By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jan 30 1999 (IPS)

Ethiopia has deported some 52,000 people of Eritrean descent since war broke out between the two countries last May, causing “untold suffering to thousands of families every week,” Amnesty International charged.

In a new report based on on-site visits to both Ethiopia and Eritrea, the international human rights organisation charged that the deportations in Ethiopia have developed into a “systematic, country-wide operation to arrest and deport anyone of full or part Eritrean descent.”

“Women, some of them pregnant, children, the elderly – even hospital patients – are now being arrested and detained in the middle of the night,” Amnesty said, adding that they were often imprisoned for several days in harsh conditions before being shipped out aboard buses under armed guard and dumped at the border.

“They arrive hungry and exhausted, and often ill, after the three-day journey,” according to the report.

The government of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has insisted that Eritreans, including those with Ethiopian citizenship, posed a threat to national security under present circumstances.

War broke out between the two nations over a border dispute last May. Since then, observers have reported occasional artillery blasts across the border as both sides mobilise men and equipment along their common frontier.

The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) has been attempting to mediate a solution to the crisis before it erupts into an all-out war, and former U.S. National Security Advisor Anthony Lake has been pressed out of retirement to help in those efforts.

He returned from the region one week ago after consultations with all parties, and with OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim. But U.S. officials said he made little progress toward calming tensions and simply reiterated U.S. policy in favour of a proposed OAU Framework Agreement to implement a resolution of the conflict.

Ethiopia accepted the agreement last year, but Eritrea has asked for several clarifications.

Eritrea, which for most of this century was an Ethiopian province, seceded peacefully from Ethiopia in 1993 following a referendum in which some 90 percent of its people opted for independence. The referendum was endorsed by the Zenawi government, which itself took power after a long-running insurgency against the government of Haile Mariam Menguistu in 1991.

The rebel movements headed by Zenawi and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki were allied for many years in the fight against Mengistu, and the United States, which played a role in negotiations resulting in Mengistu’s final removal, has been close to both countries since then.

Indeed, President Bill Clinton has hailed both men as exemplars of a “new generation” of African leaders at the vanguard of a continental “renaissance” for economic development and political participation.

The United States, as well as many European and African countries, have watched the deterioration in relations between the two countries with considerable alarm, particularly given the huge economic challenges which face them.

Ethiopia and Eritrea are among the five or six poorest countries, as measured by per capita gross domestic product, in the world. Yet, they have both imported tens of millions of dollars’ worth of military equipment, including warplanes, helicopters and tanks, over the past eight months.

Trade has also been cut off between them, so that Ethiopia, which since Eritrea’s secession is land-locked, has been forced to rely on Kenya to the south for importing and exporting goods, while Eritreans have been denied their most important market.

The expulsion of Eritreans has added to the economic problems of both countries. In many cases, people of Eritrean origin have been forced out of key jobs in Ethiopia, disrupting the work of important enterprises and bureaucracies.

On the other side of the border, the deportees, who are permitted to leave with only one piece of luggage each, cannot be easily or quickly absorbed into the general population.

Amnesty sent representatives to visit Ethiopia last October and Eritrea earlier this month to examine allegations from both sides of human rights abuses.

“Families have been split up, the male head usually deported first, and his wife, parents and children weeks or months later,” the report said. “The many Ethiopians married to Eritreans are forbidden to leave and forced to watch helplessly while their spouse and children are deported.

“Individuals who have protexted have been threatened or beaten. The deportees were arbitrarily stripped of their Ethiopian citizenship without any warning, legal process or right of appeal.”

At least 22,000 Ethiopians have also returned to their homeland from Eritrea since May, most after losing their jobs and being rendered destitute. Amnesty said, however, it could find no evidence to support Ethiopia’s charges that 40,000 of its citizens have been seriously ill-treated and forcibly deported from Eritrea since May.

The rights group is appealing to the government in Addis Ababa to put an immediate stop to the deportations and ill-treatment of deportees, and to the detentions of thousands of other Eritreans, arguing that these actions violate the country’s constitution, and international treaties ratified by Ethiopia.

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