ERINA Update
(Eritrean News Agency,
Tel: ++291-1-117627, Fax: 127385)
Wednesday, September 9, 1998
1. An independent report on the deportation of Eritreans and Ethiopians
of Eritrean origin from Ethiopia has called the deportations "a mass
violation of human rights" and recommended that Ethiopia cease
immediately and make suitable reparations to affected Eritreans. The
fifty page report by an Australian lawyer and solicitor of the South
Australia Supreme Court made findings based on extensive interviews with
over sixty deportees.
The report, which describes the deportation process as one in which the
"deportees are subject to discriminatory and arbitrary treatment," lists
over ten binding international agreements to which Ethiopia is signatory
and which prohibit mass and arbitrary expulsions. The report likens the
mass deportation of Eritreans from Ethiopia to the expulsion of Jews
from Nazi Germany prior to World War II and points out the violation of
freedom of movement laws stipulated by the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, the violation of civil and political rights set forth in
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as well as the
violation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Racial Discrimination. The report contains copies of Ethiopian
identification held by deportees and asserts that "Ethiopia's current
efforts to characterize all persons of Eritrean parentage retroactively
deprives such persons of a legal status that they possessed
unquestionably up until 1991."
Recommendations made by the report include: the immediate cessation of
all deportations, the release of all Eritreans being held in detention
camps, the establishment of a commission to compensate deportees for
their confiscated property, and reparations to Eritrea for the violation
of diplomatic privileges and immunities.
Veronica Rentmeesters, Information Officer
Embassy of Eritrea to the US
1708 New Hampshire Ave NW, Washington DC 20009, USA TEL: 202 588 7587 FAX: 202 319 1304
E-M: veronicX@embassyeritrea.org
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