Eritrea remains the black hole of news

The Horn of Africa nation Eritrea won a very dubious award this week: the world’s most censored nation. The list of the world’s 10 worst countries was put together by the Committee to Protect Journalists and Eritrea fought off the tough competition of North Korea, Syria, Iran, Equatorial Guinea, Uzbekistan, Burma, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Belarus to win this uncoveted award.  The CPJ research is based on 15 benchmarks, including blocking of websites; restrictions on electronic recording and dissemination; the absence of privately owned or independent media; and restrictions on journalist movements.

Eritrea has allowed no foreign journalists in since 2007 and domestic media are tightly controlled. Eritrea has been a dictatorship for 20 years since it achieved independence in  a bloody war with Ethiopia.  All domestic media are controlled by the government and the Orwellian "Ministry of Information" direct every detail of coverage. CPJ quoted an exiled journalist who said every time they had a story it was the Ministry who arranged interview subjects and gave instructions on the news angle to follow. Eight journalists from Eritrea are on CPJ's Journalist Assistance Program which supports exiled journalists who cannot be helped by advocacy alone.

Not surprisingly, the country’s president Isaias Afewerki who has ruled since independence in 1993, dominates coverage.  Equally unsurprising, the coverage is universally positive. As with all secretive countries, the media chose silence as a way of dealing with bad news. When Afewerki had a health scare recently it reported nothing for several weeks. Intense rumour-mongering filled the vacuum. Opposition websites and social media commented on the fact president had not appeared on television for nearly a month and many speculated on whether he had died.  (photo of Afewerki: Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP)

Finally on 29 April, Information Minister Ali Abdu told the BBC he saw Afewerki every day and the 66-year-old president was “in robust health.” A day later Afewerki went on television to dispel the rumours. "I do not have any kind of sickness," he said and accused those peddling such rumours of being "sick" and said they were indulging in psychological warfare to "disturb" the people.

The real psychological warfare is being conducted by the government suspicious of its own people. Government spies routinely report opinions in the street and even intimidate their opponents abroad.  All Internet service providers are required to connect to the web through government-operated EriTel. While Eritrea's journalists in exile run diaspora websites from London, Houston and Toronto, domestic Internet access is only affordable for the government elite. In 2011 the country had plans to implement mobile Internet capability but as the social media impact on the Arab Spring became widely known, Afewerki’s government abandoned the idea. 

The Eritrean Government has become increasingly paranoid as the country slowly becomes an international pariah. The UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Eritrea in 2009 for its support of Al Shabaab and other insurgents fighting neighbouring Somalia’s transitional government. The UN resolution also referenced a longstanding border dispute between Eritrea and Djibouti and demanded Eritrea cease “arming, training, and equipping armed groups that aim to destabilize the region or incite violence and civil strife in Djibouti.”

Eritrea’s friendlessness has allowed another longstanding enemy make incursions into its territory. In March, the Guardian reported Ethiopia had attacked Eritrea for the first time in a decade with few repercussions. Ethiopia's forces carried out a dawn raid in what it called a successful attack against military targets. Ethiopia claimed Eritrea used the military base to train an Ethiopian rebel group which has killed foreigners in Afar. 

The Guardian put the lack of international attention to the border incursion down to Afewerki's poor reputation, “a piece of work” as the British broadsheet called him. It quoted a Wikileak cable by US ambassador to Eritrea, Ronald McMullen, which said Afewerki was an unhinged dictator and his regime was very good at controlling all aspects of Eritrean society.

Media censorship is a key part of that control and the reason why the “award” for the most censored country is not as frivolous as it sounds.  As far back as 2005 Reporters Without Borders described Eritrea as a “black hole for news”.  Seven years later nothing has yet emerged from Afewerki’s vortex. And as the San Francisco Chronicle says, no one cares.

IGAD's demise spells trouble for Somalia

Eritrea has pulled out of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) after a row with Ethiopia about Somalia. IGAD is the regional development organisation for east Africa which is now down to six member countries. The decision is a blow to co-ordinated efforts to pacify Somalia. The Eritrean government of Eritrea released a statement saying it was “compelled to take the move due to the fact that a number of repeated and irresponsible resolutions that undermine regional peace and security have been adopted in the guise of IGAD”.

Ostensibly allies, Ethiopia and Eritrea are locked in a proxy war in Somalia. Ethiopia backs the weak interim government; Eritrea sponsors the Islamic militants fighting to overthrow it. UN Security Council Resolution 1725 was raised to reaffirm “its respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence, and unity of Somalia”. The resolution commended the crucial efforts of IGAD to promote and encourage political dialogue between the Ethiopian backed government in Baidoa and the Union of Islamic Courts who ruled in Somalia’s rambunctious capital, Mogadishu.

IGAD was created in 1996 to supersede the Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and Development (IGADD) which was founded ten years earlier. IGADD was a response to the droughts that crippled the Horn of Africa in the seventies and early eighties. The then six countries of the Horn (Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Sudan) decided to take a regional approach to the problem with the help of the UN. IGADD was officially launched in 1986 with its headquarters in Djibouti.

After achieving some success in drought reduction and famine relief, IGADD’s mandate widened to cover other areas of regional development. Eritrea joined the organisation shortly after gaining its independence in 1993. The organisation received a new charter and a name change to in 1996 with the focus moving away from drought to development. IGAD had three focus areas: Conflict Prevention and Humanitarian Affairs; Infrastructure Development; and Food Security and Environment Protection.

