A PRELIMINARY REPORT ON THE ERITREAN NATIONALS

EXPELLED FROM ETHIPIA DURING JUNE-JULY 1998

Eritrean Relief and Refugee Commission (ERREC)

Asmara, Eritrea

27 July 1998

In the aftermath of the eruption of the border conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia, the Ethiopian regime has launched a massive campaign of violence and hate against Eritrean nationals residing in Ethiopia. Since the beginning of June 1998, the regime has embarked upon a policy of mass detention, torture and expulsion of Eritreans living in the country. In the last two successive rounds, the regime has already expelled over 13,000 innocent Eritrean civilians who have resided in Ethiopia for a long time.

The manner the Eritreans were treated through out the process is so deplorable that there are few parallels in recent history of human rights violation carried out by any state government. The actions of the Ethiopian regime were carried out in contravention of the basic provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international instruments to which Ethiopia is signatory.

The purpose of this preliminary report is to document the ordeal that the Eritrean victims had to go through in the process of arrest, detention and deportation, to describe the social composition and characteristics of the deportees, to depict the magnitude of the social disintegration and economic depredation that have resulted from these sinister scheme.

The report is based on information obtained from interviews conducted with 3159 heads of families among the first groups of deportees that arrived Eritrea through Om Hager and Adi Qualla entry points. The process of documentation for the other deportees is underway, and it is envisaged that this report will be periodically up-dated.

Nonetheless, the information contained in this report is representative, and will give a glimpse of the gross violation of human rights visited on the Eritrean deportees by the Ethiopian authorities.

The deported Eritreans are from all walks of life, consisting of men, women, children, the aged, professionals, business people, housewives, students, etc. They are of urban, semi-urban and rural backgrounds and came from all parts of Ethiopia. Except for 114 people who went there between 1991 and 1998, all of the deported Eritrean have had established themselves for many many years long before the present regime came to power in 1991. All of them have served, in different capacities, the Ethiopian people and governments earnestly, and indeed contributed significantly in the endeavors to develop the country.

These Eritreans have been legal residents, living in harmony with the Ethiopian society, fully cooperating with the government and respecting the laws of the country. Whereas some of them were born and bred up in Ethiopia, most of the deported Eritreans have acquired Ethiopian citizenship during their almost life-long stay in the country. Some of the deportees are of mixed Eritrean and Ethiopian parentage and still some have been married to Ethiopians.

The age and gender of the group of deported Eritreans reported hereby embraces the family heads and unaccompanied under-age children. Whereas the group deported in the first round were entirely composed of adults whose families were left behind, deportees of the second round brought with them parts of their families. But the latter have also family members who are still left behind. Out of the total of 3159 people entered in this report only 561 were single while the 2388 are married and 210 widowed supporters of separate family entities. The figure of deportees presented here does not include the dependents who accompanied them.\

Over 99 per cent of the deportees constitute adults, 18 years of age and above. The overwhelming majority (82 per cent) are either married or divorced and have left behind unattended children.

The educational backgrounds of the deportees demonstrates that 54 per cent have attended senior secondary school and above. Of these, 237 are holders of first degree and above while other 270 have had university diploma in various fields. Table 2 shows the educational profile of the deportees.

Although in terms of formal education almost 31 per cent of the deportees have had only primary level of education or are illiterate, in fact this category consists of highly skilled artisans, mechanics and technicians who either owned and run their own establishments such as garages, hotels, workshops, and various other businesses or were employed in their fields which they acquired through long-term experience. The women with low level of education are predominantly housewives, with few who had establishments in the catering business. Among the Eritreans expelled from Tigrai are farmers who have migrated and settled there for generations, and some of them were present there at the time of the conflict, pursuing the transhumant pattern of pastoralism which they traditionally practiced seasonally.

As indicated in the introductory section, the overwhelming majority of the deported Eritreans have lived in Ethiopia for decades. Except for 114 people who went there after independence in 1991, all the others migrated to Ethiopia during the period of the Emperor Haileselassie and Mengistu, under which Eritrea was a colony. 128 were born and grown up in Ethiopia. Table 3 depicts the duration of stay of the deportees in Ethiopia.

