Newsletter from Eritrea Focus

Eritrea Focus is an association of Non-Governmental Organisations
(NGOs), human rights organisations, exile and refugee groups and
individuals concerned with the gross abuse of human rights in Eritrea.
Newsletter from Eritrea Focus
UK Home Office hardens its asylum guidance for Eritreans
seeking refugee status
In March, the UK Home Office issued two documents, Country
Information and Guidance Eritrea: National (incl. Military) Service and
Country Information and Guidance Eritrea: Illegal Exit, which in a
combined 64 pages have hardened the asylum rules by which thousands of
Eritreans will be judged.
These updated pieces of guidance now represent the most up-to-date
element of the UK’s official opinion on asylum applications from Eritreans
and follow a joint delegation from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
(FCO) and Home Office to Asmara over three days in December 2014.
Despite referencing critical reports from Amnesty International, Human
Rights Watch and ample media coverage of the persecution Eritreans are
subjected to, the report rests its conclusions on the highly discredited
Danish Immigration Service’s report from late 2014. This report has now
been sidelined by the Danish Government after criticism from the report’s
sources, authors and from across the spectrum of human rights and asylum
organisations.
The Home Office’s new view
The Home Office’s main divergence from its previous opinion, and the
opinion of many human rights organisations, is on the issue of National
Service. Under this new guidance National Service in Eritrea no longer
constitutes persecution, degrading or inhumane treatment; it does not
equate to forced labour; it is not indefinite; and, therefore, it does not form
the basis of a legitimate asylum claim. Furthermore, the Home Office now
views desertion from the military and illegal exit from the country as not
giving rise to well-founded fear of persecution or serious harm. The
requirement that, in order to gain a passport or travel document, Eritreans
who had left the country would pay a “reasonable request to pay Disapora
tax” (set at 2 per cent) and sign a ‘letter of apology’ at an Eritrean embassy
was not viewed by the Home Office as placing those concerned at risk. As
the guidance on illegal exit summarises “previous country guidance
indicated that those who had left illegally were at risk on return to Eritrea.
However, up-to-date information from inside Eritrea suggests this is no
longer the case.” This jars with the information gathered by nearly every
other organisation. In fact, cases of punishment for those who evade
military service and return to Eritrea abound – but they are no longer
viewed as reliable by the Home Office. Instead, it reckons on those refusing
National Service merely being required to return to their service, service
which is often indefinite but now not viewed as inhumane. Putting aside the
inaccuracies in the Home Office’s judgement of National Service as not
inhumane, it is big leap of faith to say that returning Eritreans will not be
punished – a leap of faith which unfortunate returnees will be forced to
take.
The Home Office does reserve, in its guidance on National Service, some
protection for “those who have been involved in high-profile opposition to
the Government.” The high bar of opposition now being asked of asylum
seekers is not further defined.
With the impact of this new guidance set to be felt by thousands of Eritrean
asylum seekers in the UK over the coming years, it is a sad reversal for a
country which had previously taken a more enlightened stance. The UK had
previously agreed with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
which, in relation to national service, advises that ‘in practice, the
punishment for desertion or evasion is so severe and disproportionate such
as to amount to persecution.’
Danish Report Rubbished
The Danish Immigration Service report, the basis for many of the Home
Office’s conclusions, had been widely criticised and dismissed as not
reflective of the reality faced inside and outside Eritrea. Human Rights
Watch’s deputy Africa director, Leslie Lefkow, responded to it saying that
“the Danish report seems more like a political effort to stem migration than
an honest assessment of Eritrea’s human rights situation.” The final nail in
its coffin was when two out of three of the reports authors distanced
themselves from it and its only named source criticised the findings. As a
result the Danish Government intervened to quietly overrule the reports
findings merely two weeks after its release and ensured Eritreans could
expect to be “granted asylum in many cases.”
The UK Home Office is under immense pressure to limit the nebulous
political issue of ‘immigration’. Often included within this issue is the plight
of refugees who flee violence and persecution – with Eritreans having as
valid a claim as others. These political pressures can, as Human Rights
Watch has warned, lead to political efforts to stem migration. At the time
the British Government was visiting Asmara, the Danish Government was
sidelining the report on which the UK would base much of their new
guidance. More importantly, thousands of Eritreans were making their way
through Sudan, Libya and across the Mediterranean in search of a life with
more freedom and less repression.
Thousands of Eritreans risk everything in Mediterranean boat
smuggling
No one can have failed to see the deaths last week of migrants and asylum
seekers trying to reach Europe by boat across the Mediterranean. Eritreans
fleeing the brutal dictatorship are now revealed as the second largest
population, behind Syrians, both in terms of asylum applications across
Europe in 2014 and in people arriving via the Mediterranean so far in 2015,
according to the UN Refugee Agency. Sadly, Eritreans have born the brunt
of recent deaths as the tragedy of the ‘deadliest incident on record’ where
28 survivors were rescued from a boat that held 850, included 350
Eritreans.
In the days that followed several deadly incidents, the media began to look
at why Eritreans were taking such big risks in such big numbers. One
refugee summed up the feeling telling The Guardian ‘if I die at sea, it’s not a
problem – at least I won’t be tortured.’ Business Insider writer, Armin
Rosen, writing about ‘the depressing reason the Mediterranean migrant
crisis won’t end any time soon,’ concluded that the crisis demonstrates
“how far people are willing to go to escape oppressive governments, and
push against the widely held delusion that entire populations can be
conditioned to the whims and megalomania of authoritarian governments.”
In Foreign Policy, Michela Wrong challenged the assumption that Eritrea’s
supposed successful work on some of the Millennium Development Goals
made it a good model for others, instead she described the country as ‘an
elegant cage – a suffocating place to live’. The Sunday Telegraph’s Chief
Foreign Correspondent Colin Freeman characterized the country, and its
indefinite National Service, as a “modern-day Sparta.”
Eritrea in EU Parliament
Written Question to the European
Commission on EU aid package
Eritrea. Judith Sargentini MEP, a
member of the Dutch Greens, is
asking:
Latest policy and further
reading
In a press release by Reuters on 24
March 2015, a reference is made to
the EU aid package to Eritrea that is


supposedly being prepared by the
Smith, Chair of the Commission of
European Commission. Amongst the
Inquiry on Human Rights in
objectives of the aid package there
Eritrea at the 28th session of the
would be the aim to "stem a growing
Human Rights Council (16 March
exodus of Eritreans to Europe".
2015)

preparing an aid package for the
Eritrea: Illegal Exit (March 2015)

military) service (March 2015)

Foreign and Commonwealth
as the EU's legal provisions
Office: Eritrea – Country of
indentify human rights as an
Concern (12 March 2015)
essential element for development
cooperation?

Eritrea national (including
If so, how does the European
human rights situation in Eritrea
UK Home Office: Country
information and guidance report -
Eritrean government
Commission assess the current
UK Home Office: Country
Information and Guidance -
Can the European
Commission confirm that they are

Oral Update by Mr. Mike
Can the European
Commission comment on the
contents of this aid package, in
terms of value and objectives,
specifically addressing the "hope to
curb the exodus" from Eritrea
through development aid?
We will keep you updated with any
response we get...