ERITREA: Justice long delayed, Jehovah’s Witnesses and a somber 30th anniversary
On October 25, 1994, a presidential decree stripped members of the religious organization of Eritrean citizenship and inaugurated decades of persecution.
by Donald A. Westbrook
Bitter Winter (04.11.2024) – October 2024 marked a somber anniversary for freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) and human rights watchers and activists: 30 years of religious persecution, including imprisonment, for Jehovah’s Witnesses in the eastern African nation of Eritrea.
Following Eritrea’s war of independence from Ethiopia, Jehovah’s Witnesses have been targeted due to their refusal to participate in military service and political activities in alignment with their faith. This persecution culminated with a decree (issued October 25, 1994) from President Isaias Afwerki that stripped Jehovah’s Witnesses of Eritrean citizenship and paved the way for more widespread discrimination, persecution, and imprisonment over the past three decades.
As of October 2024, according to the Witnesses’ official website, jw.org, “more than 270 brothers and sisters have been unjustly imprisoned and even tortured for their faith. Currently, 64 are in prison, none of whom have ever been charged with or convicted of a crime.”
Sadly, religious freedom violations in Eritrea are not limited to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In its section on Eritrea in their 2024 annual report, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) noted: “The Eritrean government recognizes only Eritrean Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim as religious identities. Without formal registration, authorities deny faith groups their freedom of religion or belief and prohibit them from building or owning houses of worship or engaging in religious practices such as praying in groups.”
The USCIRF report lists a series of recommendations, one of which is to: “Engage with the Eritrean government to end religious persecution of unregistered religious communities, grant full citizenship rights to Jehovah’s Witnesses, and release the remaining detainees held on account of their religious activities.”
I agree wholeheartedly. The Eritrean government must restore citizenship to all Jehovah’s Witnesses and immediately release imprisoned Witnesses—as well as members of other new and minority religious groups similarly and unjustly imprisoned. These religious groups must be allowed to register and operate freely according to Eritrea’s own constitutional commitment to freedom of religion, although at present unfulfilled. In addition, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other conscientious objectors ought to be provided with alternatives to military service in Eritrea.
Justice for Jehovah’s Witnesses in Eritrea remains long delayed, but President Afwerki can begin to right this wrong by reversing the 1994 decree, restoring citizenship, releasing prisoners, dialoguing with outside groups such as USCIRF, and setting the country on a path to live up to its constitutional aspirations and ensure religious freedom and practices for all Eritreans.
Note: For more on the imprisonment of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Eritrea, including data about particular cases, readers are directed to the jw.org landing page for more resources. And for more on the history of Eritrea and religious repression, see, for instance, Tricia Redeker Hepner’s “Religion, Repression, and Human Rights in Eritrea and the Diaspora” (“Journal of Religion in Africa,” 2014, 151–188 [44(2)]).
The presidential decree of October 25, 1994. Source: JW.org.