Over 47 per cent of the deportees have lived in Ethiopia for over 30 years or were born and bred there, 14 per cent stayed there for at least 20 years and only less than 10 per cent lived less than 10 years. Almost all of them spent all or greater part of their lives faithfully serving the Ethiopian people with dedication. As can be seen in the occupational profiles of these deportees, all of the deportees were productive members of the society and have earned their living as employees of the government or the private sector and as owners of their own enterprises. None of them was engaged in unlawful activities or became idle and burden to the Ethiopian economy and society. On the contrary, they all positively contributed to the social and economic progress of Ethiopia, in the course of their stay during the last five decades.

Against such backgrounds, the accusation which the Ethiopian regime has been labeling against these Eritreans becoming a threat to its national security is a baseless and deceitful fabrication to conceal its treacherous and predatory behavior from the international community.

The inhuman treatment to which the Eritrean deportees have been subjected during the process of arrest, detention and expulsion is gruesome. They were suddenly apprehended from their homes, work places, schools and streets and driven off to detention camps and police stations. Those that were picked up from their place of work or streets were not allowed to communicate with their families or any close acquaintances to inform of their whereabouts, to arrange for the sustenance of their family and administration of property or to cede their responsibility at work. In the case of others, they were picked up from their sleep by armed police who broke into their homes in the middle of the night. They were similarly prevented from picking up any personal belongings and even from putting on their proper dress. They ended up in detention with only their pajamas and slippers on.

Mothers were grabbed off their children who stayed home with them during the apprehension. Many reported that they could not bid farewell to the their children who had not returned from schools when they were taken away. Despite their plea to take their children along, almost all mothers were callously denied to carry even the breast fed infants whom they were forced to abandon crying and without any one to look after. A mother whose six-month old baby was snatched off and abandoned arrived delirious and agonized from swollen breasts. Another woman who left four children behind without any one to look after them suffered from mental breakdown and was taken to a mental hospital.

Owners of Garages, hotels, shops and other listless establishments were forced to leave their businesses open and prone to pillage and theft. None of them was able to delegate responsibility for his/her property, establishments and other interests. As the wave of arrest and eviction continued, the Ethiopian Government has issued instruction preventing Ethiopian nationals from acting as delegates to any Eritrean national. The implications of such measures are nakedly obvious.

Once the Eritreans are taken to the detention centers, some of them created for this particular purpose, they are subjected to interrogation, torture and deprivation of food, water, basic sanitation and visit by or communication with their families and relatives. Usually, they are crammed into dark narrow cells without toilet facilities. They were allowed to visit the toilets only once in twenty four hours. The detainees were forced to buy their own food or drinkable water which they scarcely managed to obtain from the prison guards at much higher prices. Since they were not allowed to take money and other possessions at the time of their apprehension, many of them could not afford to buy for their sustenance in detention. Hence, as a combined result of hunger, torture, poor sanitary conditions and grief, most of the deportees arrived in appalling health conditions.

During detention, some of them were kept in the compound of army barracks in the open air exposed to heavy rain and extreme cold temperatures. Others were detained in cargo-transporting containers where 40-50 people were tightly compressed in a single 20 feet container. Scared for their safety by the poor ventilation and sanitary conditions, these people had to abstain from eating or drinking in order to space out the time of the natural urge for defecation and urination. Before they were finally expelled, most of the deportees were kept for duration ranging between three and thirty days, without any charges brought against them, under wretched and extremely unhealthy detention conditions.

The mode that these people were transported is also horrendous. Although most of the deportees could have been air-lifted, they were forced to go through long arduous and exhausting route, loaded on buses which speeded off for 3-4 days and nights. Except for some 2-3 hours a day when they had to stop for fueling or other needs of the drivers, the deportees could not stretch their legs inside the crowded buses to which they were confined all the way through.

The deportees, including their families and relatives were kept in the dark as to which route they were taking to come to Eritrea. This wanton act was devised in order to increase the anxiety and sufferings of both the deportees and their families, as well as to make it difficult for the arrangements to receive them upon their arrival in Eritrea. Even the Eritreans who were detained from the urban centers in Wollo and Tigrai were made to travel inland to Gondar and then back to Humera.

