anxiety [from May]
2. 25 years – a lot of deceptive words through zero-three (the government’s rumour-mill). Many heroes in prison – we are being wiped out because of the Isaias administration
3. The government of Eritrea dwells on past history, while the Europeans discover new technology
4. The seas of Libya are filled with Eritrean youth, while the foolish people are laughing and dancing

This writer simply asks: “Isaias please step down”

The video that has been secretly sent out reinforces the message of poverty and repression.

Here are two stills showing undercover police (security agents) stopping and searching cars in Asmara. Freedom Friday’s network says they now routinely do this – looking for resistance material: posters, paint, printing equipment and even arms. They also look for currency.

searched, boot open

Undercover police question driver

There is also video showing how people – mostly women – have to sit for hours, waiting to buy everyday goods.

Here they are waiting to purchase fuel for cooking.

The Freedom Friday activists comment: ‘This was a good day! People were hopeful for getting some lamba [cooking fuel].’

Children are used to stake a family’s place in a queue.

But this is a long, arduous and entirely wasteful process.

No wonder productivity is so low and the economy relies so heavily on the mine at Bisha and the remittances from the diaspora!

Indefinite National Service has left many families desperately poor.

This has been exacerbated by drought and by the change in the currency (the Nakfa) and requirements that withdrawals from bank accounts are severely restricted.

A permanent ‘no-war, no-peace’ confrontation with Ethiopia over their disputed border has only made matters worse.

Little surprise that there is growing discontent and – as the graffiti shows – growing resistance.

Source=https://martinplaut.wordpress.com/2016/09/07/repression-resistance-and-poverty-secretly-filmed-photos-and-video-smuggled-out-of-eritrea/

 The footprints were found by the team's local guide in sediment.Courtesy of Pr Coppa

The discovery of the oldest Homo erectus footprints in the world, alongside fragments of fossilised skulls, could advance palaeontologists' knowledge of the stature and anatomy of modern man's closest ancestors. The fossils were unearthed in a region known as Buia in the heart of the Semi-arid Danakil Depression in eastern Eritrea, during an expedition led by researchers from the Italian university of Sapienza and the National Museum of Eritrea.

Their latest research started in late 2015, in an area constituted by many geological layers spanning several hundred thousand years. One day, the team's local guide made a surprising discovery: he came across a 26-square-metre foot-printed sediment surface.

Due to their ephemeral nature in soft sediments, footprints tend to be altered and eroded very quickly, so their preservation is an exceptional phenomenon. Analysing the different sediment layers, researchers found out the prints were approximately 800 000 years old. At this time, the only member of the human family tree to live in the region was Homo erectus.

The researchers thus say the prints are the oldest known to belong to Homo erectus and this is a rare occasion to get a glimpse of the lives of Homo erectus individuals in motion in their ecosystem hundreds of thousand years ago.

The footprints were found in the Danakil desert, EritreaStephan Gladieu/Getty Images

The sediments and the shape of the prints as well as their location alongside an extinct species of antelopes' footprints suggest the environment in which these early humans lived in was very different that it is today. Instead of a desert, it would probably have been a lakeside buffered by grassland.

Significance of the footprints

The discovery is significant because ancient fossilised footprints are very rare, but also because it has the potential to improve scientists' understanding of Homo erectus.

"The importance of the footprints is due to their extreme rarity. In Africa, archaeological sites with human fossils in Africa are not very numerous, but are still in the hundreds. The footprints of our ancestors however have so far only come from three locations but they can provide us with information that is not deductible by skeletal or dental fossils", lead researcher Alfredo Coppa told IBTimes UK.

Probable adult footprints of Homo erectusCourtesy of Pr Coppa

Here, the footprints appear very similar to that of modern men. They show details of the toes, and the foot shape includes a prominent arch and big toe in line with the others - features that make human feet distinctive and efficient when walking and running.

A more detailed study of these footprints will now take place and may reveal unique information about foot anatomy, stature, body mass, and locomotor biomechanics - including gait and walking speed of H erectus. Scientists may gain critical clues to better understand how hominins behaved and fared in their environment some 800 000 years ago.

Significance of the skulls fragments

In addition to the footprints, the skull fragments offer useful perspectives on the evolution of Homo erectus over thousands of years.

The Pleistocene (between around 2.588 million to 11,700 years) era represents a period of major transition in human evolution, when some of our primitive H erectus ancestors evolved into species with larger brains and more modern bodies.

Detail of the Homo erectus footprints found at the site.Courtesy of Pr Coppa

The problem is human fossils from that time are fragmentary between 1.3 and 0.5 million years ago, especially when it comes to the postcranial area of the skull. These new fossils in Buia could therefore help to fill the gap.

The Buia fossils have an intriguing blend of primitive and more modern characteristics, combining more primitive H. erectus traits with an increase in brain size and some modern aspects of hip structure.

"In this way, the Buia fossils link H erectus with anatomy seen in later species such as H. heidelbergensis", the authors explain. The fossils and the prints thus add a new piece to the puzzle of human evolution.

