In any country under a totalitarian government,
if they feel that you are strong or have an independent thinking,
they see you as a threat.
I was working in a small hospital in the south part of Eritrea,
then I was sent to the capital, to Asmara.
Until I arrived in Asmara,
even I didn’t know why I was arrested.
[Suspected Prisons - Eritrea]
First, I thought it was like a hospital.
There was about 30 prisoners.
Almost all of them were bandaged, and I said, “What happened to you?”
And they told me they were tortured, and I say, “Why?”
And they laughed,
and they said, “Because that’s why you are here.”
And I said, “No, it’s not going to happen to me
because I haven’t done anything wrong.”
But after four or five days, I was also tortured.
They tie your arms together, they make you sit,
and they put a big log under your knee.
Then when they lifted the log, you turn upside down.
So they put your whole body in a ditch
so your feet is up, over the ditch,
so they start to hit you.
The first night I was in prison, it was a small room.
But we were 45, and there was no room for us to sleep.
I said to them, “Do you want me to sing for you?”
And they said, “OK,” so I sang a song, a gospel song.
In the song it says, “When you look at me,
I look weak and miserable,
but I am happy, I am strong because I have Jesus in my heart.”
It was also a really hard time, but my faith started to grow.
I knew it’s better to be with faith than without faith
when you are in a situation like that.
[Exiled]
I was born and brought up in Eritrea, in Asmara, in the city.
There was a war going on, the war for independence.
So most of my life I spent in a war-torn country.
At one point, they were a British protectorate,
for ten years, actually.
And after that, Ethiopia eventually got Eritrea
as a part of its country.
So in 1951,
the Eritreans took up arms
and started fighting for independence,
and it took 30 years before that happened.
It was considered Africa's longest independence war.
So the Eritrean War of Independence was eventually led by the EPLF,
the Eritrean People's Liberation Front,
and they were led by Isaias Afwerki.
So when Eritrea gained independence,
he became the president of this new nation,
and it was supposed to be a temporary situation.
There's no constitution. There's no rule of law.
The UN commission described it as “rule by fear, not by law.”
And that fear has been installed by Isaias Afwerki.
My family were always Protestant,
so we were obliged to go to church,
so I grew up in Sunday schools.
After the independence, I got married.
At that time, Eritrea was devastated
by 30 years of war,
so I thought I could do a lot.
I joined the church.
The church was doing a lot of good stuff in the village.
There were a lot of signs
that the government didn’t like what we were doing,
for example, he had some of our, especially the village churches,
they were always being persecuted.
Some of our ministers or evangelists were arrested.
The whole fight for independence was about self-rule,
it was about democracy.
But with time, people start realizing that this process was being delayed
more and more.
And that was the beginning of the conversations within,
both within the government but also within the wider population,
about when are these elections going to be held
and also why is the government implementing
more and more authoritarian policies.
In 2002, there was a declaration.
The government ordered all evangelicals
and Pentecostal Church need to be registered.
None of them got any registration.
Even ordinary Christians were arrested.
Some of them now are in prison for 17 years.
A lot of them are my close friends. I knew them since I was a child.
They want you to live in fear.
There’s always harassment from your bosses, from the community.
It had the worst record when it comes to press freedom in general.
But this is not just limited to journalists;
it's also applying to individuals.
Since 2001, it’s currently the only country in Africa
without any independent media.
Also has low internet access for people
and dissent is very heavily forbidden,
so people, they disappear,
they get detained,
or they have to leave the country out of fear for speaking out.
There’s only four sanctioned religions in Eritrea,
and people who have been caught practicing in one of the religions
that are outside of those four have been harassed,
they’ve been detained,
and many flee because of this persecution.
I was working for the church,
and the government start to restrict our movement.
So I got a scholarship with my family.
Then I came here in 1999.
Our initial plan was to stay for two years.
But while I was here, the government shut the church.
They started to arrest some Christians.
And at that time, I extended my visa for one more year.
I thought if things get better, I could go,
but things start to get worse,
so I decided to ask asylum.
Then I was granted immediately.
I remain since then.
I work in three places: in the church, in the prison,
and also two or three days a week for Release Eritrea.
Release Eritrea is a human rights organization.
We are a group of Christians who specialize on Christians,
those who are being arrested for their faith
because we are all from the church.
Initially, when we started Release Eritrea,
sometimes they text you, call you to scare you.
I have seen my name actually in the government’s website several times.
And sometimes they say “He’s an evangelical terrorist,”
and sometimes I work for the CIA.
Even when I go to Africa, mostly I have to travel secretly
because they have their agents always,
so I have to be careful.
But Eritrea is unthinkable,
so it is now 20 years since I was there,
but I cannot go as long as this government is in power.
I guess one of the most terrifying aspects
of what’s happening in Eritrea, I guess beyond the immediate impact,
is the future.
The people who are being affected the most in Eritrea right now
are young people.
This is supposed to be the future of Eritrea.
This is the generation,
the first free generation after the war of independence,
and those going to rebuild this country
and make it into this, you know, amazing country
that everyone was fighting for.
A few years ago, UNHCR said 5,000 people a month were fleeing.
And then after the 2018 peace deal, the number increased massively
when the borders opened between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
And now, recently, because of the war in Tigray,
the numbers have gone down
because it's just impossible to go through.
In late November 2020,
the conflict between the Ethiopian federal government
and the Tigray regional government, the TPLF, broke out,
and the Eritrean Defense Forces
has been fighting on the Ethiopian federal government’s side ever since.
I mean, since the conflict started,
there's been very limited access to the region.
So, unfortunately, in the beginning there was absolutely no access
both to humanitarian organizations
but also to journalists and human rights organizations.
We started getting a lot of terrible stories
about what was happening on the ground.
And many of the atrocities that we have documented
have been committed by the Eritrean Defense Forces.
There’s massacres that have happened,
but there’s also reports about rape and sexual violence
that are prevalent throughout the region,
and now they’re coming out more and more.
The government is doing now even worse in Ethiopia, in Tigray.
So when the war broke out,
they went for them with a full force.
Forty army divisions went to Tigray,
and they were destroying everything.
They were killing animals, looting, raping women,
and it was really awful, especially as an Eritrean.
For me, it was a big shame.
I was really heartbroken when I hear all these atrocities.
These are the people whom we know.
The people who’ve been murdered, I know them.
The people who are murdering, also I know them.
So those people are my brothers. We speak the same language.
The Eritrean dictator is the master for all these atrocities,
so this also saddens my heart.
I don’t think that the government is going to last with all these crimes,
with all these injustices,
and I hope one day I will see him in the criminal court.
You know, justice needs to be done.
So I don’t think that it will last long now.
Yeah, that’s my hope.