A small poor country in the Horn of Africa, Eritrea will celebrate Wednesday, May 24 the 30th anniversary of its independence. Having become one of the most closed states in the world, it is ruled with an iron fist by President Isaias Afwerki, hero of independence, who has established a one-party system, without an election, where any opposition is severely repressed.
“A one-man dictatorship…Eritrea has no legislature, no civil society organizations or independent media, and no independent judiciary,” says the NGO Human Rights Watch ( HRW). Independent media have been banned since 2001 in the country, ranked 174th (out of 180) in Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) 2023 press freedom index.
The human rights situation there is “disastrous” and without “any sign of improvement”, lamented in March the UN Human Rights Council, citing in particular cases of torture and enforced disappearances committed in “total impunity”.
Hundreds of thousands of Eritreans have left their country, fleeing religious persecution, arbitrary arrests and indefinite national service, equated with forced labor by human rights organizations.
Italian colony
An Italian colony from 1889 to 1941, Eritrea then came under British administration until 1952. It was then federated by a UN resolution with Ethiopia, of which it became an “autonomous entity”, with its own flag, parliament and government. But in 1962, Emperor Haile Selassie proclaimed the annexation of Eritrea.
An independence movement, led by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Eritrea (FPLE), develops and engages in an armed struggle against Ethiopian domination. In May 1991, EPLF forces – who were instrumental in bringing down the “Red Negus” Mengistu Hailé Mariam regime in Addis Ababa – seized Asmara and installed a government led by Isaias Afwerki.
On May 24, 1993, after a referendum supported by the UN, Eritrea officially proclaimed its independence, thus depriving Ethiopia of its only coastline, on the Red Sea. Twenty-five years of tension between the two neighbors followed, which exploded into a bloody border conflict between 1998 and 2000, causing 80,000 deaths and 1.3 million displaced persons, without resolving the question of the demarcation of the borders.
On July 9, 2018, the government of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed accepted the demarcation of the border set by an independent international commission in 2002. This rapprochement allowed the reopening of embassies in Asmara and Addis Ababa, the restoration of air links, business relationships and telephone lines. It will also earn Abiy Ahmed the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.
Abuses in Tigray
In November 2020, the Ethiopian Prime Minister sent the federal army to Tigray, a northern region of Ethiopia, accusing local authorities of having organized attacks on military installations. This border region of Eritrea is led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a party that dominated the Ethiopian government until 2018 and sworn enemy of the Asmara regime.
The Eritrean army enters Tigray in support of Ethiopian forces. During the two years of conflict, its soldiers were accused of abuses against civilians (massacres, rapes, looting, etc.) and the regime was sanctioned by the United States in 2021. Asmara rejects these accusations, described in February as ” pipe dream” and “disinformation” by Isaias Afwerki.
The Ethiopian government signed a peace agreement with the TPLF in November 2022, but Eritrea did not participate in the negotiations. In January, the United States announced that Eritrean forces had begun a “withdrawal” from Tigray, but a UN report in March deemed it “very slow and largely incomplete”. As access to Tigray is restricted, it is impossible to independently verify whether Eritrean troops have left the region.
Eritrea, whose main riches are gold, copper and zinc mines, is one of the least developed countries on the planet. Its population, estimated between 3 and 6 million inhabitants, lives mainly from agriculture, an activity very vulnerable to extreme climatic hazards. Ranked 176th out of 191 countries in the UN Human Development Index in 2021, the country is also one of the most corrupt, 162nd out of 180 in the ranking of the NGO Transparency International.