Source=http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/eritrea-oldest-homo-erectus-footprints-ever-discovered-adds-piece-puzzle-human-evolution-1566082

The Interior Ministry has rejected the asylum requests of thousands of Eritreans based solely on their status as army deserters in their home country, a precedent that can no longer continue after new ruling.

Ilan Lior  Sep 05, 2016 9:22 AM

 Eritrean asylum seekers protest against their government at the EU's office in Ramat Gan on June 21, 2016. Credit Moti Milrod

• Why are the Jews not preparing a plan to help the refugees?
• At least 7,000 Eritreans in Israel survived torture, rape in Sinai
• Israel outright rejects asylum requests by Eritreans and Sudanese
• For Eritrean asylum seekers in Israel, cycling success is overshadowed by threat of jail

A custody appeals tribunal Sunday overruled the Interior Ministry’s legal opinion that Eritreans who deserted from their country’s army are never entitled to refugee status. The ministry has used this opinion to reject asylum applications for thousands of Eritreans.

The ruling could affect tens of thousands of Eritreans in Israel. Those whose asylum requests have been rejected are now likely to ask that they be considered. For those whose applications are still pending, the state will no longer be able to systematically reject them because they were based on desertion or draft-dodging.

In addition, over the past year, the state has used a procedural issue – the fact that the applications were submitted more than a year after the asylum seeker entered Israel – to reject many asylum applications without even discussing them. Now, Eritrean asylum seekers will be able to argue that they didn’t bother submitting applications before because they knew they would be rejected, but in light of Sunday’s ruling, the circumstances have changed.

According to information provided by the ministry’s Population, Immigration and Border Authority in response to a freedom of information request by Haaretz, from 2009 until the start of July 2016, Eritrean nationals submitted 7,218 asylum requests in Israel. Of these, only eight were approved, while 3,105 are still awaiting a response. All the others were either rejected or withdrawn.

Commenting on this data, Elad Azar, the custody judge hearing the case in Jerusalem, wrote, “Even in the completely theoretical case in which it was found that refugee status had to be granted to all those asylum seekers, I believe this isn’t a quantity Israel is incapable of digesting or that would lead to unreasonable results, given that in any case, all of them are expected to remain in Israel for a long time even if their applications are rejected.”

Azar said the state can’t refuse to apply the 1951 Refugee Convention to an entire group of asylum seekers making similar claims just because that group is large. If a person deserted for political reasons and would face an exceptionally harsh sentence if he returned, this could justify refugee status, it said.

“In general, desertion in and of itself doesn’t constitute grounds for granting political asylum,” wrote Azar. “But desertion that is seen as expressing a political view, and for which the punishment exceeds reasonable bounds, could amount to persecution in the sense in which Israel interprets the Refugee Convention.”

This would not apply to someone who deserted due to economic reasons, conscientious objection “or ordinary ‘cowardice,’” Azar stressed. But if a deserter’s government views the desertion as a political act, it could justify granting asylum.

One of the ministry’s arguments in the case was that if its legal opinion were rejected, Israel could be forced to grant asylum to thousands of Eritreans, with serious consequences. But Azar rejected that argument.

“Limiting the protection given under the Refugee Convention by not applying it to people entitled to refugee status, just because there are many of them, doesn’t comply with the Refugee Convention or the rules of Israeli administrative law,” he wrote. “We are talking about the personal, individual rationales of many people, not about a general group rationale.”

The appeal was filed two years ago on behalf of an Eritrean asylum seeker by Tel Aviv University’s Refugee Rights Clinic and the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants. The asylum request was based on his having deserted from the Eritrean army and then leaving the country, in violation of the law.

On the basis of the ministry’s legal opinion, the interior minister’s advisory committee on refugee affairs had rejected his application without even considering it. The appeals tribunal did not order the committee to accept the application, but did say it had to reconsider the issue without reference to this opinion.

“We can’t accept the clear trend in the cases that have been brought to this tribunal to date, in which asylum requests by Eritrean nationals that are based on claims of having evaded or deserted from military/national service are rejected at hasty meetings, without any reason, and without even being discussed by the full advisory committee on refugee affairs and brought to the interior minister for a decision,” Azar wrote.
Attorney Anat Ben-Dor of the Refugee Rights Clinic, who submitted the appeal, welcomed the tribunal’s decision. The ruling “requires the Interior Ministry to discuss individual applications for asylum in accordance with the rules of the Refugee Convention, without relying on an opinion that was meant to be a tool for systematically rejecting thousands of asylum requests,” she said.

Now, she added, the ministry should reconsider all the applications that were rejected on the basis of this opinion.

Reut Michaeli, executive director of the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, said, “It’s regrettable that judicial intervention was needed so that the Interior Ministry would apply the rules of the Refugee Convention, to which Israel is committed, instead of trying to find tortuous ways of circumventing them. In every Western country, large proportions of Eritrean asylum seekers are accepted as refugees, and just recently, another UN report revealed the torture, slave conditions and systematic human rights violations that happen in the Eritrean army, and in the country in general.

