It is illegal to leave Eritrea for people between the ages of 5 to 55 [...]there is indefinite conscription into the military starting at 16, with no end in sight, where people can spend decades laboring with little to no pay and little food. Oganizations such as the United Nations have rightfully called this modern day slavery. And during times of war, such as now, the penalty for attempting to escape can be death, with a shoot to kill policy for those caught crossing the border, often minors.
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That includes American citizen Ciham Ali who was imprisoned at 15 years old in 2012 and hasn’t been heard from since."
Eritrea is the only country in the world that has never had elections, and has never instituted its constitution. It has zero free press, no parliament or no independent arm of government except for the ruthless dictator Isaias Afewerki who has ruled with impunity for 30 years.
In this 2008 Al Jazeera interview, when asked about potential elections in Eritrea, he sarcastically responds, “What elections?”
The country has been called the North Korea of Africa (but surpasses it as the most censored country in the world), and now is the only country in the world aside from North Korea whose population has zero access to COVID-19 vaccines (the Eritrean government is now the only country in Africa not to have signed the WHO COVAX agreement).
It is illegal to leave Eritrea for people between the ages of 5 to 55 [...]there is indefinite conscription into the military starting at 16, with no end in sight, where people can spend decades laboring with little to no pay and little food. Oganizations such as the United Nations have rightfully called this modern day slavery. And during times of war, such as now, the penalty for attempting to escape can be death, with a shoot to kill policy for those caught crossing the border, often minors.
@timnitGebru The Horn of Africa is purposely kept in a state of political and economic turmoil by the West. Local people gaining control of the Red Sea shipping lanes would be a disaster for western capitalists; look what Ansar Allah (Houthis) manage to accomplish with a few rockets the past two years.
@timnitGebru oh wow 😳 I had no idea " #Eritrea is one of the world's least developed countries. It is a unitary one-party presidential republic and a de facto totalitarian dictatorship, in which national legislative and presidential elections have never been held. Isaias Afwerki has served as president since its official independence in 1993. The country's human rights record is among the worst in the world. The Eritrean government has dismissed these allegations as politically motivated."
Eritreans, including the dictator’s son, are still so desperate to escape that they take treacherous routes through Libya, the Mediterranean and even war torn Tigray and Yemen, often human trafficked and tortured for ransom. The documentary The Sound of Torture, shows some of these unspeakable kidnappings in the Sinai, and filmmaker Evan Williams’ recently released documentary Escaping Eritrea shows why people go through such lengths to escape.
When asked, Evan noted that he wanted to create this documentary after trying to understand why the biggest migrant group to Europe was from Eritrea, with no internal known war (this documentary was created before the current genocidal war on Tigray started).
@timnitGebru When I did volunteering with refugees in my German town in 2015 Eritreans also were one of the largest groups and one of just four countries that had a basically automatic permission to stay (besides Syria, Iran and I think Iraq … North Koreans probably would get it, too, but they never come here) because it’s such a human rights nightmare land