Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2016 01:07:20 +0100
Migration office criticises politicians’ Eritrea visit
Migration office criticises politicians’ Eritrea visit - SWI swissinfo.ch
<http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/objective-mission-_migration-office-criticizes-politicians--eritrea-visit/41963492>
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<http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/objective-mission-_migration-office-criticizes-politicians--eritrea-visit/41963492>
Migration office criticises politicians’ Eritrea visit -...
<http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/objective-mission-_migration-office-criticizes-politicians--eritrea-visit/41963492>
While declaring that Eritrea is not the “North Korea of Africa”, the Swiss
State Secretariat for Migration has criticised elements of ...
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<http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/objective-mission-_migration-office-criticizes-politicians--eritrea-visit/41963492>
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Feb 16, 2016 - 11:20
While declaring that Eritrea is not the “North Korea of Africa”, the Swiss
State Secretariat for Migration has criticised elements of a controversial
two-week private visit by a group of Swiss politicians to the small African
state.
[image: Swiss parliamentarian Thomas Aeschi visited the village of
Mendefera in Eritrea in early February, as part of a private parliamentary
mission to the country (Keystone)]
The secretariat is currently examining demands by a group of Swiss
politicians who visited Eritrea last month and who wish to meet Swiss
Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga, in charge of immigration, to discuss
their conclusions. They had praised the openness of the people they met in
Eritrea and the fact that they didn't have problems travelling around.
The secretariat told the Swiss News Agency on Monday that Eritrea is not
“the North Korea of Africa” and foreigners could move around “relatively
freely”. Government experts had been able to visit the capital Amsara and
other cities without surveillance on trips to Eritrea.
“However the politicians did not discuss human rights topics linked to
asylum procedures,” it added, referring to legal rights, national military
service and prisons.
Parliamentarians Thomas Aeschi (conservative right Swiss People’s Party),
Yvonne Feri (centre-left Social Democrat), Claude Béglé (centre-right
Christian Democrat), Christian Wasserfallen (centre-right Radical), visited
Eritrea with Aargau local politician Susanne Hochuli on a two-week private
trip at the beginning of February. They were invited by the Swiss honorary
counsel Toni Locher, and met Swiss and Eritrean officials and travelled
around the country.
On their return, the group requested a meeting with Sommaruga and called
for a Swiss mission to examine the human rights situation in Eritrea. They
also want Switzerland to set up a permanent diplomatic representation, to
launch a special development aid project for Eritrea and to discuss refugee
issues.
Positive impressions
Members of the group have given several media interviews expressing
positive impressions of developments on the ground.
“It’s a country which has known a very tough dictatorship and the system
remains authoritarian but it is opening up,” Béglé told Swiss public radio,
RTS, on February 10.
However, in a statement the secretariat said there was “no sufficiently
strong evidence to show that the human rights situation in Eritrea had
improved significantly”.
The visit has also been criticised in Switzerland by several politicians
and by the head of the Swiss branch of Amnesty International, Manon Schick.
“I would also like to go to Eritea to get an idea of the situation on the
ground. But unlike Mr Béglé, and the other parliamentarians, I was not
invited on their organised trip last week,”she declared in an editorial in
the 24Heures newspaper on Tuesday.
"That’s normal, the government is frankly hostile to any monitoring of
human rights situation in Eritrea. The UN special rapporteur on Eritrea,
the African Commission of Human Rights and People and independent
organisations like Amnesty International have been refused entry to Eritrea
for years. Even the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which
can enter, does not have access to prisons. What does the Eritrean
government have to hide?”
Last November, the Swiss government commissioned a report from the foreign
ministry on the situation in Eritrea, which should contain a detailed
analysis of the situation and “illustrate the political strategies that
Switzerland could adopt in the mid- to long term”.
Eritreans make up the largest national group of asylum seekers to
Switzerland, with 6,640 Eritreans having been granted refugee status in
2014. Only two other European countries had accepted more Eritreans:
Germany, with 13,200 and Sweden, with 11,500.
swissinfo.ch with agencies
(image/jpeg attachment: Migration_Office.jpg)