1. Background

2. Presentation

3. Citizenship of the Deportees

4. Do deportations have legal authority? Who authorizes them?

5. The Confiscation of Private Homes

6. Alleged Crimes Committed against Ethiopian National Security

7. Cruel and Inhuman Conduct: Break-up Families

8. Cruel and Inhuman Conduct in the Deportation Process

9. The Deportees in Eritrea

10. Conclusion

11. Footnotes

12. Appendices
    • Appendix 1: A Note on Sampling Procedures

    • Appendix 2: Amnesty International Letter to Eritrean Foreign Affairs

    • Appendix 3: Statement United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

    • Appendix 4: Prime Minister Meles ZenawiUs Interview With Radio Ethiopia

    • Appendix 5: International Committee of the Red Cross

    • Appendix 6: Human Rights Watch World Report 1999: Ethiopia

    • Appendix 7: U.S. Department of State

    • Appendix 8: Amnesty International Report Ethiopia/Eritrea AFR 25/02/99, 29 January 1999

Background

A human rights crisis is looming large on the horizon in the Horn of Africa, resulting from the impact of a border-conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea: since the outbreak of hostilities in May 1998, ethnic Eritrean citizens of Ethiopia and Eritrean nationals who are residents in Ethiopia have been and are being deported to Eritrea at the rate of about 7000 people per month. The purpose of this study is to examine whether and what kind of the human rights violations have been committed in the process of those deportations.

The immediate cause of the war was a border conflict in which both countries claimed territories along an international boundary, established in the early part of our century by a series of treaties between the Governments of Ethiopia and Italy -- the colonial power then in control of Eritrea. Intense negotiations are now in progress in the Organization of African Unity which is attempting to mediate the conflict and get both parties to agree on the temms on which the intemational boundary can be demarcated on the ground.

Illegal Mass Deportations from Ethiopia 3

The treatment of civilians in war situations is governed by the conventions and covenants of the United Nations. Mass deportations from Ethiopia are the product of a deliberate and declared policy which was spelled out by Prime Minister Melles Zenawi as the incontestable right of his government. 4 However, our data reveal that the deportation of ethnic Eritreans and the manner it is being carried out violates the UN Charter on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention on the ri~hts of the Child and the Geneva Conventions.

In contrast to the mass deportations from Ethiopia, Eritrea has a declared policy of not harassing or expelling the large Ethiopian population that lives in its territory. When Ethiopia placed an embargo on Eritrean ports in May 1998 -- ports which were, until then, Ethiopia's principal outlets to the sea -- the very large Ethiopian population living in the port of Assab became unemployed and began to return to Ethiopia. Since some of these returnees were falsely claiming that they had been harassed, robbed, raped and forcibly expelled from Eritrea, the country asked the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to oversee the entire process by which Ethiopians voluntarily depart from Eritrea. That procedure has been in operation for several months, since August 1998. Ethiopia later claimed that a similar procedure was in force on the Ethiopian side but ICRC, in a message addressed to the Eritrean ambassador in Addis Ababa, stated that there was no such procedure which they have been allowed to oversee. 5

Eritrea has adhered to its own stringent code of conduct throughout the current "border crisis." It has invited or allowed independent observers such as ICRC, Amnesty International, Africa Watch, the UN agencies in Eritrea, the European Union representative in Eritrea and the UN Commission for Human Rights to verify the situation of Ethiopians in Eritrea and determine whether or not they are being harassed or forcibly deported. 6 EPLF, the front which liberated Eritrea and established the independent state, has adhered to its longƒstanding code of conduct with regard to the ethical standards to be maintained in times of war. To day the Government of Eritrea maintains those standards not because of international pressure or because of international conventions to which they are a party, but because Eritrea's ancient as well as revolutionary traditions of the rule of law compels them to do so. 7

In the human rights arena the evidence against Ethiopia is mounting. Among the many reports that support our earlier findings on the deportees are a study by Natalie Klein, a solicitor with the Australian Supreme Court 8 and reports by the representatives of Amnesty International 9 , Human Rights Watch World Report 1999, 10 the European Union Representative in Eritrea, US State Departmentl 11 , UNICEF, Eritrea 12 , and the UNDP chief in Asmara representing all the UN agencies. 13 They have all documented different aspects of human rights violations in the recent Ethiopian deportation campaign. Nearly all of them have also established that there is no significant or extensive evidence of human rights violations on the Eritrean side or that most Ethiopians who left Eritrea did so voluntarily or because of changes in the labor market. In the face of this body of evidence, it is unethical for some diplomats and news organization to say, repeatedly, that "both nations are deporting each others citizens" without examining the available evidence cited above or independently verifying the claims of the two countries.

Mary Robinson - the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights - took bold action in condemning Ethiopia on the basis of the evidence that was available to her. 14 The reaction to her comment from Ethiopia was high handed and strident. An example is the interview by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of July 9, 1998 in which he repeatedly questions the competence of the High Commissioner and refers to her as "that woman." (See Appendix 4) Unlike some segments of the diplomatic community, however, she has not buckled under in the face of Ethiopian condemnation. The government of Ethiopia ought to know that it is not possible to hide human rights violations when deporting tens of thousands of ethnic Eritreans, allegedly because they were "security risks." In all our inquiries, we have not found a single instance in which Ethiopian authorities demonstrated these alle~ations in court, as intemational law requires them to do.

Dur first report on the deportees, titled "The Uprooted," was based on in-depth qualitative descriptions of the experiences of individual deportees. The data were accompanied with verbatim transcripts of their testimony. On the basis of the insights gained from these profiles, we constructed a survey instrument -- a questionnaire with 152 pre-coded variables representing different types and measures of violations of rights enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Rights of the Child. In this second phase of our research we have also examined violations of the Geneva Conventions.

Whereas our first report consisted of profiles of individuals whose experiences could not be shown to be representative of the larger population of deportees, our present survey is based on a properly randomized scientif c sample and, thus, achieves that very purpose. It is fully representative of the 6880 households from which the sample was drawn and, thus, the characteristics of the sample describe the characteristics of the population with a known mar~in of error.

The target sample size was 370. This is the minimum sample required to reach the 95% confidence interval with a population base of up to 10,000 cases. To enable us to carry out reliable analyses, even when there is missing data on particular variables, we took a larger sample than the minimum required. The final sample was 413 individuals selected from a population base of 6880 cases which were mostly households. Hence, we could have as many as 43 missing observations ("no data " in our tables) on any one variable and stiUget reliable results, i.e. we would still reach the 95% confidence interval -- the level we adopted as a target for the whole study. The sampling procedure is discussed in greater detail in Appendix 1.

Given this approach, it is then possible to treat the sample as being representative of the population and to make inferences about the characteristics of the population based on our empirically determined characteristics of the sample.

We now go into the main body of our research and present each group of variables under several different headings:

Who are the deportees? What are their citizenship rights? Who authorizes the deportations? What happens to the property of deportees? What is the background and role of deportation personnel? Does the Ethiopian judiciary play any role at all in the deportations? What rights of the deportees are being violated?

In terms of citizenship, the Eritrean population of Ethiopia consists of two groups: Eritrean citizens and Ethiopian citizens. Both populations also fall into two other categories:

Rural communities located near the Ethiopian-Eritrean border, who have been evicted from their farms and now live deeper inside Eritrean territory as internal refugees.

Urban communities in a few centers in Ethiopia mainly engaged in productive economic, professional and technical activities, now being deported to Eritrea.

Our focus in this study is entirely on the urban population. These fall into four large categories: those who have been deported, those waiting to be deported (many of them with suitcases packed), those who believe they will not be deported, and those who are in a variety of jails and concentration camps, with no hope of being deported. Our study has yielded systematic data on the first and anecdotal information on the second. We have little information about the last two categories, mainly because the evidence is not within our reach. We hope and trust that our Ethiopian counterparts in the human rights field will gather and publish information condemning the plight of this population and the situation of Ethiopians who have returned to Ethiopia from Eritrea for whatever reason.

It is clear, from the graph below, that most deportees come from Addis Ababa and the rest come from the Tigray, Amhara, and Oromo zones. They are overwhelmingly urban and concentrated in the capital city. Since Eritrean citizens of Ethiopia have no zone of their own, they gravitate toward Addis Ababa, a multi-ethnic city.

The fact that the next biggest concentration comes from Tigray has ethnic, linguistic, historic, and geographic reasons. The Tigrayans and the highland Eritreans are next door neighbors, they speak the same language, and have a common history. However they diverge sharply from each other in culture and character. The divergent developments are not merely a function of the colonial experience of Eritrea: the divergence goes back to the fourteenth century when Eritrea began writing her own customary laws and developing her own grass roots democratic institutions. The deep antipathy that some Tigrayans have now developed toward ethnic Eritreans is, however, a new phenomenon and will probably subside once the hate campaign runs out of steam.

The deportees who have come to Eritrea are in a state of disarray and it is not possible to present a normal sociological picture of them. Their homes and family lives have been shattered. They are now trying to pick up the pieces and start anew. The adult population we have surveyed consists of 70 percent males, 30 percent females. These individuals are mostly household heads or individuals who came to Eritrea alone or with part of their families. They are now living as "dependents" attached to other families.

The gender distribution. of the population; is skewed by age, in that there is a preponderance of females in the younger age groups and a preponderance of males in the older age groups. The difference is statistically highly significant. 15 The difference is partly due to the fact that the Government of Ethiopia often expels young women but jails

young men who are allegedly engaged in activities that are said to be a security threat. At the same time they also expel a disproportionately large number of males of retirement age or retirees on pensions who are an economic burden to the regime. They are men (and women) who spent a lifetime working for the Ethiopian government and its parastatals, now conveniently thrown out of the country.

The household status of the deportees can be better described in terms of the family structure they left behind in Ethiopia rather than the unstable and very partial structures that exist in their Eritrean homes today. Before their deportation, 74. 8 percent of the deportees were household heads, 9.9 percent were dependents, and 14.8 percent were single adults, including those who are unmarried, divorced or widowed. Prior to their arrival in Eritrea about one third of the deportees (34.4%) were homeowners and many owned very substantial homes. The rest lived in rental housing.

These families, who led stable lives in homes they owned or rented, are now scattered across Eritrean towns and living in an ephemeral environment. Aside from a small proportion (4.4%) who own homes in Eritrea, most of the remaining families and individuals have obtained temporary accommodations with their parents (6.0%) relatives (48.9%) or friends (1.3%). Some have acquired one or two rooms in the highly congested rental properties in the Asmara. A few are staying in hotels or shelters. As can be seen in the graph below, the housing pattern is listed from the most to the least stable types.

