Eritrea

North Ethiopia Eritrea, formally the State of Eritrea, also sometimes called "Africa's North Korea", is a horrifyingly corrupt, impoverished, and oppressive East African country, demolished by decades of conflict with Ethiopia.Eritrea profile - overview (May 4, 2016) BBC Located in the northern Horn of Africa, it has a long southern border with Ethiopia, a nation it had historically been a part of before Italy purchased the region from a local Sultan and turned it into a colony.Text of Encyclopedia Britannica 1911. Ethiopia got it back after World War II,History of Eritrea Historyworld.net but ethnic Eritreans longed for independence, and Ethiopia's annexation of the region would trigger a three-decade-long war.Ethiopia and Eritrea Global Policy Forum After Eritrea successfully won this war and held a referendum, they gained national sovereignty under a heavily authoritarian single-party state. Five years later, a border clash would lead to the which settled nothing and only resulted in two of the world's poorest countries wasting money and lives. Since then, Ethiopia has become a highly corrupt, de-facto one-party state,Ethiopia needs a multi-party democracy to end the crushing impact of corruption Asayehgn Desta. The Conversation. April 17, 2017. and Eritrea is still a sovereign, totalitarian military dictatorship.
Retrieved November 10, 2021.</ref> The Eritrean government spent 6.3% of the country's entire GDP on its military in 2006.Eritrea. DefenseWeb. May 2013. Even the USA only spent 3.85% that year, and a 2010 peak couldn't even top that.U.S. Military Spending/Defense Budget 1960-2025. MacroTrends. These expenditures are particularly galling for a country with its population in appalling poverty. President Afwerki maintains his military primarily for the purpose of oppressing the public, throwing people into shipping containers to die, and other horrific human rights violations. Military service is inescapable; the government drafts arbitrarily and with impunity. Eritrea is also one of the most censored nations in the world, and all independent news media has been shut down since 2001. 
== Political and civil rights ==
===Elections and the democratic process===
Ha! Made you look!
There are no elections. 
This is not an exaggeration. There has not been one election since the Eritrean independence referendum of 1993.Elections in Eritrea Last Updated: 23 January 2011 The International Foundation for Electoral Systems has a very strikingly blank page for displaying the results of past Eritrean elections.IFES Election Guide State of Eritrea For another similarity to North Korea, here's the page for North Korea, which is also blank.IFES Election Guide Democratic People's Republic of Korea
President Isaias Afwerki has been around since 1993 when he was appointed by the National Assembly, which was itself in a transitional phase where it was almost entirely composed of old Eritrean People's Liberation Front leaders. Of course, the constitution they ratified mandated that free and open elections by secret ballot would be held once the country had been stabilized. Those elections were scheduled for December 2001.Freedom House Report|Eritrea 2001 Needless to say, they never happened. Currently, the only party allowed to be within sniffing range of power is the totalitarian nationalist People's Front for Democracy and Justice.Eritrea country profile BBC Note the similar name to the EPLF.
Sadly, there isn't much hope for any elections in the future, either. President Afwerki has rather transparently been using the constant threat of Ethiopia to justify his postponement of national elections.Isaias Afwerki Encyclopedia Britannica Naturally, another violently hostile border dispute popped up in 2008, this time with Djibouti,What is behind tension between Eritrea and Djibouti? BBC 20 June 2017 in case Ethiopia wasn't enough. 
The point is that Eritrea's IFES Election Guide page will likely stay blank for a long time.
===Freedom of religion===
Eritrea officially recognizes the Roman Catholic Church, the Coptic Orthodox Church, Sunni Islam, and the Evangelical Church of Eritrea as valid religions.Religious persecution in Eritrea BBC Jonah Fisher, 17 September, 2004 Unregistered faiths, particularly Jehovah's Witnesses and Pentecostals, face brutal persecution, including routine beatings and imprisonment in deliberately harsh environments such as shipping containers. Religious gatherings are banned for unregistered faiths, and the punishment often involves prolonged and arbitrary prison sentences without trial. As of 2013, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom estimates that Eritrea has roughly 3,000 people imprisoned due to religious beliefs, with many survivors reporting being tortured.The country that's never had an election Tiffany Lynch, Foreign Policy. Nov 6, 2013 
Of course, you can't sleep easy if you're a member of a recognized religion, either. The Eritrean government is more than happy to interfere in the internal affairs of these religions to control their populace and purge dissenters. US Commission on International Religious Freedom "Eritrea Annual Reports: Key Findings"
How Christlike.
===Press freedom===
You didn't expect Eritrea to have a free press, did you?
Let's start with the big one: The Committee to Protect Journalists rated Eritrea as the most censored nation in 2012. Even more censored than North Korea.Attacks on the Press: Eritrea The Committee to Protect Journalists They cite the nation's disturbing willingness to arrest journalists for almost no reason and the President's even more disturbing refusal to account for the prisoners' whereabouts, health, or legal status.
