Eritrean Pastors Still Jailed without Charges

Eritrean Pastors Still Jailed without Charges by Compass Direct LOS ANGELES, July 28 (Compass)—Nine weeks after Eritrean police arrested three prominent Protestant pastors, the Asmara government continues to detain all three at separate police stations in the capital city. Families and church members of the jailed men have been refused any direct access to the prisoners.

Imprisoned since May 23, the Rev. Haile Naizgi and Dr. Kiflu Gebremeske are leading pastors in the Full Gospel Church. Pastor Tesfatsion Hagos of the Rema Evangelical Church was arrested on May 26. The men remain under arrest at Asmara’s No. 1, No. 6 and No. 4 police stations, respectively.

Although police authorities have allowed the pastors’ families to bring them food and clothing while under detention, face-to-face contact has been denied.

No reason has been given for their imprisonment, nor have they been charged with any legal offense. Under standard procedures, any Eritrean citizen arrested by the police or military forces is subjected to thorough interrogation within the first 24 hours of arrest. However, Compass has confirmed that the three pastors were not summoned for questioning by local authorities until mid-July, seven weeks after their arrest.

Family members reportedly petitioned two weeks ago that the government release the men on bail, thus requiring that they be charged formally before a court of law. But according to a source close to the pastors’ families, one of the church leaders has sent word out stating, “Don’t expect my release anytime soon.”

Meanwhile, another evangelical pastor has managed to escape from the Sawa Military Center, together with a well-known Christian musician also imprisoned there. After several months’ detention at Sawa, Pastor Mengse Tweldemedhane and singer Yonas Haile fled together across the Eritrean border into Sudan in late June.

The pastor of Asmara’s Hallelujah Church, Tweldemedhane had been locked in an underground cell at Adi-Abyto military camp after his arrest February 15 with 50 members of his congregation. He was later transferred to military confinement at the Sawa camp.

Haile, who was arrested in Asmara on March 19 for releasing a music video entitled “Jesus: the Solution to Man’s Problems,” had been incarcerated at Sawa since March 24.

But popular Christian singer Helen Berhane remains under severe confinement in a shipping container at the Mai Serwa military camp just north of Asmara, where she was arrested on May 13.

A Rema Church member, Berhane has refused to sign a document retracting her evangelical faith and promising to stop participating in local Protestant activities. A military commander reportedly told the 29-year-old woman, “You will be allowed no visitors, and you will rot here until you sign this paper.”

The Eritrean military frequently uses metal shipping containers as severe-confinement cells, jailing up to 12 or 13 prisoners together or putting some individuals into solitary confinement. The prisoners are allowed out twice a day under guard to relieve themselves, but otherwise subjected to extreme temperatures day and night. “It’s like being stuck in an oven in the daytime, and then overnight it becomes a refrigerator,” recalled one evangelical after the experience.

One of Berhane’s guards recently reported her to the commander after he caught her listening to a Christian program on a small radio in her container. As punishment, the commander transferred her to an underground cell, where she was kept chained for two weeks.

Still another local Christian singer, Hamelmale Habtemichel of the Kale Kiwot Church, was arrested in Mendefera in the third week of June for issuing a new musical tape recording. She was taken into custody together with music shop owner Tsegay Abraha, who had recorded and displayed the singer’s tape for sale in her shop. Both were released from the Mendefera police station after nearly a month in custody.

Various Protestant Christians jailed in containers at Mai Serwa in recent months report that at least nine members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses faith are incarcerated there, including a 96-year-old man suffering from chronic diarrhea. National military service is obligatory for both men and women in Eritrea, which has criminalized the conscientious objector stance of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Imprisoned evangelicals have been told by their Mai Serwa interrogators that the Eritrean Ministry of Defense has issued secret orders to invade and stop all secret house meetings of the outlawed Protestant believers. The orders came shortly after Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki declared publicly on March 5 that the government would not tolerate religious groups which were “distracting from the unity of the Eritrean people and distorting the true meaning of religion.”

The July 5 arrest of four more Protestant believers has been confirmed in or near the capital of Asmara. Two women from the Full Gospel Church were arrested while sharing their faith along the Abashawelo road in Asmara. It was the second arrest for Meaza Araya, 34, previously jailed for attending a secret worship meeting, but the first for Elsa Ghermay, 30, a single woman living with her elderly mother. Both were taken the same day to the Mai Serwa military prison, where they remain.

The same afternoon, two members of the Rema Church in Adi-Segdo were arrested from their homes without explanation by the military police. Dawit Mesghena and Tesafa Araya remain under detention at the Truck ‘B’ military camp near Asmara.

The Eritrean government closed down the nation’s independent Protestant churches in May 2002, forbidding the 20,000 members of 12 banned denominations to worship even in their homes. In addition to indigenous Pentecostal and charismatic congregations, the outlawed groups include Adventist, Presbyterian, Assemblies of God and Methodist-linked churches.

Although the evangelicals were ordered to apply to the Department of Religious Affairs for registration in order to become legal again, those who completed the involved application process are still waiting two years later for a government response.

The Eritrean Constitution guarantees freedom of religion for all citizens. But Afewerki’s government recognizes only Orthodox Christians, Catholics, Lutherans and Muslims as members of the nation’s historic, “official” religions.

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