The Gates

The deportees came into Eritrea through four gates that are spread across the entire 1000 kilometer (620 mile) wide border: Assab, Zalambessa, Mereb, Humera. Recently, Assab has become the principal if not the only point of entry, in contrast to the earlier situation when people were coming through all four routes.

The rationale for this changing picture is that the Assab route is the most difficult for the deportees and for their families, particularly the children. If the deportations are intended to be a form of punishment or humiliation then the Assab route achieves that purpose quite well. It is also the least public route.

The Danakil desert through which the deportees travel for days to get to Assab is so forbiddingly hot and so remote from major population centers that thousands of people can travel in fleets of as many as twenty or twenty five busses without being observed by the international press.

When they have completed this difficult trip, they have another arduous journey on the platform of open freighters lasting between 24 and 36 hours. The freighters take them from one Eritrean port to another i.e. from Assab to Massawa. They arrive in Massawa in

With each arriving group, a few individuals are taken by ambulance to a hospital to receive first aid. Some of the children are exposed to the burning sun for so long that their skin blisters or is infected and they are forced to remain standing for a major part of the trip. Some cannot withstand the freighter trip and ~o by air from Assab to Asmara.

The deportees are mostly Ethiopian citizens who happen to be of Eritrean descent. Many of them were born in Ethiopia, some are married to Ethiopians, some are the offspring of such intermarriages, many have lived in Ethiopia for a major part of their lives. Among them there is a small minority of Eritrean citizens who moved to Ethiopia since Eritrea became independent in 1993. They have no citizenship rights in Ethiopia unless proper naturalization procedures have been carried out.

The citizenship status of the deportees can be described quite simply by the official identity cards they carry. The vast majority of the deportees, 83.3%, are bearers of Ethiopian identification cards issued to citizens of Ethiopia. Of all the deportees, 70.7% had ID cards marked "Citizenship: Ethiopian" although their place of birth is often in Eritrea. Only 9.5% were without such cards mainly because they are recent émigrés who went to Ethiopia after Eritrea became independent in 1993. Since Eritrea and Ethiopia permitted near total freedom of movement of citizens between the two countries, Eritrean visitors in Ethiopia were allowed to use their Eritrean ID cards for all official purposes, including entry and exit.

The official seizure of ID cards during the deportation process is one of the most lawless acts witnessed by the victims. In these instances, Ethiopian off1cialdom was attempting to deprive ethnic Eritreans of their citizenship not by an act of parliament, or by new legislation, but by simply taking the documents away from them and thus preventing them from walking away with the evidence. On a few occasions, the off1cials actually tore up the documents in the presence of the deportee. However, nearly one fifth (19.6%) of the deportees are still in possession of their cards and many others (14%) have left them in Ethiopia with Ethiopian friends and relatives for safe keeping.

Their Ethiopian passports are yet another set of documents that show that many of them were full-fledged citizens of Ethiopia, not merely legal residents. A passport is an international document governed by customary international law. It is an off1cial request by one state to other States to allow its citizens to enter or pass through their territory. It is as clear an indication of citizenship as any document.

No fewer than 21.8 percent of the deportees are Ethiopian passport holders. That percentage in the sample corresponds to 1500 individuals in the total population of 6880. That is one of the instructive pieces of evidence indicating that the Ethiopian regime is deporting its own citizens in large numbers, purely because of their ethnic origin. They are innocent individuals who were caught in the crossfire between the two states. Ethiopian leaders have no justification in claiming that these men and women are not citizens Ethiopia and that they can be deported at will. (Appendix 4)

Passport holder

Here, as with the identity cards, Ethiopian officials have sought to deprive the deportees of their citizenship by seizing their documents. However, a large number of people (14.8%) still have their documents with them or have left them with Ethiopian friends and relatives. These can serve as evidence of their citizenship rights. The fact that so many of the identity cards or passports were seized by Ethiopian officials in the deportation procedure and were never returned to their legitimate owners has very little legal merit. Unless the Ethiopian State takes constitutionally valid legal action to deprive ethnic Eritreans of their citizenship, the seizures are pointless and lawless acts.

There are references to those identity cards and passports in many other documents, which the deportees possess. The evidence of their citizenship cannot be so easily rubbed out.

According to the current Ethiopian constitution, no Ethiopian can be deprived of his citizenship or deported out of the country under any circumstances. If a citizen commits a crime, he or she can be punished in other legally instituted ways but not by deportation. In Article 33 (1), the present (1995) constitution of Ethiopia states that "no Ethiopian may be deprived of his (her) citizenship without his (her) consent."

On the occasion of the 1993 referendum, one state, Ethiopia, became two states, Ethiopia and Eritrea. At that point in history, Eritrea permitted dual citizenship, Ethiopia did not. Ethiopia then had an obligation to give ethnic Eritreans a choice: they should have been asked to give up one or the other nationality. The Ethiopian parliament under the leadership of H.E. Tamrat Laine, who was then Prime Minister, debated the issue and came to the conclusion that the matter should be investigated. 16

Other nations faced with a similar dilemma have found a far more humane solution than the one Ethiopia has adopted. In 1975, this writer was living in Holland and witnessed an event that is relevant to our discourse. In that year, Suriname gained its independence from the Netherlands. The Surinamese were then given a choice of retaining their Dutch citizenship or taking up Surinamese citizenship. Thousands of Surinamese who chose to be Dutch citizens arrived in Holland by ship and were then taken by busses to many communities across the Netherlands, who welcomed them to their new homes. That is how one civilized, democratic society dealt with this problem.

It is our understanding that Ethiopian officialdom is planning to invoke an article in Emperor Haile Sellassie's 1931 constitution, which states that any Ethiopian who takes up another citizenship automatically forfeits his or her Ethiopian citizenship. 17 This thinking is, however, not valid because that constitution has been superceded by two others, in 1955 and 1995, neither of which preserves this particular article. Furthermore, the idea that ethnic Eritreans who voted in the referendum by which Eritrea became an independent state, and the likelihood that they voted for Eritrean independence and were issued Eritrean identity cards, constitutes an assumption of Eritrean citizenship and, ipso facto, a renunciation of Ethiopian citizenship has no constitutional validity.

Why did the Ethiopian parliament under Tamrat Laine leave the question of Eritrean citizenship after the referendum undecided? It seems clear that the matter was left in an ambiguous state for very good political reasons. In those years, EPRDF -- the coalition party that is in power to day in Ethiopia -- was fighting for its own political life. It was engaged in an election campaign that was to determine the character of the new Ethiopia and the role that the victorious forces of the Tigray People's Liberation Front and their allies in the EPRDF would play in the emergent state.

The coalition party mobilized the ethnic Eritrean population of Ethiopia to vote for it. Eritreans responded with great enthusiasm because their own fate was tied to that of EPRDF - the party that was most likely to protect their rights as Ethiopian citizens. They were issued voting cards and they voted in great numbers. Some of them ran for local office and were elected as members of the District (Wereda) assemblies. Some were elected to the professional committees of the EPRDF. Many of them contributed financially to ensure the survival and ultimate victory of the party. Some even served as election officers. All that happened in 1996, a full three years after the Eritrean referendum of l 993. Ethnic Eritreans in Ethiopia cannot take part in such critical political activities in 1996 if they had, in fact lost their citizenship in 1993.

In regard to the political contributions of the deported population to the election campaign of EPRDF, our data reveal that 6.8% of them were party members, 19.6% made financial contributions to the party's campaign funds, and 45.2% voted to elect the party. That is a very sizable voting block, which any politician would love to win over.

Even before these political developments of the mid 1990's, ethnic Eritreans in Ethiopia played an important role in stabilizing the government of Ethiopia after the three key liberation fronts in the region brought down the communist military junta that had ruled the country in the previous decades. The liberation fronts in question were EPLF (Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front) in Eritrea and TPLF (Tigray People's Liberation Front), EPDM (Ethiopian People's Democratic Movement, predominantly Amhara) and OLF (the Oromo Liberation Front) in Ethiopia. These fronts collaborated in bringing down the heavily armed junta, overburdened with 12 billion US dollars worth of Russian military hard ware it had accumulated over the years (1975-91). In 1991, Eritrean mechanized brigades marched all the way up to Addis Ababa side by side with the Ethiopian liberation forces and used their highly efficient heavy artillery units to break down the resistance of the junta and its massive army. They helped to bring down the dictator Mengistu Hailemariam and to install P.M. Melles Zenawi and his coalition party in the positions they now occupy.

The months and years that followed the collapse of the junta were very precarious. There were huge numbers of Ethiopian soldiers who had suddenly been cut adrift. Unruly bands of soldiers were using their rifles to "live off the land." Ethiopia was in a liminal state or an inter-regnum: which, in Latin, means that "one government was out and the other one was not yet in" -- a kind of temporal no-man's land. In that transitional state, the TPLF armed many ethnic Eritreans and got them to serve as members of the "Pacification and Stabilization Force," referred to in Amharic as selamnna merregagat. Their job was to use the arms that were given to them to fend off any attempt to destabilize the newly installed government. Our survey shows that 7% of the deportees served in this force.

Seven years later, the home of those same ethnic Eritreans who helped to stabilize the country, were raided by TPLF security officers and they were deported out of the country on the pretext that they were "foreigners" "enemy aliens" and a "security risk." This is one of the many callous contradictions that prevail in Ethiopian political life to day, suggesting that the country is in a state of deep denial. Ethiopian leaders have turned vehemently against those who supported and defended them in their hour of need.

The new Ethiopia did not only create an ethnic federation but she also wages its political wars along ethnic lines. The newly crafted "Ethnic federalism" is one of the most dangerous experiments with ethnic politics, which has so far surfaced in the African continent and probably has no parallels in Africa. The Ethiopian ethnic states were created with humane intentions, but the consequences have been unfortunate. There are, for instance, explosive tendencies in the relationship of the current regime of Ethiopia with all those ethnic liberation fronts or political parties of the Oromo (OLF), the Ogaden Somali (ONLF), the Afar (ALF), and the Amhara (AAPO). These are some of the indigenous fronts and parties that were violently suppressed by the EPRI)F coalition and supplanted by ethnic political parties created or nurtured by the regime.

