An African tragedy

When more than a hundred young Catholics from several African countries met in Nairobi in late April for a workshop on communication at the service of justice, peace and reconciliation, the relevance of the theme hit them bang in the face. They were informed that an Eritrean delegation was blocked by their government from travelling to the Kenyan capital for the event.

The workshop was jointly organised by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications and the regional bishops’ body, the Association of Member Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa (AMECEA), of which Eritrea is a member. The purpose of the workshop, according to the AMECEA communications secretary Fr  Chrysantus Ndaga, was “to impart the skills and the insights that will enable the participants to be at the leading edge in the development and implementation of local strategies to promote justice, peace and reconciliation through communications”.

Nothing about how to depose a 21st century African despot. But apparently, the extremely paranoid dictatorship of Isaias Afewerki in Asmara thought so. The Eritrean youth could not travel to Nairobi “due to the repressive laws of Eritrea which restrict the movement of many Eritreans from leaving their country”, the workshop was told.

Africa’s youngest nation on the Red Sea coast is practically a prison. Eritrea, which broke away from Ethiopia in 1993 after a devastating 30-year war, has impossible restrictions on civil liberties, including the freedoms of conscience and religion. President Afewerki rules the roost. A constitution approved by referendum in 1997 remains unimplemented. No national election has ever been held, and the interim parliament has not met since 2002. The Afewerki regime has ruthlessly crushed all dissent and the independent media. Anyone who questions the state is silenced by detention without trial, torture or execution.

The state controls all economic activity. “People can’t sell the products of their fields, except to the government. Government agents search from house to house looking for extra food that the families may have in their stores,” an Eritrean exile wrote in a Catholic magazine in March. Prolonged droughts, state terror and Afewerki’s Maoist policies have left up to 60% of Eritreans in poverty.

The single-party government recognises only Islam and the Orthodox, Catholic and Lutheran churches. Campaign groups estimate that more tan 3000 Christians, especially evangelicals, are languishing in detention centres for conducting illegal religious activities. “Christians of all denominations have suffered gravely in an increasingly ruthless government campaign of intimidation against churches of all kinds,” the German-based Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need said in a report last year.

Eritrean Catholics are a minority, comprising about 4% of the estimated 5 million population, half of whom are Christians. The government treats Church-run social projects with great suspicion. The regime has ignored repeated appeals by the bishops and Pope Benedict to exempt priests and religious from compulsory and indefinite military service for all adults up to the age of 50.

In November 2007, the government refused to renew the visas of 14 Catholic missionaries and ordered them out. The action was seen within Church circles as part of “a nationwide campaign to neutralise, paralyse, isolate and nationalise the Catholic Church”. Shortly afterwards, I met one of the expelled priests. He gave me grim details of the national situation. In the end, he asked me not to publish his name because, he said, “I hope to go back because I love the people.”

His missionary zeal struck me. It is a challenge to every Christian and the whole Church in Africa to pray and work hard for liberation of the Eritrean people.