Collective case of writers and journalists detained without trial for 23 years.
Dawit Isaak. Photo credit: PEN Eritrea in Exile
September 2024 marked 23 years of the incommunicado detention without trial of a group of Eritrean journalists and writers, including Dawit ISAAK; Amanuel ASRAT; Said Idris ‘ABU ARE’; Temesegen GHEBREYESUS; Methanie HAILE; Fessehaye ‘Joshua’ YOHANNES; Yousif Mohammed ALI; Seyoum TSEHAYE; Dawit HABTEMICHAEL; Said ABDELKADIR; Sahle ‘Wedi-ltay’ TSEFEZAB; and Matheos HABTEAB.
In September 2001, Eritrean authorities launched a massive crackdown on regime critics in which security forces arrested and detained a group of dissenting members of the ruling party, the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PDFJ). The politicians, popularly known as the G-15 had earlier published an open letter in which they called for peaceful democratic reforms and denounced President Isais Afwerki’s abuse of power and the president’s actions, which they called ‘illegal and unconstitutional’. Authorities also shut down all independent newspapers, including the weeklies Meqaleh, Setit, Tsigenay, Zemen, Wintana and Admas, for publishing the G-15 statement and conducting related interviews.
Between September and October that year, more than 10 journalists - among them writers associated with the banned media outlets were rounded up by security forces and detained. Along with the dissenting politicians, they have been detained incommunicado and without trial for the last 23 years. There have been unverified reports that several of them have since died in custody due to ill-treatment and neglect.
Eritrean authorities have ignored all calls for justice for the detainees made by human rights organizations as well as human rights mechanisms of the African Union and the UN. Officials have repeatedly denied that a clampdown took place in 2001, saying that the detainees had merely been sent to perform their national service duties.
On 26 July 2023, the UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention published an opinion on the case of one of the detained writers and journalists, Dawit Isaak. This was in response to a complaint filed in 2022 by an international coalition of NGOs, including PEN International. The Working Group found Isaak’s detention to be arbitrary, and in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The Working Group also referred the case of Dawit Isaak and his colleagues to the UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment for their action. This opinion vindicated previous conclusions by PEN International and other human rights and media freedom organizations that the detained individuals are being held by the Eritrean authorities in circumstances amounting to enforced disappearance.
For more than two decades, PEN International has persistently campaigned on behalf of the detained writers – who are all now aged over 55 years - including through public statements, sometimes jointly with other organizations, advocacy at the UN Human Rights Council through Universal Periodic Review joint submissions, advocacy at the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR) through a joint oral statement with PEN Eritrea in Exile and contribution to resolutions of the NGO Forum during the 77th Ordinary Session of the ACHPR held in Arusha, Tanzania in October 2023 and a follow up mention of the case in an oral statement delivered at the 81st Ordinary Session of ACHPR held in Banjul, Gambia in October 2024 . PEN International has also made solidarity appeals on behalf of the imprisoned writers and featured their cases during key PEN events.