Eritrea and Ethiopia

Lord Rea Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rea (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, for securing this short debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for introducing me to Eritrea in the year 2000 during a lull in the war with Ethiopia. In the next phase of the war the Eritreans did not do so well; it ended in a rather unsatisfactory ceasefire a year or so later. The subsequent developments in the economically damaging state of “no war, no peace”, were described extremely well by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. The unresolved border tension, as several noble Lords have said, is having a major impact on Eritrea’s economy—less so, I guess, than in Ethiopia, which has a much bigger population. The standing army that Eritrea maintains is a major drain on a country with only 3 million people.

When we were in Eritrea, we visited, among other places, the Red Sea port of Massawa, where we met the Minister for the coast and fisheries, Petros Solomon, an impressive former senior officer in the independence struggle. He took us to see a remarkable coastal prawn and tilapia aquaculture pilot project, which was being developed with the help of a small American grant. If that project had gone ahead and expanded it could have become a valuable food-producing and export industry. Sadly, it was abandoned a year or so later, possibly due to government opposition to external NGOs.

In 2001, I was among those invited to attend the 10th anniversary celebrations of the end of the independence struggle. Among other visits we were taken by helicopter to the former battleground of Nakfa, which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, described. We were impressed by the ingenuity and courage of the Eritreans and their capacity for hard work. However, shortly after our visit, 15 senior government members, known as the G15, who had signed a letter to President Isaias Afewerki urging him to implement the agreed democratic constitution and hold elections, were all arrested. They included Petros Solomon, whom the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and I had met one and a half years earlier. Some 13 years later, he is still in prison, without trial and held incommunicado, as is his wife. Can the noble Baroness, to whom I gave notice of this question, say whether our embassy has been able to obtain any information about this man and his colleagues who are still detained? Some fear that he and some of the other G15 letter writers may no longer be alive.

There are other long-term political prisoners, including a number of journalists known as the 31, whose fate is unknown, and there are almost certainly many more. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have condemned these and other arrests and disappearances, as the noble Baroness is fully aware. As all other speakers have said, there is compulsory conscription for national service and not all of it is military. Some consists of what could euphemistically be called vocational training, but pay is very low—pocket money if you are lucky. There is also a large standing army which has to be maintained because of the tension with Ethiopia and which the country can ill afford.

It is alleged that many national service recruits are being used as virtual slave labour, in poor conditions in ore-producing mines. The Eritrean Government deny this. Does the noble Baroness have any information on this? According to an independent report by the Danish immigration service, the reason given by most Eritrean asylum seekers for leaving the country is economic rather than political, although deserters from national service naturally fear punishment if they return. As noble Lords have said, this report appears to have been withdrawn. Other noble Lords have testified to the important part played by human rights abusers in the exodus of Eritreans. As we hold this short debate, there is a UN human rights commission of inquiry going on. It was not allowed into Eritrea itself, so it has, apparently, had to rely on external testimony. Does the noble Baroness have any information on the progress of this inquiry?

Other informants give another, rather more hopeful, side to the story. There is grass-roots development and, within limits, considerable local democracy. As can be imagined, this does not include criticism of the president who, like President Putin, is unaccountable but still apparently popular, despite having lost the war with Ethiopia and heading an autocratic regime. As in Russia, support for the president is strongest in provincial and rural areas. In part, this is due to the policy of land reform which grants land—all of which is state owned—to landless farmers on equitable long-term leases. WHO and UNDP have praised the effectiveness of Eritrea’s antimalarial programme and its collaboration with external advisers in public health. It has achieved the millennium development goals in education and maternal and child health. This information comes, not just from the Eritrean Government, but from United Nations agencies. Its expansion of free education and healthcare is well ahead of most other countries in Africa.

Eritrean support of al-Shabaab in Somalia is denied by the regime’s supporters who say that, in fact, Eritrea has its own jihadist problem. Does the noble Baroness have direct evidence of this alleged Eritrean involvement in Somalia? Could this possibly be Ethiopian propaganda?

Eritreans are intensely proud people and respond negatively if told what to do. They are determined to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps—hence their rejection, often to their own detriment, of many projects by aid agencies, whether official or non-governmental, and their stringent conditions for accepting much needed inward investment. They are determined not to be exploited by multinational corporations. It would be very useful to hear what the UK’s experience of investment in capital projects has been in Eritrea.

I suggest that, as with other long-drawn-out conflicts, discussion, initially perhaps behind closed doors, is more likely to lead to an acceptable outcome than open confrontation or sanctions. Having said that, political prisoners such as Petros Solomon, of whom I spoke, must be released, or at least be tried in open court. Their continued detention without trial and the failure to implement independent Eritrea’s agreed democratic constitution are major factors blocking the development of normal relations between Eritrea and the rest of the world.