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The UN special rapporteur on Eritrea on Wednesday called for a swift and independent investigation into allegations that the country’s troops attacked refugee camps in neighboring Ethiopia and abducted Eritrean asylum seekers.
Reporting to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker expressed concern about the thousands of Eritreans who were in two camps in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region – which were reportedly destroyed by the Eritrean and Ethiopian troops.
There were 96,000 Eritrean refugees living in four camps in Tigray before Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched military operations against the region’s ruling party leaders in early November.
Babiker said two of the camps, Hitsats and Shimelba, which housed more than 25,000 Eritrean refugees, “were reportedly destroyed in attacks by Eritrean and Ethiopian troops” between November and January.
He said he had received firsthand accounts of allegations of “extrajudicial killings, targeted kidnappings and forced return of Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers to Eritrea, allegedly by Eritrean forces”.
Babiker said many of these refugees have now been imprisoned in Eritrea.
“Such allegations must be promptly and thoroughly investigated by independent mechanisms,” he said.
“I call on the Eritrean authorities to give me full access to refugees and asylum seekers who are believed to be held in various prisons inside Eritrea.”
No progress on rights
The Sudanese rapporteur, who took office in November, said there was “no concrete evidence of progress or real improvement” in the human rights situation in Eritrea, in his first update. oral day in the Council.
Special rapporteurs are appointed by the council but do not speak on behalf of the UN.
“The country does not have a rule of law, a constitution, or an independent judiciary to enforce the protection and respect of human rights,” Babiker said.
“Eritrea continues to lack a national assembly to pass laws, including those governing fundamental rights and the right of the Eritrean people to participate freely in the public life of their country.”
The secret East African nation “continues to impose restrictions on religious freedoms,” he added, urging the authorities to release anyone detained for their faith.
On the issue of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, “there has been no progress”, he said, denouncing the arbitrary detention of political opponents “in secret prisons without charge or trial”.
In December, the rapporteur requested a visit to Eritrea in January. He has not yet received a response.
Responding to the rapporteur’s update, an Eritrean official told the Council that his country had been treated “unfairly and unfairly”.
He said the report was an attempt to paint a “grim picture of Eritrea and to demonize the government”.
He also said it was high time the Human Rights Council “put an end to the unwarranted ritual of annual harassment of Eritrea”.
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