By IPS Correspondents
NEW YORK, Apr 29 2002 (IPS)

Eritrea’s newly established border with Ethiopia should help remove past obstacles to democratic reform, say former Eritrean government officials exiled in the United States.

Two former Eritrean diplomats, who defected to the United States last year in the midst of their government’s clampdown on dissent, are forming a new political party with other Eritreans abroad in defiance of their government’s ban on the formation of political parties.

Two weeks ago, an independent tribunal in The Hague set a new official boundary between Eritrea and Ethiopia. The two Horn of Africa nations have observed a peace accord reached in 2000 after fighting a brutal two-year border war that claimed an estimated 80,000 lives.

“People were afraid of acting against the government while we waited for the border ruling. Now there are no more excuses for being quiet,” said Hebret Berhe, former Eritrean ambassador to Scandinavia, who said she resigned last year to protest her government’s intolerance of criticism within the ruling party.

Last September, in response to a growing rift within the sole ruling People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), Eritrean authorities shut down private media and arrested dissenters, including officials and journalists.

Those detained included 11 members of the so-called Group-15 (G15), government officials who had published a letter criticising President Isaias Afwerki’s leadership and calling for more collective decision-making in the government.

“Under the current leadership, power is concentrated with one man. We want power transferred to the people,” said Adhanon Ghebremariam, former Eritrean ambassador to Nigeria and a G15 member who was in the United States seeking medical treatment at the time of the arrests last September.

Ghebremariam, like others in the G15, is a veteran of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), which led a 30-year armed struggle that won Eritrea’s independence from Ethiopia in 1993. “We didn’t fight for thirty years for this kind of system. Our nation is now living under a reign of terror,” he said, adding that there has been no word from his 11 detained colleagues.

Resolutions from a meeting of Eritrea’s National Assembly in January accused the G15 of treason, which under Eritrean law carries the death sentence. Officials have yet to confirm the number of people arrested since the crackdown began last September; no one has been charged. Ten imprisoned journalists announced a hunger strike four weeks ago to demand hearings before a court of law, and have since been moved from their jail cells to an undisclosed location.

Human rights organisations have expressed grave concern for the welfare of the detained and have called for the protection of their constitutional rights to a fair hearing in court. In February, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for the release of all political prisoners and resumption of private media.

“We were a liberation movement,” said Berhe, who said she joined the EPLF in 1978. “Our mandate was to transfer power to the people. We had a responsibility to transfer power to the people. The present government has gone back on this mandate.”

The ruling PFDJ, with Afwerki as its leader, was born out of the rebel movement after a referendum approved Eritrea’s independence in 1993. Elections as mandated by the 1997 constitution were postponed when war broke out with Ethiopia in 1998.

The EPLF-Democratic Party, the first political party to form outside the PFDJ, advocates establishing a multi-party system and constitutional governance. Berhe and Ghebremariam said their party is not merely symbolic, will soon start a membership drive, and will offer a democratic alternative to the ruling PFDJ whenever elections are held.

Parliamentary elections, which had been scheduled for the end of 2001, have been postponed indefinitely, along with the ratification of a draft law to allow political parties. The government has argued that political pluralism must be postponed until Eritrea’s borders are secure from the threat of aggression from Ethiopia, a sentiment echoed by some Eritreans here who say that despite the recent border ruling, it is not yet time for Eritrea to let down its guard.

“Until the border is demarcated, we cannot say that the war is finished. If there was peace there would be no need for peacekeepers to still be there,” said Rezene Inghida. “Opposing the government will only weaken the government and give advantage to the enemy.”

Although the ceasefire that ended the conflict in 2000 has held and Eritrea is about to demobilise an initial 5,000 soldiers, some 200,000 troops remain at the front. A United Nations force of about 4,000 peacekeepers continues to monitor a demilitarised zone along the border and is mandated to remain until demarcation is completed, a process that could take another year or two.

“After the war of independence in 1991, our country was in ruins. There were no roads, no crops, no nothing. Since then roads have been rebuilt, along with schools and clinics. Now kids have access to education and medical care. That’s the kind of democracy we need in Eritrea at this time, not just putting ballots in a box,” said Tsehaye Tesfai, president of the Eritrean Community Centre here. Tesfai said the majority of the centre’s 500 members support the present government in Eritrea.

An EPLF-DP meeting here Saturday drew an audience of only about 35 people, but the meeting’s organiser, Solomon Sengal, said he was not discouraged.

“People are afraid to get involved to make change. But fear shouldn’t keep us from pushing for change,” said Sengal, chairman of the 100-member Eritrean Public Forum discussion group.

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