Eritrea: Further information on: Prisoner of conscience/Torture or ill-treatment/Detention without charge PUBLIC AI Index: AFR 64/005/2005 11 May 2005
Further Information on UA 73/05 (AFR 64/003/2005, 24 March 2005) Prisoner of conscience/Torture or ill-treatment/Detention without charge
ERITREA Pastor Kidane Weldu (m), aged in his mid-50s 14 members of the Kale Hiwot evangelical church New name: Demoze Afewerki (m), aged 67, chair of the Gideons (Bible) International branch in Eritrea
Demoze Afewerki, 67, married with three children, is now known to have been arrested at the same time as Pastor Kidane Weldu, and is detained without charge, incommunicado, in the same prison. He is head of the inspection department of the Housing and Commerce Bank of Eritrea, and chair of the Gideons (Bible) International branch in Eritrea.
Pastor Kidane Weldu of the Mullu Wongel (Full Gospel) Church, arrested in mid-March 2005, is still detained incommunicado and without charge or trial in the special security section (Wenjel Mirmera) of the 2nd police station in the capital, Asmara.
Pastor Kidane Weldu is one of 16 full-time pastors of various evangelical churches currently detained without charge in military, security and police prisons in Eritrea on account of their religious beliefs. Among the detained pastors are Haile Naizgi, Dr Kiflu Gebremeskal and Tesfatsion Hagos (for details see UA 187/04, AFR 64/006/2004, 1 June 2004), and Reverend Doctor Futsum Kuluberhan, Reverend Doctor Tekleab Mengisteab and Reverend Gebremedhin Giorghis (spelling corrected) – members of a revival Sunday School movement ("Medhanie Alem") of the Eritrean Orthodox Church.
Up to 900 members of these banned churches, worshipping clandestinely, are also detained. Among them are nearly 150 women, including a well-known evangelical singer, Helen Berhane.
They are held in harsh conditions, some of them tortured to try to make them sign a renunciation of their faith, in shipping containers, secret cells or underground prisons. They are detained in a number of military prisons (with over 230 in Sawa military conscription and training centre, near the Sudan border), Mai Serwa army camp near Asmara, and police and security prisons in Asmara, Keren town in the north and the Red Sea port of Assab.
The Eritrean authorities continue to claim that accusations of religious persecution are "groundless". The director of the President’s Office recently said that "one cannot question the credentials of this country on religious rights and religious tolerance" (quoted by Agence France Presse, 5 April 2005), though saying that "if a sect assembles without permission, its members are maybe arrested for five hours and then let off with a warning." An Eritrean representative informed the UN Commission on Human Rights in April that the Seventh Day Adventist Church, one of over a dozen minority Christian churches which had been shut down in May 2002, would soon be granted official registration, but none of them has yet been allowed to open.
AI Index: AFR 64/005/2005 11 May 2005