Much of this activity occurs under the 1996 Press Proclamation Law, which mandates that all publications must be approved by the Information Ministry before release. Also, it bans reprinting material from banned publications, of which there are many.Eritrea Freedom House 2015. Foreign journalists are also not permitted to enter the country. 
This began with a ban on independent media on September 18th, 2001, when the government banned all private publications, arrested eleven people, and ordered all printing houses to stop printing everything, including wedding invitations and nightclub posters.Remembering the day the Eritrean press died Al Jazeera SEP.18.17 After this, President Afwerki successfully centralized the entire national press under his control, consequently reducing the nation's newspapers to little more than vehicles for ads and obituaries.
===LGBT rights===
Sexual intercourse between members of the same gender is illegal in Eritrea, leading to jail time from 10 days to 3 years.Homosexuality "against Eritrean values" afrol News There are also reports of suspected gay individuals being rounded up for imprisonment or death, although the country's general environment makes these reports difficult to confirm. There are no legal protections for gay or transgender individuals against discrimination, and changing gender is illegal.LGBT Rights in Eritrea. Equaldex. Discourse in Eritrea is so suppressed that the very existence of sexual minorities is probably unknown to much of the nation's population.
===Crimes against humanity===
Given the indefinite suspension of Eritrea's constitution for more than twenty years, it's hardly surprising that the nation has no real rule of law. Its lack of a judiciary, a real national assembly, or any kind of democratic institution has created a climate where the government is free to brutalize its citizens with absolute impunity.Crimes against humanity committed in Eritrea, warns UN group UN News 8 June 2016 Nothing and no one can hold Eritrea's president accountable, which is, of course, the point. 
A United Nations press release and many other NGOs have repeatedly exposed a multitude of crimes against humanity committed by the Eritrean government in its detention facilities, its military camps, and other locations. These crimes include slavery, torture, political murder, judicial rape, indefinite national service, and arbitrary detention.UN Inquiry finds crimes against humanity in Eritrea UN Human Rights: Office of the High Commissioner 8 June 2016
=== Government slavery ===
The compulsory military service is 18 months, but in reality, those drafted by it often spend the rest of their lives in government slave labor utterly unrelated to the military.Eritrea: events of 2016 HRWEU accused of funding project in Eritrea using 'forced labour' BBC They really have no reason to still have the draft going on, as they aren't in conflict with anyone now.
Eritrean children are forced to become child soldiers, usually when they are in their last school year.It's not at war, but up to 3% of its people have fled. What is going on in Eritrea? by Patrick Kingsley The Guardian
==Refugees==
As can be expected with such horrific conditions, more than 400,000 (tried to) flee Eritrea, making them one of the biggest sources of refugees from 2001 to 2010.UNHCR Glocal Trends 2010 Unfortunately, Eritrea has some draconian laws, forcing citizens to pay income tax even while living abroad (the US is the only other country to do this),Eritrea "intimidates emigrants into paying tax" afrol News and allegedly employs spies to intimidate Eritrean refugees.How Eritrea controls its exiles by Daniel Campos i24NEWS 
In 2014, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that Israel purposely mistreats Eritrean asylum seekers to force them to leave."Make Their Lives Miserable" HRW
Denmark has tactics for deterring Eritrean asylum seekers. Danish Immigration Service used to, in November 2014, state that Eritrean asylum seekers don't face persecution for illegally leaving Eritrea.Dispatches: Denmark’s Deterrence Tactics on Refugees HRW They hastily switched their position in December 2014 after the HRW and UN complained. In 2016, Denmark legalized police taking money and expensive personal possessions from asylum seekers in searches.Danish parliament approves plan to seize assets from refugees by David Crouch and Patrick Kingsley The Guardian
Britain's asylum officials had an increase in rejected Eritrean asylum seekers, which led to a rise in successful appeals.Young Eritreans are victims of poor decision making by British asylum officials by Jo Wilding The Conversation The waiting process to officially claim asylum is long; asylum seekers may have to wait for years.
==Gallery==
File:Asmara street.jpg|Street in Asmara, Eritrea's capital.
File:Eritrean Injera with stews.jpg|Eritrean flatbread with various stews.
File:Sheikh Hanafi Mosque (8529064326).jpg|Sheikh Hanafi Mosque in Massawa.
File:Independence Day of Eritrea.jpg|"Free" Eritrea, huh?
File:Traditional Cafe (8384455850).jpg|Coffee is served at an Eritrean cafe.
File:Train Asmara Eritrea.jpg|Eritrean steam train.
== See also ==
*Asia's Eritrea
==External links==
*
*Eritrea country profile
*Eritrea | World | Africa | Human Rights Watch
==References==
Category:Authoritarianism
Category:Authoritarian regimes
Category:African countries
Category:Crimes against humanity
Category:Government incompetence
Category:Totalitarianism
Category:Homophobia
Category:Transphobia