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Eritrea’s government is guilty of committing crimes against humanity since independence a quarter-century ago with up to 400,000 people “enslaved”, the UN said yesterday.
The crimes committed since 1991 to the present day include imprisonment, enforced disappearance, extrajudicial killings, and rape and murder, said the United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) on human rights.
The forced labour of military conscripts is also a major problem in the country, the UN said.
“We probably think that there are 300,000 to 400,000 people who’ve been enslaved,” chief UN investigator Mike Smith told journalists in Geneva.
The governement also operates a shoot-to-kill policy to stop people fleeing the country, according to evidence collected by the UN inquiry.
About 5,000 Eritreans risk their lives each month to flee the nation where forcible army conscription can last decades.“Very few Eritreans are ever released from their military service obligations,” Smith said.
Eritrea’s Minister of Information Yemane Meskel denounced the UN’s findings on Twitter.
One witness said that Air Force conscripts were made to work in a plantation that belonged to the Air Force chief. The conscripts were not paid and were sent to detention facilities if they refused to work. – Al Jazeera
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