GENEVA: Brutal government repression in Eritrea, including extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and torture, is leaving its citizens with no option but to flee, a UN expert said yesterday.
“The human rights situation in Eritrea is dire,” Sheila Keetharuth told reporters in Geneva, where the UN’s top human rights body was debating the situation, noting that thousands have fled despite a shoot-to-kill policy for those trying to cross into neighbouring Ethiopia or Sudan. Keetharuth, the UN’s first special rapporteur on the rights situation in the autocratic Horn of Africa country, called on the international community to engage directly with Eritrean authorities and urged African nations especially to explore how they might be able to help improve the situation.
But her report was swiftly denounced as unfair by the Eritrean ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council.
Keetharuth said the world should pursue efforts to receive news of the numerous people being detained incommunicado, including Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak, who was arrested along with nine other journalists and 11 opposition politicians in September 2001.
In a report to the rights council, Keetharuth said rampant violations of citizens’ rights in Eritrea were “triggering a constant stream of refugees.”
