http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/eritrea-calls-un-report-of-horrific-rights-abuses-vile-lie_1610530.html
Eritrea calls UN report of horrific rights abuses `vile` lie
Last Updated: Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - 20:45
Nairobi: Eritrea on Tuesday dismissed a UN investigation detailing
systematic human rights abuses as "outrageous claims" aimed at
destabilising the isolationist Red Sea state.
The UN commission of inquiry on the human rights situation in Eritrea
described horrific torture, including electric shock, near drowning,
sexual abuse and forcing people to stare at the burning sun for hours.
Its nearly 500-page report details how the country, under Isaias
Afwerki`s iron-fisted regime for the past 22 years, has created a
repressive system in which people are routinely arrested at whim,
detained, tortured, killed or go missing.
But Eritrea`s foreign ministry -- which denied UN investigators access
to the country -- said they were "wild accusations" and called the
report "attacks aimed at undermining our sovereignty."
The dictatorship languishes at the bottom of world freedom indices and
is one of the largest contributors to the exodus of migrants crossing
the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.
It is a crisis Eritrea has in the past blamed on a CIA conspiracy and
human rights activists.
"These accusations are simply a continuation and an escalation of the
politically motivated campaign to undermine the political, economic
and social progress the country is making, including in the area of
human rights," the statement added.
"There are those who will hide behind these outrageous claims to
whitewash their transgressions against Eritrea and to seek pretexts
for their acts of destabilisation," it added, calling the report "vile
slanders."
Tens of thousands of young Eritreans brave razor wire, minefields and
armed border guards to sneak out of the country every year in order to
escape repression and avoid years of conscripted military service.
The UN commission report was based on 550 interviews with Eritreans
living abroad, and on 160 written submissions.
It said the government is responsible for "systematic, widespread and
gross human rights violations" on an almost unprecedented scale,
driving some 5,000 Eritreans to flee every month.
The report found that some of the numerous abuses committed in Eritrea
"may constitute crimes against humanity", with violations taking place
on a "scope and scale seldom witnessed elsewhere".
Eritrea, which broke away from Ethiopia in 1991 after a brutal 30-year
independence struggle, is "ruled not by law but by fear," the report
read.
AFP
First Published: Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - 20:45
Received on Tue Jun 09 2015 - 11:30:10 EDT