We need to pay attention to Ethiopian ethnic politics in this paper because it has had a major impact on the present crisis and the deportation process. Ethnicity as a social factor impinges on the conduct of those who are doing the rounding up, the jailing, dispossessing and the deporting of ethnic Eritreans from Ethiopia. As such it is eminently relevant to the issues human rights under discussion.

The campaign against Eritrean civilians in Ethiopia is ethnic at its source and it is ethnic in its objective, in spite of the fact that it attempts to wear the mantle of "national sovereignty or security." It is partly motivated by the need to humiliate Eritreans, in response to a feeling that Tigrayans, particularly the people of Eastern Tigrai, are viewed contemptuously by Eritreans. That is the agenda behind many other agendas. It is discussed in the local press, in vernaculars, but not in the international press, in English. Whether the leaders choose to speak about it or not, the O.A.U. "elders" who are mediating the conflict cannot ignore it. No mediation can succeed unless it can uncover the "hidden agenda" of either or both parties and , as elders in Africa, who are daily engaged in mediation work and peace making, know so well.

There are many characters that are key players in the deportation campaign. These are the faceless informer, the familiar informer, the raider, the 'deporter,' the jailer and the bus guard. Each one of these players will be discussed in different parts of this paper.

An important, but obscure, player in the current deportation campaign is the faceless informer, who makes it his business to hunt out Eritreans and report them to the authorities. He, more than any one else, is responsible for the state of terror in which the Eritrean community in Ethiopia finds itself today. So great is the anxiety generated by this faceless threat, that many Eritreans wait in their homes ƒ with suitcases packed ƒ for the day when the ax will fall. Many sleep on the floor after having sold all their furniture and their beds. Some try to leave the country voluntarily, after putting their affairs in order, but very complex bureaucratic restrictions are put in their way. They will be allowed to leave when the regime says it is time. They will leave on its terms, not theirs.

We have much descriptive information but little statistical data on the paid informers. Their existence is known to the deportees, because they often bring the official raiders to the home of an Eritrean, deliver their victims to the security officers and then make a hasty retreat. They are mercenaries who are paid by the security apparatus for their services. They do not hesitate to give false information about their victims in order to drum up business for themselves.

Aside from the faceless informer, who works covertly, the other types of informers are well known to their victims. The most common type is a neighbor, who has been close enough to his victims socially, to be able to describe their life histories, political affiliation and social network: 20% of the deportees report that it was a neighbor who reported them to the security organization and recommended that they be thrown out of the country.

It is important to stress, however, that not all neighbors are informers. Many are disturbed by the deportations. They look after the children and property left behind by the deportees and offer their help in many small and understated ways, such as relaying information to the deported parents about the plight of their children, their homes and their properties. Necessarily, this role of the good Samaritan must remain understated, so as not to provoke the ire of the regime.

Others, however, turn violently against their neighbors and pressure their victims to sell their homes, cars and possessions to them at dirt-cheap prices. They are motivated by undisguised greed. One Eritrean woman was asked to sell a television set worth 10,000 Birr (US$ 1500) for about 400 Birr ($50). She picked up the set, dropped it on the cement floor, smashed the tube into bits, and declared "There, you can now pick up the pieces for free!" The conduct of these neighbors, turned into informers and scavengers, is a source of much anger and resentment among the deportees.

In the world of informers, the Judas factor is most apparent in the case of co-workers (6.8%) and friends (4.1 %) who turn upon their Eritrean colleagues. These are people

whom Eritreans respected and trusted, people who had, for years, shared in their joys and sorrows, their weddings and funerals. Among these there is a small number (0.7%) who were the childhood friends of the deportees.

In the earliest stages of the Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict, P.M. Melles Zenawi declared that there is nothing ethnic about the war that his regime declared on Eritrea. He said that his government is not "anti-people" but opposed to the regime now in power in Eritrea. (Appendix 4) That has now turned out to be far from the truth. Evidence is emerging that Tigrayans are at the forefront of the deportation war, which is specifically aimed against ethnic Eritreans. Nevertheless, it is obviously not an exclusively Tigrayan campaign because it encompasses the three major ethnic groups in the country.

The ethnic campaign backfires

In all this, the position of the Oromo is most interesting. They are, by far, the biggest ethnic group in Ethiopia (some 18.8 million souls, as opposed to 3.1 million Tigrayans, as per the 1994 census). Oromo are obviously not taking part, whole-heartedly, in the deportation campaign. Their movement was crushed by the Tigrayan army in the early 1990's. Their national liberation front (OLF) was barred from taking part in national politics and their leaders were driven to exile. They are, nonetheless, feared because they can be expected to play a dominant role in any open democratic polity that might be established in the country. The Oromo are clearly not enthralled with the ethnic hate campaign launched by Tigrayan leaders and have delivered a coup de grace of their own invention. They have, on occasion, "deported" Tigrayans from their territory (Oromia) along with ethnic Eritreans, with the explanation that they cannot tell the two groups apart. They say that both speak the same unintelligible language, Tigrinya, and they are both known to them as "Tigre."

In many cases, police officers were involved in carrying out the deportation procedure. However, their role in this ethnic cleansing campaign should not be overstated. Many a police station chief has stated that the Eritreans brought to him cannot be detained unless they have violated laws and that merely being an Eritrean is insufficient ground for imprisonment. This is amazing law-abiding behavior in the midst of all the turmoil and lawlessness surrounding the deportations.

By contrast, all the other types of off1cers who have played a role in the deportations are most unlikely to raise questions about such fine points of the law as guilt and innocence. The dominant party, EPRDF, has declared war on Eritreans and they are merely carrying out the mandate given to them by the party. Local (Kebele) administrators are EPRDF party operatives as are the security and army officers. These require no justification to jail or deport an Eritrean, so long as the person's Eritrean descent is established. Often, the statement of an informer is suff1cient and the victim is not even asked to identify his own ethnic background. There are times when even Amhara victims are deported, though they do not have a drop if Eritrean blood in them.

The deportation procedure is, sometimes so haphazard and indiscriminate that a variety of unintended victims are sent off to Eritrea. There is, for instance, evidence that two individuals who were visiting their relatives in jail, were thrown into the bus and sent off with the detainees. No amount of protestation from the victims or their jailed relatives could persuade the jailers of the error they were committing. This episode reveals the disregard of the deportation authorities for the right of every individual to be treated as "a person before the law." It is consistent with earlier case material presented in our first report, titled "The Uprooted," concerning an Eritrean family that was deported while visiting another Eritrean family.

Intermarriage between Eritrean and Ethiopian citizens has become a major source problems in the present deportation campaigns. A full 12% of the deportees are Eritreans married to Ethiopians who have been forced to leave their spouses and children behind. Surprisingly, the deportation authorities also violate Ethiopian law by sometimes deporting Ethiopians married to Eritreans. Article 33 (1) of the 1995 constitution states

Marriage to a non-Ethiopian does not invalidate his (her) Ethiopian citizenship.

In practice, however, it does. The broad-brush accusation leveled against such mixed marriages is that they are "Sha'biya (EPLF) families." In such situations, both husband and wife are sometimes deported. Each of these couples who are, thus, deported is a double violation of Ethiopian law and, in the case of the indigenous spouse, even the shaky legal edifice that has been built to legitimize the deportations is irrelevant.

Nothing demonstrates more effectively the lawlessness that is creeping into Ethiopia than the manner that the property of the deportees is being treated. Ethiopian authorities insist that they do not "confiscate" property and that the homes and businesses of the deportees are simply being kept under the control of the Ethiopian government, until such time as the law can properly dispose of them. To assure the deportees that this disposal of property will be legally conducted, they are asked to write a power of attorney document authorizing a person of their choosing to represent them in the disposal of the properties.

The fact is, however, that the procedure is quite vacuous. The power of attorney document they were asked to prepare was but a note on a blank sheet of paper not properly notarized by a court of law. In most cases the designated agents were not even asked to give their consent. They were authorized in absentia. They may not even be aware of the responsibility that was being placed upon them and could easily turn down the offer. 18

Under these very dubious circumstances, only 50¯/0 of the deportees agreed to give power of attorney to anybody, although they believed that the procedure was in violation of the Ethiopian Civil Code and served no purpose other than legitimizing the confiscation of their properties. Others (7.7%) did not prepare the power of attorney document because they refused to do so. Some (24%) were not asked to do so because they did not have the kind of property that would require an agent to dispose of it.

Those who did write the document had difficulty finding an agent while they were in custody. Unable to think of an appropriate person, many of the deportees designated their wives (24%) or relatives ( 11 %) as their agents, only to find that they too were deported soon after them, leaving their properties completely abandoned without a caretaker. About one third of the respondents (33.5%) felt that they had given the power of attorney to a hastily chosen person under duress.

What makes all this power of attorney exercise so suspect is the fact that many of the deportees told their captors that they had proper agents, whose power of attorney was authenticated before a judge or other court-authorized off1cers. Their jailers, however, rejected these legitimate agents and pressured their victims to go through the exercise, insisting that the slips of paper on which they had written the power of attorney instructions would be legalized at some later stage. There is no indication that any of the agents so designated have been given such properly authorized documents, at any time since the conflict began.

The home of a deportee is commonly "taken over" by the Government of Ethiopia. However, there are several factors that make it difficult for us to document the full extent of this practice statistically. Our research was conducted immediately following deportations. In other words, each group was surveyed or interviewed as it arrived in Eritrea. At that time, most people did not know the status of their homes in Ethiopia with regard to evictions, sealing, confiscation etc. It also takes some time for the deportation authorities to complete the confiscation procedure and even more time for the deportees to learn about it. To permit an adequate assessment of the situation, the data we have must be updated in the months following deportation. What we present here, therefore, is the situation of homes that were confiscated while the deportation was in progress or very soon thereafter.

The confiscation process consists of the deportation authorities doing some or all of the following things: evicting the homeowners from their homes, allowing them to stay in the servant quarters -- if part of the family remains behind, after the household head is deported -- preventing the family from getting access to the contents of the house, handing over the house to officials to live in, and finally "sealing" the house. The act of "sealing" a house (masheg in Amharic) means that the doors are locked and a piece of paper is pasted on the main door stating that the property is under Government control. Since the authorities do not prepare inventories of the sealed properties or issue a receipt to the deportee, there is nothing to prevent the deportation personnel from entering the house through one of the unsealed entrances and helping themselves to its contents. The procedure invites corruption and vandalism. Amazingly, the dictatorial military junta of the pervious decades used to prepare an inventory and issue a receipt before confiscating a house, but to day's Democratic Federal Republic of Ethiopia does not.

