Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Human Rights Watch
- Acknowledgments
- Table of Contents
- Foreword
- The Day After
- The Trouble With Tradition: When “Values” Trample Over Rights
- Without Rules: A Failed Approach to Corporate Accountability
- Lives in the Balance: The Human Cost of Environmental Neglect
- Photo Essays
- Africa
- Americas
- Asia
- Europe and Central Asia
- Middle East and North Africa
- United States
- 2012 Human Rights Watch Publications
Eritrea
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Human Rights Watch
- Acknowledgments
- Table of Contents
- Foreword
- The Day After
- The Trouble With Tradition: When “Values” Trample Over Rights
- Without Rules: A Failed Approach to Corporate Accountability
- Lives in the Balance: The Human Cost of Environmental Neglect
- Photo Essays
- Africa
- Americas
- Asia
- Europe and Central Asia
- Middle East and North Africa
- United States
- 2012 Human Rights Watch Publications
Summary
Torture, arbitrary detention, and severe restrictions on freedom of expression, association, and religious freedom remain routine in Eritrea. Elections have not been held since Eritrea gained independence in 1993, the constitution has never been implemented, and political parties are not allowed. There are no institutional constraints on President Isaias Afewerki, now in his twentieth year in power.
In addition to ongoing serious human rights abuses, forced labor and indefinite military service prompt thousands of Eritreans to flee the country every year.
Access to the country for international humanitarian and human rights organizations is almost impossible and the country has no independent media. In recognition of the “continued widespread and systematic violation of human rights,” the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) in 2012 appointed a special rapporteur on Eritrea.
Forced Labor and Indefinite Military Service
National service keeps most young Eritreans in perpetual bondage. Although a decree mandating compulsory national service limits service to 18 months, in practice the government prolongs service indefinitely. National service conscripts are poorly fed and receive inadequate medical care. Eritrean refugees describe them as emaciated. Their pay (less than US$30 per month) is insufficient to provide sustenance for a family. Female conscripts report sexual abuse by commanding officers. In early 2012, President Isaias acknowledged that national service members and government employees are so poorly paid that they essentially “have been fulfilling their duties apparently without pay” for the past 20 years.
Conscripts allegedly provided forced labor to construct infrastructure at the Bisha gold mine, Eritrea's only operating mine and a major source of revenue. Although the Eritrean government had agreed with the mine's principal international owner that no national service conscripts would be allowed to work at Bisha, it required use of a ruling party-controlled contractor, Segen Construction. Segen makes widespread use of conscript labor and there is evidence that it did so at Bisha as well. Escapees told Human Rights Watch in 2012 that they worked 12-hour shifts and endured dangerously inadequate food and housing conditions. They did not complain because, as one escapee told Human Rights Watch, “we were afraid for our lives.”
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- Information
- World Report 2013Events of 2012, pp. 84 - 89Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2013