In the case of the farmers deported from Tigrai and around Humera, they were forced to walk barehanded across the border, mostly with their entire families, leaving behind their sown fields, homes, herds of livestock and other possessions. Prior to the last acts of brutal expulsion, most of these deportees from Tigrai explained that they had been subjected to repeated harassment, imprisonment, fine, torture and pillage by the TPLF authorities during the last three years, and especially since 1997.

Although full report has yet to be compiled regarding the 400 Eritreans deported from the Arba Minch, Nazereth, Debre Zeit, Dire Dawa, Asebe Teferi, Shashemene, and Awasa areas to Assab, they were subjected to the most agonizing experience of hardship. In the extreme heat conditions present in those regions which is on the average at 40-45 degrees Celsius, the deportees were kept for weeks in ill-ventilated cells made of corrugated metal sheets. In the buses which transported them to a point near the heavily militarized border, the authorities prevented them from opening the windows of the buses. They disclosed that a group of 56 people were made to remain inside buses in the middle of no where for two and half days, waiting until the buses with another group caught them up. As a result of the heat, exhaustion and depression, they sustained severe health problems. A 56 year old man died soon as he arrived Assab due to exhaustion and depression which he suffered when his daughter was snatched away by the Ethiopian authorities near the border.

The pretext used to detain and expel Eritrean nationals from Ethiopia include membership in the Peoples Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), voting in the referendum of 1993, serving in the national service, participation in the summer vacation development programs and contribution of money to the Eritrean Government's development schemes. These were all legal activities around which every Eritrean rallied.

Certainly, in the post-Derge period, Eritreans living in Ethiopia have established different organizations (PFDJ and community) with the permission, support and encouragement of the Ethiopian authorities. Therefore, the claim by the Ethiopian government that the organizations were clandestine and that their members were engaged in subversive activities to destabilize the Ethiopian state is absolutely baseless. To date, the Ethiopian government has been unable to produce an iota of evidence to support its allegation against the Eritrean nationals.

Furthermore, the profile of the deportees has made it abundantly clear that none of these people could by any stretch of the imagination, be considered as a threat to the security of the Ethiopian state. They are law abiding people with long years of stay in Ethiopia. It should be noted that many of the deportees were neither members of PFDJ nor of Eritrean community. This fact has been attested to by an OAU investigating team, UN agencies, the diplomatic community in Eritrea, as well as other independent bodies.

The Ethiopian Government used the "security" issue to camouflage its real motive(s). All along, confiscation of Eritrean property has been one of the principal motives for the mass expulsion. Besides, the regime hopes that by expelling Eritreans it can appease and win the support of some extremist groups in the Ethiopian body politics who harbor deep rooted hatred against Eritreans.

It is clear that the actions of the Ethiopian regime is indefensible. The Ethiopian Government knows that its position is untenable. Because he could not come up with any rational argument to defend the mass-expulsion of Eritreans, the Ethiopian Prime Minister, in the infamous interview he gave on July 9, 1998, made an abominable statement on the issue, a statement that epitomizes the thinking of the people in power at the present time. In trying to defend the actions of his government, the Prime Minister asserted that Ethiopia has unlimited right to expel foreigners. He stated that "any foreigner, whether Eritrean, Japanese, etc, lives in Ethiopia because of the good will of the Ethiopian Government. If the Ethiopian Government says 'Go, because we do not like the color of your eyes' they have to leave." Oblivious of the fact that all Eritreans deported were legal residents in Ethiopia, he had the audacity to compare the measures taken by his government with the deportation of illegal aliens by the USA. He said, "the US Government is throwing out Mexicans who slipped into the country simple because they are unwanted." We think this is an affront to the international community.

To have the approval and support of the Ethiopian people, the mass expulsion and detention of Eritreans has been coupled with intensive campaign of hatred, a campaign aimed at fomenting animosity among both peoples. To confuse the issue, and if possible conceal its actions, the Ethiopian government has been accusing Eritrea of mass expulsion and arbitrary detention of Ethiopians. The purpose of such unfounded allegation is to manipulate world public opinion, it is a ploy to exonerate itself through a futile attempt to cover up its crime.

Ethiopia's claim notwithstanding, the Ethiopian Charge d'Affairs in Asmara told UN agencies and the OAU committee of Ambassadors who visited Asmara at the end of June that the alleged "number of (Ethiopian) detainees was 57." Even this figure was inflated by his own admission as he said that some of those detainees "had been long released, while many others were petty traders arrested long before the crisis, for ordinary criminal and civil offenses."

