Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity | Eritrea

Eritrea is one of the world's newest states, having been created in 1993 at the conclusion of a thirty-year war of independence waged against Ethiopia. The territory that is Eritrea was first associated with Ethiopia as part of its precursor kingdom, Aksum, which flourished in the fourth century CE. Eritrea's present-day population is almost equally divided today between Christian and Muslim faiths, but the nation began a history distinct from Ethiopia with its incorporation in the Ottoman empire prior to becoming an Italian colony in 1890. Italy briefly joined Eritrea with Ethiopia, which it conquered in 1936 and occupied until 1941, when British armies liberated the entire region. Discouraged from contemplating post–World War II colonization of Ethiopia, Britain administered Eritrea until 1949 as a trust territory on behalf of the United Nations.

As an early and important accomplishment, the United Nations rejected both Eritrea's bid for independence and its incorporation within Ethiopia, opting instead for federating it with Ethiopia in 1951. Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I then systematically undermined this agreement, eventually co-opting the Eritrean parliament to vote for full union with Ethiopia. This prompted the birth of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF). The ELF was later rivaled and then supplanted by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), which led the war against Ethiopia, achieved victory in 1991, and successfully gained formal independence in 1993. The EPLF has since renamed itself the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ).

An independent commission named by the Eritrean government produced a thoroughly democratic constitution developed through extensive and exemplary consultations with all Eritrean communities, including citizens residing outside the country. The government, however, comprehensively failed to implement its constitutional provisions for the protection of human rights and democratic elections. In the estimation of Freedom House, a respected pro-democracy and human rights watch group, Eritrea's record on human rights has become one of the poorest in sub-Saharan Africa. Renewed war with Ethiopia from 1998 to 2000, prompted by a border dispute, caused incalculable suffering in both countries and seems to have been a factor in Eritrea's increasingly severe abuse of basic human rights.

Eritrea has, however, been severely victimized by Ethiopian abuses of human rights, both during its war of liberation and in the recent border war. Under its military dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam (1974–1991), Ethiopia indiscriminately bombed Eritrean civilians in both urban and rural areas, in a futile effort to stamp out the guerrilla-based liberation movement by conventional military means. No formal international tribunal was subsequently proposed or convened to investigate war crimes committed during this conflict, although for more than a decade, Ethiopia's Special Prosecutor has brought former Mengistu regime officials to trial for egregious crimes now prosecuted under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court regarding genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Had he been brought before an international criminal tribunal, Mengistu would no doubt have claimed that his government was seeking to restore and preserve the unity of the Ethiopian state, which constitutes a mitigating factor within the meaning of the applicable Rome Statute's provisions. The statute is less clear on how the outlawing of war crimes applies to a liberation movement such as Eritrea's, which functioned entirely within the borders of what it regarded as its own territory. The statute distinguishes between international and non-international conflicts, but Eritrea's long history in relation to Ethiopia makes it unclear as to which category (international or internal) applies.

The Liberation War, 1962–1991

That war crimes were committed on a massive scale, at least by Ethiopian troops during the liberation war, is beyond dispute. These crimes included, inter alia, willful killing and willful causing of great suffering. Ethiopian armies inevitably directed attacks against civilian populations given the difficulty in guerrilla warfare of distinguishing between military and civilian personnel.

Mengistu insisted throughout his rule that the only acceptable end to the conflict would be an Ethiopian military victory. In a region where the average age of the population is under the age of twenty, it is all but certain that "children" participated in this conflict and in the subsequent border war, which automatically qualifies as a violation of international laws regarding war crimes as established by the Rome Statute.

Domestic Human Rights Performance, 1993–2004

To an observer not schooled in international law, Eritrea's very poor human rights record, especially since the border war, appears not to include genocide, since its transgressions have not been directed against any ethnic, religious, national, or racial community within its borders. Indeed, the PFDJ regime has gone to some lengths to try to protect each of its two major and nine distinct ethnic communities and to insure their equitable representation within the government. Pervasive abuse of the civil and political rights that are generally understood as essential to democracy does conflict with the Rome Statute's proscription of crimes against humanity, however, in so far as these include torture and imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law. Assessments of Eritrea's poor human rights record by Amnesty International, Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, and the U.S. Department of State have found these abuses to be widespread and comprehensive.

Eritrea does not appear to have been guilty in any major way of violating the other major categories of crimes against humanity identified by the Rome Statute. By contrast, Eritrea has consistently and flagrantly violated political and civil rights normally deemed essential to democracy but that are not, however, considered genocide or crimes against humanity. These violations have included pervasive denial of freedom of speech and association, blocking the emergence of a free and independent press, and arrests, trials, and incarcerations that are in direct violation of due process as it is understood by judiciaries in democratic countries. Eritrea has indefinitely postponed the holding of the free and fair multiparty national elections that are mandated by its draft constitution. Jehovah's Witnesses have been persecuted because of their refusal to accept compulsory military service.

The Border War, 1998–2000

Eritrea's border war with Ethiopia has profoundly victimized hundreds of thousands of people in both countries. The most easily identifiable war crime, of which both countries were guilty, was unlawful deportation within the meaning of the Rome Statute. Each country identified citizens with heritage traceable to its opponent, and then forcibly deported them to their putative "home" country. Numerically, Ethiopia's transgression was far greater than that of Eritrea. The United Nations-sponsored agreement ending the war contained provisions for the repatriation of such involuntary deportees.

The Rome Statute appears implicitly to presume a distinction between soldiers and citizens that the border war blurred. It was a war between peoples notwithstanding their important ties of consanguinity and their historically intertwined economies, politics, and cultures. Both countries mobilized hastily trained "civilian soldiers" as well as their professional military personnel. As one consequence there was no clear empirical distinction between military targets and civilian enterprises, which were destroyed in the thousands. Nor was there a clear delineation between military personnel and civilians, whom the Rome Statute seeks to protect. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, maimed, and rendered destitute, whether or not they were unarmed civilians or professional soldiers.

The Rome Statute's focus on "intent" is similarly problematic in the case of Eritrea and Ethiopia. Given their historic interdependence, neither side has fully come to terms with Eritrea's still new independence. Each has felt—and continues to feel—betrayed, violated, and threatened by the other's "unilateral" and contrary courses of political and economic action.

Both the liberation war and the subsequent border war, and their aftermath, have greatly exacerbated longstanding environmental degradation in both countries. Eritrea and Ethiopia face "natural" disasters that have their roots in the damage of the war years and which have strained the capacities of humanitarian relief agencies, and deepened some of the worst, most comprehensive, and most pervasive poverty anywhere in the world.

SEE ALSO Ethiopia

John W. Harbeson