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Eritrean children locked up for having Bibles, says Amnesty
Rory Carroll, Africa correspondent
Saturday September 20, 2003
The Guardian
Eritrea has
locked up dozens of children in metal shipping containers at a military
base as punishment for possessing Bibles, Amnesty International said
yesterday.
The authorities
in the east African country are persecuting a minority Christian church
by subjecting 27 girls and 30 boys to "cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment", it said.
The children
have been denied proper food and medical care, and are being held in
unventilated, overcrowded and extremely hot conditions while undergoing a
compulsory "education" course at the Sawa military camp in
western Eritrea, Amnesty said.
The children,
arrested last August in different parts of the country after being found
with Bibles in the Tigrinya language, were described as prisoners of
conscience who have been promised freedom if they join the majority
Eritrean Orthodox Church.
"These
girls and boys are being held in horrendous conditions merely for their
religious beliefs," said Stephen Bowen, Amnesty International UK's
campaigns director.
Amnesty said
its claims were based on sources inside Eritrea which could not be
identified for their own safety.
The government
cracked down on minority churches last year, demanding that they register
and reveal any foreign funding, in an apparent effort to crush the
evangelical revival movement lest it become a focus of dissent.
Several hundred
people were arrested earlier this year, including 80 military conscripts
who could face the same fate as three Jehovah's Witnesses, who have been
detained for nine years for refusing military service on religious
grounds.
Once a province
of Ethiopia, Eritrea proclaimed independence in 1993 and has been ruled
as a one-party state ever since by the Popular Front for Democracy and
Justice.
The New
York-based Human Rights Watch yesterday also called for the release of
political prisoners in Eritrea.
On Thursday the
French-based human rights organisation, Reporters without Frontiers,
appealed for the release of at least 14 jailed journalists. Eritrea was
the biggest prison for journalists in Africa, it said.
Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1045872,00.html
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