The Eritrean Government has extended invitation to all interested parties to come to Eritrea and to independently verify for themselves the situation in which Ethiopians living in Eritrea find themselves. Contrary to the allegations of the Ethiopian regime, the Eritrean Government has, since the beginning of the dispute, scrupulously respected the human rights of Ethiopian citizens living in Eritrea, at it will continue to do so, regardless of the of the belligerence and instigation of the Ethiopian regime. It has not and will not put civilian Ethiopians living in Eritrea in detention camps. It has not deported any single Ethiopian. It has not take action that violates their physical, mental and moral integrity. It shall allow them to live in Eritrea as peacefully as they had done so in the past.

In this connection, the National Assembly of Eritrea, in its eleventh session on June 26, 1998, declared that "The Eritrean Government has not, and will not, take any hostile action against Ethiopians residing in the country. Their right to live and work in peace is guaranteed. If this right is infringed upon under any circumstances or by any institution, they have the full right of redress."

Practically all reported that their plea to take along with them the remaining members of their families or dependents was rejected by the Ethiopian authorities. Under the circumstances, a mother or father was deported alone living behind children without support. 210 of the deportees were widowed or divorced single parenting mothers who had to abandon their children by themselves, without any responsible adult care-taker.

The campaign of expulsion of Eritrean nationals from Ethiopia has caused immense dismantling of families, as mothers or fathers were singularly deported leaving behind entire members of their families and other dependent. Records for the 1402 Eritreans deported in the first round depicts that this alone have left behind 5649 dependents without any supporter. The figures in following table illustrate the magnitude of the catastrophic family disruption and suffering created by the crimes of the Ethiopian regime upon defenseless Eritrean civilians who have lived in Ethiopia.

47 per cent of the dependents abandoned in Ethiopia are infants and children under 17 years of age. The others are composed of adult members of the family, including mothers, fathers and other relatives. As indicated earlier, these dependents were left without any clue or arrangement to their means of sustenance. Children are left with out attendant mothers or fathers, and in many cases both parents. The distress resulting from the missing of their parents not sufficing, these dependents left behind are being thrown out of their homes by the officials of the regime who have recently started to occupy their homes after their eviction.

As the various data about the deportees reveal, the cardinal targets of the last two rounds of detention and expulsion have been the relatively well to do. Since their expulsion was sudden and unexpected, as well as because they were deprived of any chance to arrange for the administration and protection of their property, the deported Eritreans have left behind assets and property worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The tables below show the value and types of property and asset left behind by 1402 of the deportees. The value of this lifelong earned wealth is estimated to be US$ 212,000,000.00. For the sake of convenience, the wealth left behind is presented in two tables, table 5 for property and table 6 for cash left behind by the above deportees.

The expelled Eritreans constituted part of the economically most productive section of the population. A number of them are well to do business people who owned over US$ 1,000,000.00 worth of property and assets.

Table 7 shows the types of property and asset left behind by the deportees. They consist of various establishments, dwelling houses, trucks and buses, land, cash money, agricultural produce and livestock and personal effects. The enterprises owned and managed by the deportees are mostly in trade (import-export business, shops, etc.), services (hotels, restaurants, bars, garages, gas-stations, distribution, clinics, etc.), transport (dry cargo and liquid cargo trucks, buses and taxi), manufacturing (shoe factories, liquor factories, sweater factories, wood and metal workshops, etc.), agriculture (commercial farms and livestock), construction (brick making, contractors, etc.).

Upon arrival in Eritrea, at the time of registration, one of the principal concerns expressed by the deportees was their fear that the Ethiopian government will confiscate their properties and assets. They asked, through the UN system, that the international community should make sure that their basic human rights which include the protection of life and property, is respected and protected.

This concern is a well-founded apprehension. As mentioned in the relevant section above, one of the underlying motives for the expulsion of Eritreans is the regime’s greed to appropriate the properties and assets of the deportees. It is true that in some of the detention centers, Ethiopian authorities had asked some of the deportees to give, on a plain white paper, power of attorney to family members and/or relatives. But all this is sham. Aware of this fact, and as it does not even fulfill the minimum legal requirements for the giving of power of attorney, most of the deportees declined to do so.