The evidence shows that, of all the houses owned by the Eritrean deportees 27% were immediately sealed by the authorities. during the deportation procedure or soon thereafter. These homeowners who have lost their houses constitute 9. 7% of the sample, or an estimated 646 homeowners out of the total population of 6880 households. Although they have no receipts for their confiscated properties, many of the families have documents showing the value of their estates and the manner they were acquired. A few of them have detailed inventories.

*Rented & owned mixed

During the weeks that the remaining family members were in this precarious state, they were often ordered to sell their home if it was not already sealed. They were given a deadline of one to three months. Most of them were given just one month.

What was the meaning of this deadline? How does a family sell a home within a month? Most families take at least a year to complete the process of advertising, finding buyers to offer bids, selling and authenticating the transfer documents. Hence, the deadline is quite ludicrous. But it becomes even more ludicrous when we realize that the deadline itself was not honored. In most cases, the members of the family who remained behind after the deportation of the household head, were themselves deported before the deadline. They were deported one to four weeks after the deportation of the household head (5%).

Under these circumstances, most homeowners were reduced to having to sell their homes in less than four weeks. A few homeowners (5%) sold their homes at throwaway prices. Many had to fall back on the power of attorney procedure made up by the deportation authorities. Some of the victims told their captors that the procedure was in violation of the Ethiopian civil code and that it had no validity whatsoever. They were told that the government would legalize the documents subsequently. However, we have not found a single piece of evidence indicating that they have done so during the six months that have elapsed between the beginning of the deportations and the time that we completed this survey. Throughout that time, we have a record of only one agent legally selling a house on behalf of a deported family. That agent had a proper court- authorized power of attorney document prepared long before the deportations began. In other words, not a single case has turned up in our survey, showing that a house had been sold on the basis of the flimsy power of attorney documents prepared while the internees were in custody.

The entire procedure, therefore, looks like a crude scheme designed to give the appearance of legality. It is clearly not intended to achieve the ostensible purpose for which the procedure was established. It is also important to realize that the confiscation of property we have discussed here concerns private houses only. It is consistent with our objective of studying only phenomena that are widely distributed in the population. Our study does not deal with the properties owned by Eritrean businesses, entrepreneurs, banks, corporations, industrial plants and the very large association of Eritrean truck owners that accounted for between 80 and 90% of the truck haulage in Ethiopia. A11 that will be the object of later studies. It has, in large measure, also been documented in the ERREC census and data base.

In all the activities described above, there is a measure of thinly disguised lawlessness. Surprisingly, however, there is one branch of the law- enforcement community that has exhibited some hesitation about this lawless conduct. As indicated earlier, the police force has not entirely abandoned its professional ethics. To the extent that they are able to resist the pressures of the security apparatus, they do, sometimes, insist that even Eritreans are protected by the law. For instance, many a police station chief insisted that the detainees must have broken the law in order to be taken into custody and that merely being an Eritrean is not adequate ground for imprisonment. Hence, the deportation authorities had to improvise to find some place in which to keep their victims. They have used a whole assortment of buildings such as garages, schools, and private homes as detention centers. In one case, in Mekele, they were unable to find an appropriate place of detention. They then simply smashed the doors of one house that had been vacated by a previous deportee -- a teacher named Memhir Hadgu -- and used it as a makeshift prison. The reader should recall that the rationale given for seizing and sealing the home of an Eritrean deportee and its contents was for 'safe keeping' until it could be disposed of legally, with the aid of the designated agent. Instances such as this make a mockery of that procedure.

It is not diff1cult to establish that the judicial arm of the Ethiopian government is playing no significant role in the deportations. With the exception of the police off1cers, the deportation personnel has no reason to be particularly knowledgeable about the national laws of Ethiopia or to be aware that these laws are in any way applicable to the deportees. Furthermore, all the personnel who directly confront the deportees at every stage of the deportation process and about whom we have evidence appear to be largely unaware of the international laws governing the position of civilians in wars between states.

In uprooting a whole segment of Ethiopian society from their homes, neighborhoods, jobs, and businesses, the Government of Ethiopia claims that they did so for reasons of national security. We have not found any deportees who were accused of engaging in espionage, sabotage or any other activities that constitute a threat to the Ethiopian State. Indeed, if they were allegedly engaged in such activities they would be jailed, not deported. That has been the pattern of official Ethiopian action to date. There are many Eritreans who have been put in prison for far lesser alleged offenses than espionage or sabotage. From the perspective of the deported population, the national security justification, therefore, appears to be quite groundless.

What are the real criteria they have used to pick up Eritreans for deportation? They are:

1. Voting in the Eritrean referendum
   
2. Membership in the Eritrean Community Association, referred to as "Com" for short
   
3. Leadership role in the Com
   
4. Membership in PFDJ, the ruling political party in Eritrea
   
5. Leadership role in PFDJ
   
6. Making financial contribution to Eritrean associations or to Eritrea as a state
   
7. Participation in Eritrea's national service
   
8. Participation in Eritrea's summer development programs
   
9. Possession of firearms
   l 0 Visits to Eritrea

   The residual criterion, invoked when all the above criteria fail to incriminate

   After applying the above ten criteria, if the official cannot find fault with the prospective deportee, he or she then asks the two or three questions which are the residual but critical questions.

10. Place of birth
    
11. Father's place of birth
    
12. Grandfather's place of birth

In short, the criterion that is ultimately used to expel Eritreans is an ethnic criterion. That criterion is applied whether the individual is an Ethiopian or Eritrean citizen.

The paradox is that each one of the ten activities now judged to be incriminating evidence by the Ethiopian regime were legally permitted and politically encouraged until the outbreak of hostilities in May 1998. Throughout the post-liberation years (1991-1998) there were no laws prohibiting those activities. If it wishes to ban the associations, the government has a right to do so. Membership in the associations becomes an offence only after the ban is in effect. It is not lawful to de-legitimize the associations and activities after the fact. Doing so violates the principle of non-retroactivity of law, which is a basic premise the Declaration of Human Rights, Article 11 (2) and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 15 (1).

The Eritreans who are being deported in huge numbers are not criminals who were determined to destroy the Ethiopian state. On the contrary, they contributed significantly to its establishment as a new state, after the collapse of the heavily armed communist military junta, the Dergue. That junta fell because of joint military action by Eritrean and Ethiopian liberation forces, who received much support from the civilian ethnic Eritrean population in Ethiopia.

Thereafter, many ethnic Eritreans in Ethiopia were armed by the newly established government to serve as members of the "Pacification and Stabilization Force." They played a key role in that pacification process.

The coalition party, the EPRDF, that came to power as the ruling party in Ethiopia was elected to office partly because of the massive effort ethnic Eritreans made to ensure its success. They contributed funds to the party, they participated in local (Kebele) assemblies and professional associations of the party, and they voted for the party in great numbers. Our survey reveals the following facts:

1. 7% of the deportees were active in the Pacification and Stabilization Campaign,
   
2. 19% made financial contributions to the EPRDF & campaign fund,
   
3. 5% were members of EPRDF's professional associations,
   
4. 45% voted to elect EPRDF and to help make it the ruling party of Ethiopia.

It is very important to realize that the same people who were active in the Eritrean community association or in PFDJ were also active in the campaign to put EPRDF in power. That was a natural pattern of collaboration, because the two parties, or their predecessors, EPLF and TPLF, were allies in the wars that brought down the junta.

It is disingenuous for the Ethiopian regime to now claim that the population that helped to bring it to power is a threat to its very existence. Here too, the Judas factor is apparent. Not only are the broad-brush accusations leveled against ethnic Eritreans groundless, the hostility of the regime toward that population is taking on the character of a hate campaign and is highly discriminatory by any standards of humanitarian law.

The area where the ethnic factor becomes blatantly clear is in regard to marriage and family organization. Ethiopian authorities have ruthlessly and recklessly broken up families in order to push the anti-Eritrean campaign to its logical but absurd limits. If the new order says that all Eritreans must be rooted out of Ethiopia and if many Eritreans are married to Ethiopians, the logical but absurd conclusion is to break up those couples and deport the undesirable half.

As indicated earlier, no less than 12% of the ethnic Eritrean citizens of Ethiopia who have been deported during the last six months were, and still are, married to native Ethiopians. In the great majority of those cases, the families have been broken up and the Eritrean member of the couple has been deported.

Another variation of this absurd procedure is to deport both spouses and their children. All the justification that is needed is for off1cials, informers or neighbors to declare them to be a "Sha'biya family."

Over and above the break up of mixed marriage families, however, the disruption of Eritrean family and community life generally is one of the most inhumane aspects of the campaign. Our data reveal that 45% of the deportees were forced to leave their spouses behind. Mothers have been torn away from their suckling infants, parents from their children, elderly parents from adult children who look after them, disabled family members from their care takers, monks and nuns from their monastic communities, priests from their congregations. The full range of atrocities committed against the Eritrean family and community cannot be adequately documented at this stage. We are still gathering in-depth qualitative data and life histories, which will be capped with a scientific survey at a later stage. What we have documented statistically at present gives only a partial picture.

Most parents pleaded and pleaded to be allowed to take their underage children with them, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. As is clearly revealed in the following tables, the situation of the children is pathetic: 19.2% of them were abandoned with siblings, neighbors, maids or with no caretakers at all. That corresponds to 3989 abandoned children in the total population of 6880 households. It is important to note that 1412 of those 3989 children were left with no care takers of any kind. That represents 6.8% of the households of deportees who left their children in that state.

Atrocities are piled up one on top of another when the Ethiopian regime evicts the children left behind by the deportees out of the homes their parents had rented from the local (Kebele) administration. 19 No less than 6.8 % of the deportees learned that their children were so evicted. Another group of deportees learned that the children were put in jail (2.4 % ) or were subjected a variety of other atrocities (8.4 % ). In this context, "other atrocities" include hostile acts such as harassment, name calling and beating. The children who are doing the harassment appear to be acting out the ethnic hate campaign, which they hear and see regularly in the Ethiopian mass media.

Parents who arrived in Eritrea leaving their children behind were deeply disturbed when they realized that telephone-communication between Eritrea and Ethiopia had been made extremely difficult and they were unable to learn much about the plight of their children. Telephone rates were jacked up sky high by the Ethiopian regime and telephones lines were tapped. Many parents were reduced to having to call family members abroad (North America, Europe, or the Middle East) and asking them to find out about the fate of their children.

