When tragedy struck off Italy's coast last week, it was a
Paris-based radio station that broke the news to Eritrea, home to a
majority of the 300-plus men, women and children feared dead in the
shipwreck.
State media in the tiny Horn of Africa nation made
no mention of the Eritrean nationals who perished last Thursday near
the southern island of Lampedusa. Their boat caught fire in the worst
recent migrant disaster in the Mediterranean.
That came as no surprise from a country where
former rebel leader turned president Issaias Afeworki has ruled with an
iron fist for two decades, prompting a steady exodus of refugees.
The country ranked last below North Korea in a
global survey on press freedom by media watchdog Reporters Without
Borders (RSF). According to the United Nations, about 3,000 people flee
Eritrea every month.
But for staffers at Radio Erena, an independent
radio station set up in 2009 with backing from RSF, covering the tragedy
was "almost a personal mission," said its chief Biniam Simon.
In a country of just five million people, he said,
"the loss of 200 to 300 lives could potentially affect anybody: the
victims could be your neighbour, your colleague."
Biniam said the radio station, which ran survivor
accounts after the shipwreck, caused a "wave of gloom in Asmara," the
Eritrean capital.
The broadcaster was scathing of the manner in
which the shipwreck, which has only left 155 survivors, was covered by
both Eritrean and Western media.
He suggested the Eritrean media's "shameful coverage" was due to the fact emigres are viewed as traitors by the government.
"They spoke of 'immigrants from Eastern Africa who
were illegally crossing the sea' without saying where they came from,"
Biniam said.
"It was just to discourage others aspiring to
leave," added the former Eritrean state television presenter, who
decided not to return to his country after a work visit to Japan in
2006.
Despite the silence in the state-run media,
Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed has offered his
condolences to the families of the victims, although he did so from New
York.
Mass conscription and forced labour
Biniam charged that Western media outfits had been "improper" in their reporting.
"They speak of illegal immigrants but the
Eritreans are asylum-seekers who have no other choice but to leave their
country," he said.
Eritrea, which broke away from Ethiopia in 1991
after a brutal 30-year independence struggle, has consistently raised
fears domestically that Addis Ababa is scheming to re-take the country.
This has allowed the government to conscript most adults into the army or force them to perform compulsory labour.
Mass national service, introduced in 2004, can
last decades and military police prowl the streets to round up those
shirking service.
"Young men and women are sent to work on big
national construction sites with almost no pay and this can last up to
age 40 or 50, unless they become invalid before then," said journalist
Leonard Vincent, the author of a book on Eritrea.
Thousands have fled to neighbouring Sudan or
Ethiopia despite a reported shoot-to-kill policy by border patrols, with
families of those left behind risking being punished by crippling fines
or imprisonment.
To make things worse, the economy has stagnated
and rumours have grown of Issaias's heavy drinking, furious temper and
shouting fits at cowed officials.
Although nominally under civilian rule, Eritrea
under Issaias has been carved up into zones of control by army generals,
who run a flourishing networks of corrupt businesses and cream off
lucrative profits.
The Lampedusa tragedy has sparked shock across Europe and highlighted the European Union's flawed asylum policy.
Italy -- which has seen some 30,000 migrants
landing this year mainly from Eritrea, Somalia and Syria -- wants a
change in EU rules that force migrants to remain in their country of
first arrival while their asylum application is being processed.
But northern European states are opposed to Rome's
argument that this puts an extra burden on the crisis-hit southern
states. They say they do their share by taking in more refugees than
southern Europe once asylum is granted.
Despite the emotion the latest deaths provoked in
Europe, Biniam fears "it will not change anything as the problem is not
being treated at source".
SOURCE: AFRICA REVIEW
SOURCE: AFRICA REVIEW
