Bringing their stories to light

By Claire Denman, CSW Public Relations Officer.

Three years ago, I found myself at the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC), playing a game with an eight-year-old girl – I would say the name of an animal and she would draw it. She was an Eritrean refugee and had come to the HRC with her parents as part of a delegation who were there to give testimony.

Her entire family had been detained by the government, locked up with others in a shipping container. She shared memories of the entire place smelling awful, of being freezing cold at night and roasting hot during the day and of how she and her other siblings joked about which family member was covered with the most lice. A serious issue was turned into a game as their parents did their best to shield their children from the full force of the horrors they were experiencing.

In Eritrea prisoners are confined in appalling conditions. In fact, thousands of prisoners of conscience are detained indefinitely in facilities where conditions are life threatening and torture is rife.

On 17 March 2017, two Pentecostal Christians reportedly died in hospital after undergoing a hunger strike to protest the abuse they suffered while detained at Wi’a military camp. The only means of resistance they had left was their own bodies. Their tragic story is emblematic of many others whose suffering and deaths generally fail to register internationally, due to the closed nature and pervasive control of the ruling regime.

The Eritrean government is one of the most repressive in the world. A campaign of arrests targeting selected religious communities has been ongoing since 2002, when the government effectively outlawed all practices not affiliated with the Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran or Orthodox Christian denominations and Sunni Islam.

Prayer meeting raided

In one incident, six men and four women were reportedly rounded up following a raid on a prayer meeting; during the same period, an unspecified number of Christians were picked up from their homes in a round-up that is reported to still be ongoing.

In August 2016 eight Christians, including a mother and her three-year-old child, were detained after gathering in a park. Another report highlights the arrests of 79 men, women and children, including a mother and baby, who were rounded up during a wedding in May 2016.

Join us in prayer. Let the world know you have not forgotten Eritrea.