Of all the deportees, 12.8 % were making very expensive telephone calls via other countries, 12 % were communicating through third parties in Ethiopia, and 9% were hiding their identity to get around official eavesdropping if they manage to get through to friends and neighbors. A full 30% of the parents had completely lost contact with their children.

In "The Uprooted, part I" we appealed to UMCEF, New York, and asked them to direct UNICEF Ethiopia and UNICEF Eritrea to take joint action and find a humane solution for the plight of these children. It is unconscionable for these organizations to fail the children and leave them stranded in the streets of Ethiopian cities -- thousands of children rendered homeless by the official actions of a state which is a member of the UN family of nations and a party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

From the moment that armed men break into the home of an Eritrean family at an ungodly hour, until the family crosses the border into Eritrea, the deportee is exposed to sporadic terror and sustained humiliation. The upheaval in the life of an Eritrean family begins when a number of armed men come, in most cases between 2 and 5 a.m., and bang on the door or gate. Any hesitation on the part of the family to open the door -- they could after all be burglars -- provokes violent reaction. The door or gate is smashed or they jump over the fence and descend upon the family.

Often, the whole house is ransacked to make sure that the "Sha'biya family" does not have weapons. The members of the family who are selected for deportation are then taken away to a detention center.

In 54% of the cases they are not told that they are being deported
In 92.5% of the cases they are not told how they will travel
In 96.1% of the cases they are not informed how many days the trip will take

Instead, most of them (53.0%) are told that they are needed at the police station or local administration (Kebele) for just a few minutes and that they will go right back to their homes. The majority of these men and women never see their families again. They go on the long trip in a helpless state, often still wearing their night clothes. If there is a bus ready to take them to Eritrea, they may begin their trip in that state.

This pattern of deceptive behavior becomes less confusing and humiliating if the prospective deportee is kept in a detention center for a few days and the family is allowed to visit him or her. During that time the family has a chance to accept the fact that the uprooting process had begun and to make some necessary preparations. As we shall see later, however, the family often has no visitation rights.

The detention centers are large collection camps, most of them located some distance away from urban centers and curious eyes. The majority of the detainees (52%) are kept in custody from one to six days, but it can be as long as 27 days. 20

The purpose of detention is partly collection, partly interrogation, and partly humiliation. The interrogations were fairly methodical in the early stages of the conflict but they have now become much more perfunctory or are entirely left out. The statement of an informer is now sufficient to get an ethnic Eritrean deported out of Ethiopia.

Once they have been put in custody, citizens of Eritrea and ethnic Eritrean citizens of Ethiopia are treated in ways that violate their rights of visitation, food, drink, clothing and access to toilet facilities. 21

Our data show that in 39% of the cases, relatives of the detainees were not allowed to visit them. Some 23.6% of the deportees said that relatives were not allowed to bring them food. Even when the detainees wanted to use their own money to buy food or drink, they were prohibited from doing so in 33 and 36 percent of the cases respectively. It is worth remembering that the detainees were rarely supplied with food or drink by their jailers.

Often there were no toilet facilities and people had to use the same rooms in which they lived and slept for such purposes. In 26% of the cases, people were denied access to toilets for extended periods of time.

The deportees suffered various forms of cruelty on the trip to Eritrea. Most were deprived of food for 12 to 36 hours but some as many as 4 days. On average, they were deprived of water for 12 to 48 hours, but some for as many as 5 days. They were commonly deprived of access to toilet facilities for 12 to 24 hours but some times for as long as 5 days.

One of the worst cases on record is a bus in which the deportees were told to use the bus as their toilet. In desperation and with a sympathetic guard pretending not to notice, the men were able to use an empty jerrican as a urinal. The situation was bad enough to cause the death of one of the deportees.

Hours without access to toilets

Yet another form of cruelty is to let the travelers stay cramped in the bus all day and require them to sleep in that same cramped position at night. Of all the deportees 54.6% spent their days and nights in the bus. Even elderly people suffering from gout or arthritis, whose joints were extremely vulnerable to abuse, were required to spend up to four days and nights in the busses. By the time they reached the border, their joints were locked and they had to be carried across the border.

Whether they are sent off hastily or kept in detention for some days, the deportees are not allowed to take what they need for the trip. The bus ride can last from 1 to 11 days, not including the stops along the way at additional collection centers. On the whole, the deportees were not allowed to gather what they needed for the trip (62%). They were not allowed to take food (59%) or drink (58.5%) or clothing (57%) or medicine (65.9%).

Perhaps one of the most cruel aspect of these deprivations is the fact that the elderly people with chronic illness were not allowed to bring their medicines along. No less than 26% of the deportees had such illnesses. Of all the deportees, 15% had informed their captors that they had chronic illnesses but that did not make any difference. They were still sent off on the trip without their supply of medicine.

Nearly all the respondents (97.8%) said that throughout the trip there was no time when they were not under the direct observation of armed guards. The great majority of them (91 %) said that they had been told they were "prisoners. " The guards who were in the busses with them were policemen (44.6%), soldiers (34%) and security men (8.2%). There were two to four guards on each bus.

The head guard, who often had a radio communication device, was in the great majority of cases (72.7%) a Tigrayan. He was in communication with senior officers in Land Cruisers accompanying the fleets of busses. The senior off1cers in turn had big horn antennas on their vehicles through which they communicated with higher authorities. The ethnic affiliation of the remaining head guards was 14% Amhara, 3.9% Oromo and 1.0% Debub peoples.

We also asked the respondents to tell us which of the guards behaved in cruel and inhuman fashion and to identify him by his ethnic affiliation. The pattern was, again, similar but even more pronounced.

The deportees were delighted to learn that the Government had placed a "doctor" in a bus to look after them, should that become necessary. However, when the doctor could not offer any help to an elderly diabetic who had developed serious problems, they discovered that it was all a cruel hoax. The doctor asked for his suitcase, which was said to be full of medicine, but had been loaded on top of the bus, and the guards on board said that the suitcase could not be brought down "for security reasons." This type of action was carried out to keep up appearances: 6.7% of the deportees said that there was some kind of "health worker" around during the trip but only 4.3% ever got access to medicine in the bus.

More importantly the ICRC was supposed to give some assistance to the deportees during their trip across Ethiopia. Our data concerning ICRC's activities are inconclusive because the deportees could not distinguish the ambulances of the national and international Red Cross societies. To the extent that the national and international organizations were collaborating with each other it makes no difference. In any case, our data reveal that of all the deportees 13.5% stated that there was a vehicle with a Red Cross insignia travelling along with their fleet of busses but that they hardly ever saw them giving help to the deportees during the trip across Ethiopia. On the Eritrean side of the border ICRC's role is substantial in that they furnish the deportees with accommodations in Assab and cover the cost of their transportation from Assab to Massawa.

The very first group of deportees who arrived at Humera were told, mid-way through the trip, "You will face the firing squad when you reach Zone 1 or Zone 2." 22 Throughout the second half of their trip, they traveled with that Guillotine hanging over their necks. When they reached a mountainous area, before descending toward Humera, they were stopped by soldiers who demanded that the deportees be handed over to them. The guards in the busses refused to do so and the two teams argued for several hours while their passengers listened, from a distance, in a state of terror.

This is but one of the many ways devised by Ethiopian authorities to terrify and humiliate the deportees. When they reached the border, they were kept waiting until it was pitch dark before being allowed to cross over. They were told not to use any flash lights (torches) or comparable devices. Their odyssey thus began in darkness when armed raiders broke into their homes and ended in darkness when they crossed the border.

Part of the reason why this is done is because they do not want the deportation to take place under the watchful eye of the national and international press or in the presence of curious citizens of Ethiopia who might have misgivings about the justice of it all. For the same reason, the bus drivers were also under strict orders not stop in towns along the way. If necessary, they were to stop just before or after reaching the towns. Otherwise they were told to speed through the populated areas.

There were other, carefully crafted, dangers at the border. The deportees were told that there were land mines on both sides of the road and that they must stay on the road at all times. How does one do that when it is pitch dark? As would be expected, one child did actually wonder off the road and was killed.

In some of the grimmest moments in this odyssey, the Ethiopian soldiers saw the deportees off to the border crossing and then opened fire from their rear. The hope was clearly to provoke return fire from the other side and thus let their victims fall a prey to friendly fire from Eritrean troops. On more than one occasion, they also required the deportees to walk toward Eritrean trenches in total darkness or to cross the Mereb river when it was swollen and dangerous.

In these and many other instances the Ethiopian officers were stopping just short of murder, hoping to place the deportees in harms way, without actually doing the deed themselves. We do not know where all this will lead and what purpose it serves. It certainly does not enhance Ethiopia's security or her standing among civilized nations.

Our inquiry is not concerned with the situation of the deportees after they arrive in Eritrea. Below is a brief summary of their arrival and reception by the people and institutions.

Crossing the boundary into Eritrea is an anxious moment. As they cross the no man's land between the trenches of the Ethiopian and Eritrean armies, ICRC performs its historic role of affecting the transfer.

After crossing the border to Eritrea, the deportees are welcomed as if they were heroes. people line up along the streets to welcome the fleets of busses. They cheer, they sing, they dance defiantly. They bring them food, drink, and sometimes clothing.

he Eritrean Relief and Refugee Commission, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Eritrean Red Cross give them whatever assistance they need: a place to stay, food, first aid and medical treatment. Other humanitarian groups such as the Sisters of Charity are also there with a kind word and a helping hand.

The oppressive heat of the Danakil desert which they cross by bus, the suffocating closed bus n which they spend the night at the border and the four- kilometer walk across the no man s and can all be a debilitating experience for the elderly, the sick and infants. For some it is also a terrifying experience.

Often, the weakest deportees have to be rushed to a clinic to receive first aid. Some are in such a bad state, that they have to be flown to Asmara hospitals. All others travel on the pen deck of freighters from Assab port to Massawa port, a trip that takes 24 to 36 hours, in blistering heat, exposed to the Red Sea sun.

The biggest of the freighters called " Selam" or " Peace" carries 1500 passengers. That is the same number of people as were on the Titanic on its last journey, but packed on the deck of a l r smaller vessel. As the freighter docks in Massawa, the deportees invariably break out into applause--a surprisingly joyous moment at the end of their horrible exodus.

