{UN investigation reports a litany of crimes committed in Eritrea since 1991, including enslavement, rape and murder.}<\/p>\n
Eritrea’s government is guilty of committing crimes against humanity since independence a quarter-century ago with up to 400,000 people “enslaved”, the UN said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The crimes committed since 1991 include imprisonment, enforced disappearance, extrajudicial killings, and rape and murder, said the United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) on human rights. <\/p>\n
The forced labour of military conscripts is also a major problem in the country, the UN said.<\/p>\n
“We think that there are 300,000 to 400,000 people who have been enslaved,” chief UN investigator Mike Smith told journalists in Geneva.<\/p>\n
The government also operates a shoot-to-kill policy to stop people fleeing the country, according to evidence collected by the UN inquiry. <\/p>\n
About 5,000 Eritreans risk their lives each month to flee the nation where forcible army conscription can last decades.<\/p>\n
“Very few Eritreans are ever released from their military service obligations,” Smith said.<\/p>\n
Eritrea’s Minister of Information Yemane Meskel denounced the UN’s findings on Twitter. <\/p>\n
One witness said that Air Force conscripts were made to work in a plantation that belonged to the Air Force chief. The conscripts were not paid and were sent to detention facilities if they refused to work.<\/p>\n
These acts were perpetrated to terrify and control the civilian population, while crushing opposition, the Commission of Inquiry said.<\/p>\n
“There is no genuine prospect of the Eritrean judicial system holding perpetrators to account in a fair and transparent manner,” Smith said.<\/p>\n
The Commission of Inquiry recommended that the international community and the International Criminal Court get involved.<\/p>\n
“Crimes against humanity have been committed in a widespread and systematic manner in Eritrean detention facilities, military training camps and other locations across the country over the past 25 years,” the UN commission said.<\/p>\n
“Particular individuals, including officials at the highest levels of state, the ruling party – the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice – and commanding officers bear responsibility for crimes against humanity,” it said.<\/p>\n
The 1991 split between Ethiopia and Eritrea followed a three-decade independence war, which saw Eritrean rebels battling far better-equipped Ethiopian troops backed first by Washington and then by the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n
The country ranks below North Korea as the worst in the world for press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders.<\/p>\n
With an annual per capita gross national income of $480, Eritrea is one of the world’s poorest nations, according to the World Bank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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