Letter from Africa: Emptying Eritrea
In
our series of letters from African journalists, film-maker and
columnist Farai Sevenzo considers why Eritreans endanger themselves so
much to reach Europe.
The Mediterranean is fast becoming a massive watery grave for Africans.Another 500 reportedly drowned off the coast of Italy the other week, while the attention span of the world quickly moves away.
But who are these Africans willing to risk all to reach European shores where they are not wanted?
Those of us following the story of African migration will have noticed a marked increase in the number of Eritreans being interviewed in refugee camps on the edge of Europe.
President Isaias Afewerki is accused by human rights groups of turning the tiny East African country into "one giant prison" and brooks no opposition.
But is that reason enough for this tiny nation to keep haemorrhaging its citizens at such an alarming rate?
The young men and women who survive trekking across the desert and make it across the Mediterranean in wooden boats further endanger themselves by climbing on to lorries in European ports to try and find a place to make a life.
In Eritrea, they are expected by President Isais' government to do national service until they are 40.
All around them high-ranking government officials are locked up, opposition members are imprisoned, the private press has been gagged for decades and President Isaias keeps flexing what military muscle he has by constantly threatening another border war with Ethiopia.
And he has also been accused of sending his soldiers across the border of another neighbour, Djibouti.
Mapping Mediterranean migration
The Eritrean government maintains those leaving are economic migrants.
"This phenomenon where the youth are leaving their countries to go to the richer countries is an international phenomenon and it should be fought by the international community," Eritrea's ambassador to Italy Zemede Tekle Woldetatios told the BBC last year, blaming human traffickers.
He said continuing conscription was the fault of Ethiopia's refusal to withdraw from the border town of Badme, awarded to Eritrea by the UN more than a decade ago.
Kinship forgotten But the numbers speak for themselves - a population of 6.3m is responding with their feet and emptying the country with despairing frequency.
The UN estimates that as many as 3,000 people every month are trying to leave his rule by any means possible.
These are difficult times to be a refugee.
Europe, its politicians tell us, is full. The mass of legal immigrants pouring out of the east has knocked the fate of Africans back; sympathy for the plight of those fleeing persecution has all but evaporated.
Africans have always had a complicated relationship with their leaders, but Mr Isais seems to have cloaked himself in robes of one from the 1970s - unaccountable and seemingly obsessed with power.
In June, the UN Human Rights Council set up a commission of inquiry into human rights abuses in this tiny Red Sea nation, which will report back in just under a year.
Source: BBC
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