Radio Erena: March 24, 2014
(Geneva 24 March 2014) Elsa Chyrum, Director of Human Rights Concern Eritrea (HRCE), is starting a hunger strike today outside the Djibouti Mission to the United Nations (UN) in Geneva, in support of 267 Eritrean refugees detained in Djibouti.
HRCE has been campaigning for the release and resettlement of the Eritrean refugees for the last three years. The refugees are detained incommunicado, without visiting rights, at Nagad Detention Centre in Djibouti. Most are deserters from forcible and indefinite national military conscription in Eritrea and several have been detained for as long as six years.
It is believed that the refugees are kept in detention by the Djibouti authorities because they are deemed a security threat due to the ongoing border dispute between Eritrea and Djibouti. However, given the oppressive nature of the Eritrean Government, the refugees were almost certainly forcibly conscripted into the Eritrean army, and were seeking refuge in neighbouring Djibouti.
Until relatively recently many of the detainees had been suffering from diseases such as tuberculosis, hepatitis, serious depression and various infections, and had not received treatment. Two are known to have died in custody from illnesses they picked up in prison, and due to the lack of medical care and unhygienic environment.
Elsa Chyrum, begins a hunger strike today outside the Djibouti Mission in Geneva, said this:
“These people came to Djibouti to seek asylum from a brutal regime. The Government of Djibouti is signatory to the Geneva Convention and its 1967 Protocol, and the African Charter which states that such refugees are entitled to freedom from persecution, such as involuntary confinement, involuntary separation from their spouse, and being held incommunicado when one has committed no crime. It is unjust and inhumane to detain and deprive these forgotten people of liberty year after year”.
“We have tried lobbying the Djiboutian authorities to uphold their international obligations and release the Eritreans, granting them protection, but they have refused to listen. I now feel I have no choice but to protest in this way. These vulnerable Eritreans thought that they had escaped one prison only to find themselves in another”.
“HRCE calls the Djiboutian Government release these refugees as a matter of urgency and to provide them with the protection and dignity that international law rightly affords them.”
For further information, please contact Elsa Chyrum, Tel: +41 767438911, www.hrc-eritrea.org
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