Hundreds of Eritrean asylum-seekers take to the streets near Tel Aviv in support of a UN probe into the African state’s regime, considered one of the world’s most repressive.
Chanting “dictator out!” and “Viva Geneva!” many wearing blue caps with the United Nations crest, the demonstrators are gathering outside the Israel mission of the European Union. They are calling on the EU to support the claims of their compatriots seeking asylum in Europe.
Eritrean migrants protest in front of the European Union embassy in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, calling for the EU to try the Eritrean leadership for crimes against humanity, June 21, 2016.(Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)
Earlier this month the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) on human rights said the government of Eritrean President Isaias Afworki is guilty of committing crimes against humanity with up to 400,000 people “enslaved” in the country, and should face international justice.
The crimes include systematic enslavement, forcible conscription and other abuses such as rape, persecution and murder, it said.
The UN inquiry was due to report on Tuesday to the Council on Human Rights in Geneva.
“We have come to give our support to this commission of inquiry which has cast light on a fact: Eritrea is a dictatorship where people are killed or disappear,” Bluts Iyassu, one of the event’s organizers, told AFP. “There is no free media and we are forcibly drafted into the army,” said Iyassu, who has been seeking asylum in Israel for three years.
— AFP
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Tuesday, June 21, 2016
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