They then go to an ERREC reception center just outside of Massawa, a village called Emkullu. They are photographed, registered by ERREC officers, issued refugee cards, given 00 Nakfa ($70) per person, regardless of age or status. They are also given utensils.

From there, they go by bus to Asmara and to their respective towns and communities where hey are, once again, given a hero's welcome.

Then they spend a few months in Eritrean towns looking for a place to stay and trying to piece together the shattered fragments of their lives.

The data we have presented were gathered specifically to answer questions about violations of human rights that are protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention of the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In addition to these declarations and covenants, the Ethiopian deportation authorities may also be in violation the Geneva conventions -- a vast and complex body of laws. We leave it to legal scholars to determine whether the acts we have described and documented constitute such violations and, if so, which conventions and articles are applicable, keeping in mind that Eritrea is not a signatory of the Geneva conventions but that it has voluntarily followed the prescriptions of these conventions with regard to both civilians and combatants. As such both Eritrea and Ethiopia are probably bound by the conventions.

We base this conclusion on Article 2 of the Geneva Convention concerned with the "Protection of Civilians Persons in Time of War," which states that:

Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the conventions thereof.

The specific violations that we have identified so far on the basis of all the evidence we have presented above are the following:

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (hereafter ICCPR), Article 3, specifies the due process provision for persons charged of criminal offense, such as the right to be informed of the nature of the charge against them, have access to counsel of their choosing, be tried without delay, and have the right to cross examine witnesses who testify against them. ICCPR Article 14 (2) also specifies another critical right: the right of an individual to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Although most of the deportees in our survey were said to have committed crimes against the Ethiopian State, they were deprived of the above rights and were deported without due process of law.

Even after they have been detained, the deportees have rights that are protected by international law. As detainees or internees there are minimal standards that are guaranteed in terms of visitation, food, drinking water, clothing and toilet facilities.

These standards are specified in the Geneva Conventions concerning "Protection of Civilians in times of War," Section IV on "Regulations for the treatment of internees." 23

Eritreans who are not nationals of Ethiopia but legal residents in that country, have been deprived of their right of protection against arbitrary detention and the right to transfer earnings, savings and other assets abroad. The relevant laws are contained in the Geneva convention, "Declaration on the Human Rights of Individuals Who are not Nationals of the Country in which they Live," Article 5 (1) (a), 5 (1) (lg) and Article 9. 24 The same rights are also protected for citizens as indicated in the Universal Declaration of Human rights, Article 16 (2) with regard property and ICCPR, Article 9 (1) with regard to arbitrary arrests or detentions.

The right of all the deportees -- be they citizens and non- citizens -- to be recognized everywhere as a "person before the law" (ICCPR Article 16) is repeatedly violated during the course of the mass arrests. In the daily round ups, one individual is substituted for another, or adult members of a family are lumped together as a "Sha'biya (EPLF) family" and deported, or individuals are arrested and deported without ascertaining their identity, merely because they have been denounced as enemy aliens by neighbors or informers.

Eritrean citizens of Ethiopia also have a right to participate in Ethiopia's political life. They have formed social and political associations to help them in that activity. Until the outbreak of hostilities in May 1998, these associations were legally authorized and positively encouraged by the Ethiopian government. Nevertheless, the great majority of the deportees have been accused of criminal offenses because of the fact that they were members of these associations. This action violates the non- retroactivity principle and is prohibited in ICCPR, Article 15 (1) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 11 (2). The latter states that "No one shall be held guilty of a penal offense on account of any action or omission which did not constitute a penal offense under national or international law, at the time when it was committed."

The Ethiopian deportation authorities have extensively and ruthlessly violated the rights of children contained in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in particular Article 9 (1) which provides that "a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will," and Article 10 (1) which requires States Parties to ensure the re- unification of families so separated.

An abundance of evidence has been presented showing that Ethiopia's deportation campaign is aimed at ethnic Eritreans who are citizens or legal residents of the country and thus violates Article 26 of ICCPR which provides that the law shall prohibit any discrimination on grounds such as national and social origin.

One of the most critical legal issues that has arisen in regard to the present Ethiopian-Eritrean crisis is that Ethiopia is deporting her own citizens. In so doing she has deprived the deportees of their nationality. That action is prohibited by Article 15 (2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that '~o one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality."

The evidence we have presented in this study is subject to rigorous controls and verification. We have on record two addresses for nearly every individual in our sample: a current address and a permanent address of a senior relative including telephone numbers of the family or their neighbors. Any legitimate international human rights organization or UN agency that wishes to spot check our work will be given access to our questionnaire, as well as the lists and addresses of the deportees in our records and in the national records from which we selected the random sample. 25 In other words, our research is transparent and replicable. It is, furthermore, not anonymous. 26

In the manner we obtain, analyze, interpret our findings, we are bound by the highest standards of academic and professional ethics that we are able to muster in the midst of the current hostilities. Our Ethiopian counterparts should be held to the same standards of verifiability and transparency.

• 1 The author is an anthropologist, Ph.D (Harvard), emeritus professor of anthropology, formerly of Northwestern University, Boston University, Swarthmore College, (1968- 1991), academic vice president of the University of Asmara (1995- 96), chairman of the Eritrean Relief Committee (USA) (1984-91), chairman of the first national conference on the Rights of the Child Convention (1996), and at present director of research. Citizens for Peace in Eritrea.

• 2 Citizens for Peace in Eritrea (CPE) is a voluntary association of concerned Eritrean citizens who have come together as a committee for the purpose of studying and disseminating information about the EthioEritrean conflict and its human consequences. The chairman, Petros Tesfagiorgis, is a founding member of ERA (Eritrean Relief Association) a worldƒwide organization which was active during the last decade of the liberation war, devoted to relief and the alleviation hunger and dislocation caused by droughts and wars. Address: Citizens for Peace, P.O.Box 4588, Asmara, Eritrea; Tel. 291-1-11-92-95; Fax 291-1-18-30-31. E-mail, er4peace@infodesk.gemel.com.er or alegess@eol.com.er

• 3 The term "deportation" is used in this research because its dictionary definition fits the meaning we intend. Webster's Dictionary defines the word as follows: "the removal from a country of an alien whose presence in the country is unlawful or is held to be prejudicial to the public welfare." That is what the Ethiopian government believes it is doing. We consider the deportation to be illegal because the victims are not aliens but, in the main, citizens and their presence in the country is not unlawful or prejudicial to the public welfare of the country. In short, the object of our study is "illegal deportations." '

• 4This seminal interview the Prime Minister gave over Radio Ethiopia has been translated from the original Amharic by this writer and appears, below, as Appendix 4.

• 5 See Appendix 5.

• 6 See statement of Amnesty International in Appendix 2

• 7 Eritrean customary laws have been preserved in writ~en form since the 14'h century. These laws are as venerable as the Magna Carta ƒ and they are treated with the same degree of reverence by the Eritrean peasantry as the "Great Charter" is in Anglo Saxon traditions.

• 8 Natalie Klein, "Mass Expulsions from Ethiopia: Report on the Deportation of Eritreans and Ethiopians of Eritrean Origin from Ethiopia: June - August 1998."

• 9 Arnnesty International Secretariat, Urgent Action, AFR 25113198, 23 July 1998. The report concludes that "the scale of proven abuses," is "very much smaller" in Eritrea than in Ethiopia.

• 10 The report, reproduced in Appendix 6, states that the evidence about the expulsions from Ethiopia are compelling and show that the procedure has degenerated from selective targeting to indiscriminate deportations. "

• 11 James Foley, of the US State Department office of the Spokesman, August 7, 1998. The statement that was released condemns Ethiopia's deportations of ethnic Eritreans and the confiscation of their properties and recommends that the deportees be compensated for their losses. (Appendix 7)

• 12 UNICEF, Eritrea, "Summary of Field Trip Findings about Deportees Children Left behind," 20 July 1998. The report documents the plight of Eritrean children left behind without caretakers.

• 13 Memorandum from Martyn Ngwenya, UN Designated Official and UN Resident Coordinator, to Sergio Viera de Mello, Under secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, New York, 22 July 1998. In a televised interview with Eritrean Television, Mr. Ngwenya stated that he and his team found no evidence of human rights violations in Eritrea with regard to the Ethiopian residents in the country and that there were significant examples of such violation on the Ethiopian side.

• 14 UN Press Release, titled "High Commissioner for Human Rights Expresses Deep Concern at Continuing Expulsion of Eritrean Nationals from Ethiopia." 1 July 1998, which appears below as Appendix 3.

• 15 It is significant at the 0.0001 level (chi square).

• 16 The prime minister, an Amhara and the leader of the Amhara party (ANDM within the EPRDF coalition is now in imprisoned on corruption charges.

• 17 The relevant article was first proclaimed in "Ethiopian Nationality Law," Berhanena Selam Newpaper Vol. 6, No. 30, July 24, 1930, Article 11, and later incorporated into the 1931 constitution.

• 18 Only in 19% of the cases were the prospective agents asked to come to the detention centers to give their consent to represent the deportee.

• 19 It is mostly the poor families who live in such rental properties. These are houses owned by the local (Kebele) administration and the rents are controlled.

• 20 There are instances that we recorded in interviews with Eritrean truck owners who were detained in Mekele for as long as 100 days hut these did not appear in our survey.

• 21 The graph on deprivations is a summary of seven different variables (tables): numbered pr4 - pr11.

• 22 Zone 1 is Tigray and Zone 2 is Afar. Different informants mention one or the other Zone.

• 23 The relevant articles are 85, on hygiene, health and sanitary conveniences, 86 on canteens, 89 on daily provision of food and drinking water, 90 on clothing.

• 24 UN, Human Rights: Compilation of International Instruments, V. 1, part 2, p. 668

• 25 That is, the names, serial numbers and addresses that served as the sampling frame.

• 26 The names of individuals whose documents are presented in this paper, were deleted to protect members of their family who are still in Ethiopia. These and all the other names associated with this study will be made available to human rights organizations, with the understanding that they will not be made public.

• 27 The translation, prepared by this writer from the original Amharic, is presented here with emphasis added. This translation was first published in Eritrea Profile in the August 8, 1998.

  
  
  

The main aspects of the sampling procedures employed in this study were described in the main body of the paper. However, some detailed aspects of the procedure need to added here. To begin with, we used ERREC's census of the deportees as the sampling frame. ERREC's approach and ours were similar in one respect: we both recorded families under their household heads, but we also recorded lone individuals separately who were deported separately. From a human rights standpoint, the experiences of every individual or family are relevant sources of information.