Subsequent developments have corroborated the fear expressed by the deportees. Immediately after their expulsion, families/relatives of the deportees have been ordered to dispose of their properties and assets and leave the country within one month. This illegal measure is tantamount to confiscation.

It is reported at the time of writing this report, from reliable sources, that the Ethiopian regime has decided to revoke all business licenses of the deportees. Worse still, it is also reported that as some of the cadres of the regime could not wait for a month, they have started to throw out the deportees’ families and occupy the houses. Not only are they being thrown out with no place to go, but they are also not allowed to take anything from the house.

Eritreans who have lived for generation in the rural areas of Ethiopia, particularly the Tigrai and Humera parts, and have been integrated with the respective communities constitute the majority of the deportees. Only very few of the deportees had temporarily crossed there pursuing the traditionally practiced seasonal migration for grazing.

The number of the Eritreans deported from the rural areas of north western parts of Ethiopia (Tigrai and Gondar provinces) alone is 2016 households consisting of over 8500 members. Prior to their deportation, these deportees disclosed that they have been subjected to discriminatory rude treatments during the last three years, and more intensely since 1997. They have been repeatedly fined and arrested without any criminal charges brought against them. The taxes they were made to pay for grazing and farm lands has been unbearable.

These deportees were busy preparing their land and planting when the mass deportation took place. Some were rounded up with entire families, while others were tending their livestock. Without exception, all were forced to abandon their entire herds of livestock scattered in the wilderness.

Although the majority were directly driven out of their homes and thrown at the border, many had been detained and severely beaten up before their expulsion. In humera, they were locked inside metalic cargo containers without food and drinks. During the time the outdood temperature reached 45 degrees Celcius.

During their stay which extends for two to three generations, these Eritreans have been fully integrated into the society. Many of them have mixed Eritrean and Ethiopian origins resulting from the intermarriages which have taken place during the consecutive generations. Some of them cannot even trace their ancenstry back in Eritrea. Almost all had never set their feet in eritrea at any one point of their life and had fully associated themselves with Ethiopia.

Soon as they arrived in Eritrea, these deportees expelled from the northwestern rural places of Ethiopia have been temporarily resettled in the Gash-Barka region. The government of Eritrea is making endeavours to provide them with immediate relief assistance. Emergency measures to assist them in carrying out some agricultural activities are underway, although their livelihhods remain largely miserable. The number of the deportees which passed through the registration sites until 17 July, 1998 and the places where they are temporarily resettled in Eritrea is shown by the following table. This is, however, not an exhaustive figure since the flow is continuous and many who did not show up at the registration centres are scattered in the region.

Like the deportees from the urban places in Ethiopia, these deportees with rural backgrounds commanded huge wealth, mainly in the form of livestock. The majority of the households individually owned a herd consisting of over 100 heads of cattle, besides to the vast crop farms which they all invariablly possessed.

The monstrous actions of the Ethiopian regime is not limited to only expelling Eritrean nationals from Ethiopia. In addition to the over 11,000 so far deported, thousands of other Eritreans, predominantly young boys and girls, are reported to have been seized and kept in exclusive detention centers. The whereabouts and conditions of these group is still a mystery. About one thousand youngsters, including 85 university students who went there under the exchange program signed between the University of Asmara and Addis Ababa, are reported to be languishing in a camp known as Fishe, situated about 100 km northwest of Addis.

Among them are also former EPLF fighters who were demobilized and had re-established themselves into ordinary civilian livelihood.. Others are detained on the grounds that they had undergone through the national service program or have taken part in summer development campaigns which are standard obligations for all Eritreans between the ages 18 to 40 years.

An unknown number of Eritreans who were detained with those already deported were taken to seclusion in yet unidentified destinations. There has not been any trace as to what has happened to them.

In contempt to the world public opinion and the recent condemnation of the inhuman actions by the Department of Humanitarian Affairs of the United Nations, the regime continues to escalate its gross violation of the Universal Human Rights of the remaining Eritreans. During the last four days, the Ethiopian Government has resumed another phase of rounding ups and detention of the Eritreans residing in Addis Ababa and other parts of the country.