I certainly welcome today’s meeting .It offers us a real opportunity to
pay tribute to those in Eritrea who show such courage as they
continue to face appalling persecution at the hands of the
totalitarian regime led by the Isaias Afewerki.
Human rights violations, relentless cruelty, tyranny and oppression
are, tragically , everyday experiences for Eritreans.
It is horrifying .It is also so far away from what so many Eritreans
heroically fought for, and what campaigners outside that country
were supporting, in the struggle for liberation.
Twenty seven years ago ,in March 1988, I travelled to Eritrea with a
War on Want team to look at water projects and to assess other
ways of developing partnership and support with Eritreans.I have
also been there twice since in delegations from the European
Parliament.
In 1988,in the midst of conflict, incessant Ethiopian air attacks meant
that we could only travel at night, and the devastating effects of the
27 year war between Eritrea and Ethiopia were painfully plain.
At the hospital in Orotta, on the night after the battle of Afebet, we
saw men and women fighters of the EPLF army with the most terrible
battlefield injuries, and we also witnessed the bravery, skill and
inventiveness of the people of Eritrea.
This, and other experiences at that time, made me even more
determined to continue to show practical solidarity with the
Eritreans who were demonstrating the indomitable spirit which
had, for years, enabled them to fight poverty , famine, and armed
Ethiopian aggression.
When I returned to Britain, I wrote a book in which I expressed great
admiration for the people, for organisations like the National Union
of Eritrean women…and for the EPLF Leader, Isaias Afewerki.
When Eritrea finally won independence and the victorious forces
rode into Asmara in 1993,we rejoiced at what we, and countless
Eritreans, thought was the beginning of a future of freedom.
We were so wrong.
Twenty two years later, Eritrea is now being described as Africa’s
North Korea – and the cruelty which is inflicted on Eritrean people by
the Afewerki regime justifies that description :
The National Assembly hasn’t met since 2002 ;
the 1997 constitution has never been implemented;
there is no independent judiciary;
extra-judicial executions, torture, arbitrary detentions of journalists,
teachers, and members of religious groups are common;
Eritreans are not allowed to move, speak, assemble or organise
freely;
Indefinite compulsory military conscription and forced labour
prevails.
The recent UN Commission report calls such conditions “slavery” and
said that “Some of the gross and widespread human rights abuses
which are being committed in Eritrea, under the authority of the
Government, often constitute crimes against humanity”.
A member of that UN Commission of Inquiry said “We seldom see
human rights violations of the scope and scale as we see in Eritrea
today”.
The list of atrocities goes on:
Women face discrimination and sexual and gender-based violence
and are denied access to justice.
Few, if any, detainees are brought to trial.
”Disappearences” are commonplace.
According to Human Rights Watch, prisoners are held in crowded
underground cells or in shipping containers with no space to lie
down.
The regime in Eritrea is,in short, a secretive, reclusive, authoritarian
tyranny which is ruthlessly controlled by President Aferwerki.
His rule of terror is a complete betrayal of the cause of liberation and
self-determination for which so many Eritreans fought and died.
That is why such large numbers of Eritreans are prepared to risk
everything - including the “shoot to kill” system operated in border
areas - to escape their country to seek a better life for themselves,
and their families.
The scale of that exodus is huge: in 2014, almost as many men,
women and children fled from Eritrea ( a country of 6 million people
which not at war) , as fled in that year from Syria (a country of 18
million people, torn by 4 years of war).
Clearly, a very large proportion of the people who cross land and sea
in the desperate effort to reach Europe are Eritreans.
And they are unquestionably refugees under every definition of that
pitiful status.
All the evidence of the horror is in the UN Commission report and in
the testimonies of Eritreans.
There is no need, and no room, for doubt.
What IS needed is decisive action, and a clear and unequivocal policy
on maintaining and fully enforcing UN sanctions against the Eritrean
regime.
The UN Commission urges us to offer protection to Eritrean asylum
seekers.
Knowing that, in Britain and in the European Union we must surely
uphold the principle of providing refuge to people who have a
genuine and justified fear of persecution, and are fleeing from what
manifestly constitutes crimes against humanity.
There can be no good reason to say that “giving refuge will simply
encourage more to take awful risks”: Living in Eritrea is an awful risk,
thinking about leaving is an awful risk, doing it is an awful risk.
It isn’t the prospect of refuge that makes make people flee, it is the
dread of STAYING which makes them abandon their homeland.
Eritrea is isolated politically, regionally and internationally and UN
sanctions are firmly in place.
We are hearing now, however, some suggestions that substantial
financial aid should be given to Eritrea as part of efforts being made
to stem the exodus of refugees.
Such a course, if it was ever taken, would be disasterous, not least
because – on the basis of all the evidence about the regime – any EU
aid offered to Eritrea would be seen as an endorsement of the
Government and used to entrench a repressive regime, not to help
those in need.It would almost certainly breach the EU’s commitment
which states that “Human rights is at the forefront of EU
Development Co-operation”.
We need clarity on that and on other concerns which are being
raised.
Nothing can obscure the fact that Eritreans bare being terrorised and
trapped into what amounts to enslavement by a regime that imposes
tyranny, cruelty and oppression.
Nothing should diminish the reality that Eritrean victims of that
persecution deserve our solidarity, and need to be supported by all
of us who believe that conciliation and concession to regimes such as
exists in Eritrea will surely fail.
No such softening should ever be contemplated. Our own freedom
compels us to fulfil our duty to those who are not free,and never will
be until the vileness that imprisons Eritrea is ended.