In the ERREC census, a household head is, in most cases, male, but, occasionally, female. The household head will have listed under him his children and dependents. The dependents could be old or young, or young adults who have not yet established separate households, whether they are married or not.

We employed two different randomization procedures at two different stages of our research. Computer generated random tables were the basis for selecting to the first lot from a population base of 4000 household heads as listed in the ERREC census. We made a great deal of effort to find and interview all the individuals who turned up in the sample. After we completed this phase of our research, we found that we were unable to find 20 individuals in the sample, because no address was available for them or they moved to another address. We replaced these individuals with others, who were also selected using the same randomization techniques.

To compensate for the errors that might have crept into our procedure as a result of the 20 substitutions, we employed a second strategy to sample from another 2880 household heads. This time, we decided to take the samples and administer the questionnaires at the reception centers where the deportees were being registered, rather than waiting until they were registered and dispersed to their various communities throughout Eritrea. We took every sixteenth individuals (or 6.25%) from those which ERREC officers were registering. The sampling ratio was therefore kept at the same level across the entire population under study. In this second approach, there were no missing cases and we did not, therefore, have to make any substitutions.

The two sampling procedures contain different kinds of errors and each procedure compensates for the other type. The first strategy's weakness arises from missing individuals who were sampled but could not be located. The second strategy is fully inclusive of the population from which we sampled but we did not sample from every group that arrived at the reception centers. We got most of the groups but not all of them. In any case, we do not claim that our sample is representative of all the deportees but only of the 6880 households from which we drew the sample. However, this population of 6880 households constitutes the vast majority of the urban deportees from Ethiopia.

TO: Mr. Haile Wolde-Tensae
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Asmara, Eritrea

FROM: Africa Program Director
DATE: 5 August 1998

Dear Minister,

Thank you for the communication from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs dated 26 July 1998. This refers to letters from members of Amnesty International in various countries who had expressed concern about reports of Ethiopians detained in Eritrea without charge or trial or deported from Eritrea.

We welcome the assurance contained in your letter that the Government of Eritrea does not have a policy of deporting Ethiopian residents and that the latter will continue to have the right to live and work in Eritrea. We note the information about the return to Ethiopia of 46 students of the University of Asmara and 80 teachers from Assab.

It is encouraging to learn that the government has invited representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Off1ce of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to Eritrea and has asked them to investigate the allegations of detentions. It will considerably reassure the international community if the ICRC is able to provide its range of services to the Government of Eritrea to ensure respect for the Geneva Conventions in connection with the current conflict with Ethiopia, and if it is granted access according to its mandate to prisoners of war and security detainees. Similarly the presence in Eritrea of officials of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights will be a positive step for protection of human rights in the region in the times ahead.

With regard to the situation of Eritreans in Ethiopia, many of whom had Ethiopian nationality, Amnesty International has been deeply concerned at the thousands of arbitrary detentions and deportations and ill-treatment of men, women and children of Eritrean origin. Since these serious human rights violations started in mid- June 1998, our members have been repeatedly protesting to the Ethiopian government about these arrests, particularly where Eritreans appear to be prisoners of conscience detained solely on account of their Eritrean origin and without any evidence that they have committed criminal offences. We have called for their immediate and unconditional release if they are not to be charged with a recognizably criminal offence. We have demanded respect for the basic human rights of detainees and for them to be humanely treated while in detention, including being given immediate access to relatives, lawyers and the ICRC. Furthermore we have appealed for deportations not to be carried out in violation of articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights prohibiting arbitrary exile or deprivation of nationality and affirming the right to freedom of movement. We call for them not to be deported without any clear or fair procedures, including the right to challenge the deportation order through open and fair court proceedings.

We would like to clarify that although these issues of detention and deportation in Eritrea and Ethiopia bear some similarity, the scale of proven abuses has been very different in terms of the numbers of people affected: the detentions in Ethiopia number some thousands and the deportations have apparently surpassed 12,000, whereas the allegations concerning Eritrea refer to a very much smaller number. The Ethiopian authorities have not replied to Amnesty International's appeals or halted the detentions and deportations. It does not appear that the ICRC has been given full access to the detainees.

We appreciate this prompt reply from the Government of Eritrea, which we are communicating to our members. In view of this positive response from the Government of Eritrea we are asking our members to discontinue their letter- writing to Eritrea at the present time. We will continue to investigate and where appropriate will bring allegations of arbitrary detention to the attention of the authorities. We trust that the Eritrean authorities will thoroughly investigate all allegations which are substantially based.

Yours sincerely,

Gill Nevins
Acting Africa Program Director

July 1 1998

High Commissioner for Human Rights Expresses Deep Concern at Continuing Expulsions of Eritrean Nationals from Ethiopia

The following statement was issued today by the High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson.

"I am deeply concerned by the violation of human rights of Eritrean nationals being expelled from Ethiopia, and particularly by the fact that their passports are being stamped, 'expelled, never to return.' Others, who had been trying to leave, have had their identity cards conf1scated.

There are serious violations of the rights and freedoms set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Ethiopia is a party.

1. Question: To safeguard the security of the nation, the Federal Government, had suspended some Eritreans from government service, and had expelled others form the country. In connection with this, there was a statement issued by United Nations High Commission for Human Rights. Would this statement prevent us from taking further appropriate steps to respect our national security?"

2. Answer: (Prime Minister Meles) First of all I feel it is important to state the connection between human rights and the situation of foreign nationals living in a country. People cannot be put in prison just because they are foreigners without due process of law. They cannot be beaten or flogged, cannot have their property confiscated, cannot be killed outside of the law; cannot be prevented from anything, cannot be punished.

3. This is one point. The second point is this: a foreigner can live in another country when that government believes that the foreigner is useful to it. One foreign national, for example Ethiopian, can live in the US when the government of the US allows it. No Ethiopian has a right to live in the US. He lives there when the US government allows it. Beyond that, he cannot say he has a right to live in the US. This is not [a matter of ] human right. This is citizenship right. Eritreans live in Ethiopia because of the good will of the Ethiopian government. It is the right of the Ethiopian government to expel Eritreans living in Ethiopia at any time.

4. The same with the Eritrean government's right to tell Ethiopians living in Eritrea to leave the country and expel them for any reason. The Eritrean government has no right to imprison Ethiopians there illegally. It has no right to confiscate property of the Ethiopians there illegally. It has no right to punish them by death outside a court judgement. It has no right to beat them or flog them under any circumstances. Likewise in Ethiopia.

5. Seen from this perspective, what is the character of the stand taken by the Ethiopian government, the steps taken in regard to human rights? No one has been so treated; no one will be. Is there any property that we have taken without the law, let alone outside the law ?

   
   

6. As was done in every war situation, we have put in prisoner-of- war camps both Shabiya (EPLF) officers and Shabiya soldiers living in Ethiopia. This is in accordance with international law. To ascertain that this was done according to international law we have made the ICRC visit them from time to time. We have made the ICRC visit the place where these people are located.

7. What we have done is honour the rights of foreign nationals one hundred percent. By contrast, if we see the situation in Eritrea, not only did they expel Eritreans [sic] from there, they have flogged them, confiscated their property and expelled them, have tortured them against the law. They are torturing them in a situation where nobody, including the ICRC, is allowed to see them. It is the Eritrean government that is violating human rights. We, on the other hand, have respected the human rights of foreign nationals.

8. This being the truth, the statement issued by the person in charge of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, has astonished not only ourselves but also we can say, many UN bodies. Before taking such a stand, and making such a statement, a person should at least take steps to verify the information. We have presented opposition to the steps taken by the Eritrean government, which violates the rights of our people. That was accompanied by evidence. We have done this before that woman [Ms Mary Robinson, UN Commissioner for Human Rights] issued her statement. Similarly, the Eritrean government may have presented [its case] to her. She should have compared both documents, she should have gone to Eritrea to ascertain what the Ethiopian claim is, she should have come to Ethiopia to ascertain the claims of the Eritreans. After that she can take a stand. It is astonishing to make a statement without finding out what the facts are and while she was travelling. This calls for accountability, in my view. This is an unusual procedure. The way you and others have asked the question misses the point. Our stand is well known. Our action is well known. Our conduct is well known. The ICRC is following this case. Many UN agencies are following our action on this matter.

9. Hence, to look at the second question (issue) "Would the steps that we have taken now, to safeguard our security, prevent us from taking worse actions in the future?" What does this (question) mean? As long as any foreign national is in Ethiopia, any foreign national is in Ethiopia, any foreign national, whether Eritrean or Japanese etc. . . lives in Ethiopia because of the goodwill of the Ethiopian government. If we say 'Go~ because we do not like the color of your eyes,' they have to leave.

10. Security is a different issue. Because, any foreign national living in Ethiopia is there because of the goodwill of the government. Therefore, we can say 'leave' and expel them honorably. There is nothing preventing us from expelling them without beating, without flogging, without confiscating their property illegally, without killing them. We can do it by only saying 'we don't like you, that we are not happy with you.' We cannot imprison, we cannot punish outside the law. Nobody can prevent us from expelling them because we do not like them. It is our right. It is the right of every country. There is a right to live in a given country. This is citizenship right. We cannot expel a citizen of Ethiopia from Ethiopia. We cannot expel him whatever he does. But we can expel a non-citizen of Ethiopia for any reason. Whatever the reason. This has no connection with human rights. Does not the US round up many Mexicans who cross the border right and left and return them because they say 'you are not wanted'?

11. Therefore, we have unlimited right to expel. How do we use this unlimited right? As I said, can we expel collectively? Impossible. There is nothing like it. Because this government is not anti-people. Because it does not hate any people. Though it has a right, it is not its stand. Because it is not its stand, it can gather and expel Shabiya's (EPLF's) fifth column to safeguard its security. It has done so in the past and will do so in the future, and this is not subject to discussion.

12. Outside of this, they have the chance to live in Ethiopia as long as they respect the laws and regulations of the country, though we have the right [to expel], because our stand is not based on hating people. What that woman [Mary Robibnson] has taken as a stand has nothing to do with the steps taken on security grounds. It is not connected with human rights. This can only be connected with human rights if they are beaten, killed outside the law, their property confiscated illegally, imprisoned illegally and it will be possible to say that it is was done outside the law and outside human rights.