But process in IGAD is now stalled. The lack of a functioning central government has kept Somalia out of any meaningful action. Sudan is preoccupied by its civil wars in the South and West (Darfur). Kenya and Uganda, meanwhile prefer to concentrate their energies on the East African Community EAC) which it shares with Tanzania with Burundi and Rwanda joining later this year. The EAC is a more stable bloc of countries and has an eventual goal of economic and political union between its members.

But the major impediment to any progress within IGAD is the ongoing dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Although the two countries are officially at peace since the Algiers Agreement of 2000, the UN was forced to demand Eritrea to remove its forces from a disputed buffer zone on its border with Ethiopia last October. Two months later, Eritrea protested when Ethiopian forces invaded Somalia to end the regime of the Islamic Courts in Mogadishu. Eritrea had supported the Islamic Courts as a buffer against Ethiopia.

While the fighting still rages, the US accused Eritrea this week of providing funding, arms and training to insurgents battling Somali forces and allied Ethiopian troops in Mogadishu. Assistant US Secretary of State Jendaye Frazer called for renewed ceasefire talks to end the fighting but said "Eritrea has not been playing a constructive role in Somalia because they continue to fund, arm, train and advise the insurgents" she told reporters.

The fighting not only damages IGAD. It is also destroying Somalia. In the past month alone, nearly 1,300 people have died in fighting between government troops and their Ethiopian allies on the one side, and Islamists on the other. There have been over 300,000 refugees from the capital. But the world is not interested. A Somali intellectual said, "There is a massive tragedy unfolding in Mogadishu, but from the world's silence, you would think it's Christmas.”

Eritrea attacks Ethiopia

The UN has requested the African Red Sea state of Eritrea to take its armed forces out of a neutral buffer zone on its border with Ethiopia. Eritrea has moved troops and tanks into a buffer zone that the UN has policed since the border war of 1998-2000. Kjell Magne Bondevik, the special humanitarian envoy for the Horn of Africa, expressed the UN’s concerns in meetings with Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki and his government.

The two countries signed the Algiers Agreement in June 2000 to officially end the border war. Several thousands had died on both sides. The agreement called for the establishment of an independent commission to decide the border question. A month later, the UN deployed a peacekeeping force called UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) to monitor the ceasefire. UNMEE consisted of 4,000 military personnel from 40 countries. UNMEE separated the armed forces of the two countries with a demilitarised security zone and briefly contributed to stability in the area and the return of the refugees displaced by the conflict.

The land known as Eritrea (from the Greek word for Red Sea) was created by the Italians. They colonised lands bequeathed to the Egyptians by the old Ottoman Empire. Italy had a strategic goal: to establish a presence on the world’s busiest shipping lane after the creation of the Suez Canal. They declared Eritrea an Italian colony in 1890. It remained in their hands until the British took it in World War II. After the war, the UN decided Eritrea would be federated with Ethiopia. Haile Selassie was restored to his throne of Ethiopia that he lost after the Italians invaded the country from their base in Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. He wanted Eritrea to give Ethiopia access to the Red Sea. Selassie proclaimed a new constitution in 1955 which proclaimed Ethiopian ownership of Eritrea. His government slowly but surely broke the terms of the UN Resolution, reducing Eritrea to status of an occupied country.

In July 1960 a group of Eritrean students and intellectuals held a met in Cairo and formed the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF). A year later, the Eritrean World War II hero Hamis Idris Awate (pictured) fired the first shots for the Eritrean independence movement attacking the Ethiopian army and police. It was to be the start of a brutal 30 year battle. In the 1960s, the ELF was primarily a lowlands Muslim movement. Selassie was ousted in a coup by the Derg junta in 1974 and they launched bloody reprisals against Eritrean attacks. The Christian highlanders had now joined the independence movement as they became increasingly disillusioned with Ethiopian massacres of civilian populations. The Derg strongman Mengistu Haile Mariam succeeded in stopping independence only because Ethiopia was now armed by the Soviet Union. After the end of the Cold War, the Soviets ceased supplying Mengistu and the war turned in Eritrea’s favour. When Mengistu was overthrown in 1991 the parties met in Washington and quickly moved to end the war.

Eritrea was formally pronounced an independent country after an almost unanimous referendum. On May 28, 1993, the United Nations formally admitted Eritrea to its membership. Initially relations with Ethiopia’s new rulers were good. But the peace agreement had not properly established the border and in 1998 the two countries’ armies clashed in the disputed town of Badme. The fighting spread and led to massive internal displacement in both countries as civilians fled the war zone. The war lasted two years and ended in unsatisfactory stalemate. UNMEE came in to monitor an uneasy peace.

Eritrea’s president Isaias Afewerki addressed the stalemate when he wrote the “Eleven Letters” to the Secretary-General and Security Council of the UN between 2003 and 2005. They claimed Ethiopia had rejected the boundary commission’s recommendations on the border between the countries and the UN failed to do its duty to “enforce its own resolutions and to uphold the rule of law”.

Afewerki has been president of Eritrea since full independence. He joined the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) in 1966 and received military training in China. He went on to become deputy divisional commander. In 1970 he co-founded the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) and in 1987 he was elected secretary-general of the organisation. He promised to call elections on several occasions but always found reasons to defer.

Eritrea is now a one-party state, with the ruling People's Front for Democracy and Justice the only party allowed to operate. There is no independent media or in the country and Reporters Without Borders have described the country as a “black hole” for news. Only North Korea has a worse record for freedom of expression. In Eritrea journalists exist only to provide government propaganda. Harassment, psychological pressure, intimidation and round-the-clock surveillance are common for anyone foolhardy enough to ignore the rules. While his well-equipped army wages war on Ethiopia, Afewerki's people are ravaged by poverty and drought. The UN has expressed its grave fears about the humanitarian consequences of Eritrea's violation of the security zone.