“I hope that now, the asylum system will finally begin to operate in compliance with international standards,” she added.

Ilan Lior
Haaretz Correspondent
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.740249

Ilan Lior  Sep 05, 2016 9:22 AM
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Eritrean asylum seekers protest against their government at the EU's office in Ramat Gan on June 21, 2016. Moti Milrod
Why are the Jews not preparing a plan to help the refugees?
At least 7,000 Eritreans in Israel survived torture, rape in Sinai
Israel outright rejects asylum requests by Eritreans and Sudanese
For Eritrean asylum seekers in Israel, cycling success is overshadowed by threat of jail
A custody appeals tribunal Sunday overruled the Interior Ministry’s legal opinion that Eritreans who deserted from their country’s army are never entitled to refugee status. The ministry has used this opinion to reject asylum applications from thousands of Eritreans.
The ruling could affect tens of thousands of Eritreans in Israel. Those whose asylum requests have been rejected are now likely to ask that they be considered. For those whose applications are still pending, the state will no longer be able to systematically reject them because they were based on desertion or draft-dodging.
In addition, over the past year, the state has used a procedural issue – the fact that the applications were submitted more than a year after the asylum seeker entered Israel – to reject many asylum applications without even discussing them. Now, Eritrean asylum seekers will be able to argue that they didn’t bother submitting applications before because they knew they would be rejected, but in light of Sunday’s ruling, the circumstances have changed.
According to information provided by the ministry’s Population, Immigration and Border Authority in response to a freedom of information request by Haaretz, from 2009 until the start of July 2016, Eritrean nationals submitted 7,218 asylum requests in Israel. Of these, only eight were approved, while 3,105 are still awaiting a response. All the others were either rejected or withdrawn.
Commenting on this data, Elad Azar, the custody judge hearing the case in Jerusalem, wrote, “Even in the completely theoretical case in which it was found that refugee status had to be granted to all those asylum seekers, I believe this isn’t a quantity Israel is incapable of digesting or that would lead to unreasonable results, given that in any case, all of them are expected to remain in Israel for a long time even if their applications are rejected.”
Azar said the state can’t refuse to apply the 1951 Refugee Convention to an entire group of asylum seekers making similar claims just because that group is large. If a person deserted for political reasons and would face an exceptionally harsh sentence if he returned, this could justify refugee status, it said.

“In general, desertion in and of itself doesn’t constitute grounds for granting political asylum,” wrote Azar. “But desertion that is seen as expressing a political view, and for which the punishment exceeds reasonable bounds, could amount to persecution in the sense in which Israel interprets the Refugee Convention.”
This would not apply to someone who deserted due to economic reasons, conscientious objection “or ordinary ‘cowardice,’” Azar stressed. But if a deserter’s government views the desertion as a political act, it could justify granting asylum.
One of the ministry’s arguments in the case was that if its legal opinion were rejected, Israel could be forced to grant asylum to thousands of Eritreans, with serious consequences. But Azar rejected that argument.
“Limiting the protection given under the Refugee Convention by not applying it to people entitled to refugee status, just because there are many of them, doesn’t comply with the Refugee Convention or the rules of Israeli administrative law,” he wrote. “We are talking about the personal, individual rationales of many people, not about a general group rationale.”
The appeal was filed two years ago on behalf of an Eritrean asylum seeker by Tel Aviv University’s Refugee Rights Clinic and the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants. The asylum request was based on his having deserted from the Eritrean army and then leaving the country, in violation of the law.
On the basis of the ministry’s legal opinion, the interior minister’s advisory committee on refugee affairs had rejected his application without even considering it. The appeals tribunal did not order the committee to accept the application, but did say it had to reconsider the issue without reference to this opinion.
“We can’t accept the clear trend in the cases that have been brought to this tribunal to date, in which asylum requests by Eritrean nationals that are based on claims of having evaded or deserted from military/national service are rejected at hasty meetings, without any reason, and without even being discussed by the full advisory committee on refugee affairs and brought to the interior minister for a decision,” Azar wrote.
Attorney Anat Ben-Dor of the Refugee Rights Clinic, who submitted the appeal, welcomed the tribunal’s decision. The ruling “requires the Interior Ministry to discuss individual applications for asylum in accordance with the rules of the Refugee Convention, without relying on an opinion that was meant to be a tool for systematically rejecting thousands of asylum requests,” she said.
Now, she added, the ministry should reconsider all the applications that were rejected on the basis of this opinion.
Reut Michaeli, executive director of the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, said, “It’s regrettable that judicial intervention was needed so that the Interior Ministry would apply the rules of the Refugee Convention, to which Israel is committed, instead of trying to find tortuous ways of circumventing them. In every Western country, large proportions of Eritrean asylum seekers are accepted as refugees, and just recently, another UN report revealed the torture, slave conditions and systematic human rights violations that happen in the Eritrean army, and in the country in general.
“I hope that now, the asylum system will finally begin to operate in compliance with international standards,” she added.
 
Ilan Lior
Haaretz Correspondent
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