13. It is the right of any government to say 'leave our country.' While that right remains intact, we as a people and government, do not have a stand that aims to create hatred and conflict among peoples, but to develop brotherhood among peoples. For this reason we will do what we have done before, identify the members of Shabiya's (EPLF's) fifth column one by one and take action against them.

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    Appendix 5

    INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS

    Letter to Mr. Girma Asmerom, Eritrea's Ambassador to Ethiopia

    On behalf of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Ethiopia, I convey my warmest regards, and take this opportunity to bring to your attention a representation contained in the Statement of the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dated June 24, 1998~ which is in need of clarification.

    In paragraph 27 of the statement it is indicated that the approximately 1045 civilian internees taken by transport to the border with the State of Eritrea were "accompanied by representatives of the ICRC." The ICRC wishes to point out that representatives of the ICRC were not involved in the transfer of these civilian internees and did not accompany their transfer to border of the State of Eritrea.

    The ICRC will continue in its efforts to carry out its mandate in relation to civilian internees and prisoners of war, as recognized under the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol, in relation to both Parties to the conflict. Further, the ICRC remains ready to offer its good offices to the Parties, as a neutral intermediary, for the protection ~.f those not involved in the conflict.

    Thanking you for your support of ICRC in its humanitarian activities, I remain.

    Sincerely,

    Signature Illegible,
    Georges --------
    Head of Delegation

    [Published in Eritrea Profile, August 8, 1998, p. 8.]

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    Appendix 6

    HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH WORLD REPORT 1999

    Events of December 1997 - November 1998
    New York, Washington, London, Brussels

    ETHIOPIA

    Human Rights Developments

    The close political and strategic alliance between Ethiopia and Eritrea collapsed in early May when a minor border dispute flared up into brief violent confrontations. Hundreds were killed on both sides, mainly civilians. The fighting displaced thousands of villagers on both sides of the border. Fighting ceased in mid-June following intense mediation efforts, but a massive military buildup by both states continued as a bitter propaganda war and the pursuit of escalation by extremists on both sides reduced the chances of a negotiated settlement.

    Both sides traded accusations of ill-treatment of their citizens whom the conflict had found on the wrong side of the border. Eritrea denied deliberately expelling Ethiopians and said its policy would remain one of welcoming and protecting Ethiopians willing to stay, but a September 26 statement by the Eritrean foreign ministry put the number of Ethiopians who had "voluntarily returned to their country" at 6,600.

    Compelling evidence pointed to a deliberate campaign by the Ethiopian authorities to expel Eritreans and Ethiopians of Eritrean origin to Eritrea. By late October, an estimated thirty thousand, most of them Ethiopian citizens who had not taken up Eritrean nationality in the aftermath of Eritrean's 1991 secession from Ethiopia, were deported after experiencing systematic denial of their human rights. The campaign swiftly degenerated from selective targeting to indiscriminate deportations. A government "policy" statement on June 11 said the "550,000 Eritreans residing in Ethiopia" could continue to live and work peacefully there. However, as a "precautionary measure," the statement ordered members of Eritrean political and community organizations to leave the country on account of their suspected support of the Eritrean war effort, and gave a mandatory leave of absence of one month to Eritreans occupying "sensitive" jobs. While authorities initially suggested an option of voluntary departure for the targeted categories, they later began rounding up people on the sole basis of their being Eritrean or of Eritrean extraction, and apparently without making an effort to distinguish between the two categories. Not all who fell in the dragnet were deported. Those of military age were sent to detention camps where an unknown number remained held by late October without charge or trial. Others were trucked, after brief detentions to remote border posts and ordered to cross into Eritrea on foot. Those detained and expelled included many elderly retired citizens who lived and raised their children in other provinces of Ethiopia while Eritrea fought for its independence. The government ordered the freezing of their assets and revoked their business licenses, stripping them and their families of their livelihood.

    Many families were separated during the deportations from underage children who were not allowed to leave with them, or, in a few cases, from children who were deported unaccompanied. '

    Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in an interview with Radio Ethiopia on July 9 said the deportees were "foreigners," adding that ..."any foreign national, whether Eritrean or Japanese etc....lives in Ethiopia because of the goodwill of the Ethiopian government. If we say 'Go because we don't like the color of your eyes. 'they have to leave."

    1 Emphasis add by this writer.

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    Appendix 7

    U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
    Office of the Spokesman

    
    For Immediate Release August 6, 1998

    
    Statement by James B. Foley, Depute Spokesman
    Ethiopia: Expulsions of Eritreans

    The United States Government is greatly concerned about the growing impact on civilian populations of the continuing conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

    The United States views with deep concern the detention and expulsion of ethnic Eritreans in and from Ethiopia. The government of Ethiopia has a legitimate right to guarantee the safety and security of its people against potential threats. However, there are fundamental humanitarian and human rights concerns raised by the forcible separation of families, the undue hardships of those detained or expelled to Eritrea, and the financial losses caused by the sudden expulsions. We urge the government of Ethiopia to respect international human rights norms and standards and follow appropriate due process in handling its security concerns. We further urge the government of Ethiopia to allow all those who were wrongfully expelled to return and to establish a compensation commission to investigate and recommend compensation for the claims resulting from undue financial loss and hardship as a result of rapid, forced expulsions.

    We call on the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea to ensure full access to all detainees and POW's, to allow all students to repatriate, and to facilitate the return of nationals who wish to repatriate voluntarily. We welcome the decision of both governments to grant the ICRC access and urge full cooperation with ICRC in accordance with its standard procedures. We call on both parties to receive missions from appropriate United Nations agencies. History has shown that deportations and detentions and the massive displacement of innocent civilians, wherever and whenever they occur, create hardships and bitterness fueling misunderstandings and lasting mistrust.

    Ultimately, durable peace is the best guarantee of the right of each other's nationals in Eritrea and Ethiopia. The United States urges Ethiopia and Eritrea to redouble their efforts in seeking a peaceful resolution to the current border conflict, and we pledge our continued commitment to support such efforts.

    
    

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    Appendix

    Amnesty International - News Release - AFR 25/02/99, 29 January 1999

    Ethiopia/Eritrea
    Amnesty International witnesses cruelty of mass deportations

    "I was picked up at night, thrown into prison, not allowed time to pack.
    I asked what my crime was. 'You're an Eritrean,' they said."

    Amnesty International representatives returning from investigations in Ethiopia and Eritrea warned today that forced mass deportation now threatens everyone of Eritrean origin hl Ethiopia. causing untold suffering to thousands of families every week.

    Last week in Eritrea, Amnesty International's representatives witnessed the arrival of some 1,'80 women, men and children of Eritrean origin who had been rounded up and deported by the Ethiopian authorities. Most of those Amnesty International spoke to either had Ethiopian passports. or had been born or spent their entire working lives there. and considered themselves Ethiopians .

    Ethiopia's policy of deporting people of Eritrean origin after war between the two countries broke out in May 1998 has now developed into a systematic, country-wide operation to arrest and deport anyone of full or part Eritrean descent. Fifty-two thousand Eritreans have been arbitrarily deported from Ethiopia over the last seven months. 6,300 so far in January 1999.

    "Women, some of them pregnant, children, the elderly;" even hospital patients" ; are now being arrested and detained in the middle of the night," Amnesty International's representatives said.

    "People of all ages, from babies to pensioners, are imprisoned in harsh conditions for several days before being forced to board buses under armed guard with only one piece of luggage each, if that, and being dumped at the border. They arrive hungry and exhausted, and often ill, after the three-day journey."

    Families have been split up, the male head usually deported first, and his wife, parents and children weeks or months later. The many Ethiopians married to Eritreans are forbidden to leave and forced to watch helplessly while their spouse and children are deported.

    Deportees have had to abandon their homes, possessions, businesses and other property with no guarantee of ever recovering them. Individuals who have protested have been threatened or beaten. The deportees were arbitrarily stripped of their Ethiopian citizenship without any warning, legal process or right of appeal.

    Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has said that the deportees posed a threat to national security and that they had forfeited their Ethiopian citizenship by voting in Eritrea's independence referendum in 1993.

    Amnesty International representatives visited Ethiopia in October 1998 and Eritrea in January
    1999 to examine allegations from both sides of human rights abuses arising from the May 1998
    conflict. They met government officials and interviewed returnees from both countries.

    At least 22,000 Ethiopians have returned to Ethiopia from Eritrea since May, most after losing
    their jobs and being rendered destitute as a result of the hostilities, and some in fear of reprisals.
    No evidence was found to support Ethiopia's allegations that 40,000 of its citizens have been
    seriously ill-treated and forcibly deported from Eritrea since May

    Enquiries were also made into the Eritrean bombing of a school in Mekelle, northern Ethiopia, in
    June 1998. The Eritrean government admitted the resulting deaths of 48 civilians, including
    women and children, were a "mistake", but has established no independent investigation into the
    bombings. An Ethiopian plane bombed and killed one person at the airport in Asmara, the
    Eritrean capital, the same day.

    Amnesty International is reiterating its appeal to the Ethiopian government to put an immediate
    stop to the deportations and ill-treatment of deportees, and arbitrary detentions of thousands of
    other Eritreans, including 38 students in Blattein military camp. They contravene Ethiopia's laws
    and Constitution, as well as the international human rights treaties Ethiopia has ratified.

    In the event of further fighting, the human rights organization urges both sides to respect the
    Geneva Conventions, which Eritrea should immediately ratify. They should also ensure that
    civilians do not become targets or victims of the fighting, and that no Eritreans in Ethiopia, or
    Ethiopians in Eritrea, should suffer reprisal because of their national origin.

    "The international community -- particularly government representatives stationed in Ethiopia --
    must break their silence and make a joint stand against the deportations and other human rights
    violations," Amnesty International said.

    Background

    The deportations of Eritreans from Ethiopia began on 12 June, one month after war broke out in
    May 1998 between the former close allies who fought together as guerrilla movements to
    overthrow the Dergue government in Ethiopia in 1991, when Eritrea became a separate
    independent state. What began as a border conflict led to some ground fighting, then air attacks
    by both sides, and occasional artillery firing along the border.

    Mediation by the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the United Nations, the United States
    and other governments is continuing to avert a near-imminent all-out war which would be
    devastating for both sides. Each side has re-armed and has mobilized massive forces along the
    border, and the fighting has already displaced up to a quarter- million people.

    Ethiopia is state party to International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the African
    Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the
    Geneva Conventions.

    Source: Amnesty International,
    International Secretariat, I Easton Street
    WCIX 8DJ, London, United Kingdom

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