Land of the Martyrs
Flame of the Revolution

After independence a constituent assembly was formed, and in 1994 a constitutional committee travelled through villages, towns and exile communities gathering people's proposals. The constitution was completed and ratified in May 1997: party pluralism, separation of powers, guaranteed freedoms, periodic elections.

Not one article of it was implemented. It was announced that the border war with Ethiopia (1998–2000) had "postponed" its promulgation, and then the postponement itself became the country's working constitution: no constitutional court to interpret, no independent judiciary to adjudicate, no parliament to legislate or hold to account.

The result is a rule based on one person's mood rather than on a written text: the National Council has not met regularly since 2001, and decisions of fate — from war to peace to the destiny of an entire generation — issue from a single office.

A people who paid thirty years of blood for a homeland ruled by law now find themselves ruled without law. That is why we say: returning the constitution to life is not a legal luxury, it is the first step on the road out.

Since independence was declared in 1993 Eritrea has known neither a presidential nor a parliamentary election. What took place was a limited transitional vote in 1993, then local elections in 2000 which were themselves cancelled, and the whole path was cut off.

What is striking is that the system itself adopted a constitution in 1997 that expressly provides for elections every five years and a term limit for the president. Isaias Afwerki has overridden that text for three full decades, remaining president without a renewed popular mandate for more than thirty years.

There is no opposition candidate waiting for a ballot box, because parties are effectively banned, the press is chained and public gathering is forbidden. Elections were not cancelled by an announced decision.. the entire country was emptied of the possibility of holding them.

And when a people vote with their feet, fleeing by the thousands every month, that is the clearest electoral statement in the world: a legitimacy that has lost every one of its ballot boxes and has nothing left but fear.

National service was enacted in 1995 for a fixed term of eighteen months: one year of training and one year contributing to construction. But the 1998 war opened the gates wide, and it turned into open-ended conscription with no end date, leaving an entire generation in the camps.

A student in the twelfth grade is marched to the Sawa camp, and from there to military units, state projects or army farms, on a symbolic wage that will not close a gap of hunger. Those who are late or absent are arrested, and neighbourhoods and markets are ringed in raids that people call "Giffa".

The United Nations Commission of Inquiry (2015–2016) concluded that this system amounts to enslavement, documenting open-ended forced labour under threat of prison and torture, and orders to shoot anyone attempting to cross the border.

This is how whole lifetimes are stolen in the name of duty: no years left for study, for marriage, for a dream. The homeland the young liberated has become a prison guarded by the young.. and the entire life is "service" that ends only in flight or in the grave.

After liberation in 1991 Eritrea knew a relative media window: state newspapers alongside independent ones published in Tigrinya, Arabic and English, criticising ministers and local officials and opening files of corruption. That window lasted about ten years.

On 18 September 2001 all independent newspapers were closed at once — "Memitgnas", "Zemen", "Adaliss", "Setit" and others — and their publishers and editors arrested, while foreign journalists were barred from entering the country. Since that day there is not a single independent newspaper in Eritrea.

Rights organisations have recorded the death in custody of a number of journalists, and the Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak remains detained since 2001 without charge or trial, in one of the longest cases of journalist detention in the world.

Today Eritrea sits at the bottom of Reporters Without Borders' press-freedom index every year, sometimes ranked below North Korea itself. A country where the word is not permitted.. is a country run by silence.

In the spring and summer of 2001, fifteen figures from the leadership of the state and the liberation movement — former ministers, field commanders and heroes of the first rank of the fighting, some of whom had fought beside Isaias Afwerki himself since 1961 — sent open letters demanding that the constitution be applied, freedoms released, and those negligent in the conduct of the 1998 war held to account.

The answer came at dawn on 18 September 2001: a wave of arrests took most of the signatories, who were moved to solitary cells and secret prisons, with no announced charge, no lawyer, no trial, and no news to their families of where they were held.

The fate of most of them remains officially unknown to this day. The government announced the death of Mohammed Said Nawud in custody in 2004 "from a heart attack", rights reports placed a number of others behind bars, and those who escaped were sentenced in absentia.

These men were not opposition from abroad; they were partners in the revolution and in power. And this is the truth the system flees: the most dangerous threat to one-man rule came from within it.. and its authors were buried in the desert.

Eritrea keeps no public register of its prisoners and no judiciary that hears their cases. The security apparatus arrests and holds alone; most detainees never see a judge at all, and those who are brought before anyone face exceptional military courts that meet none of the minimum standards of a fair trial.

The UN Commission of Inquiry documented forms of detention that signal real danger: cells dug underground in Eiraeiro, Ouetal, Massawa and Asmara; metal containers that suffocate in summer and freeze in winter; and small rooms in which dozens are packed without bedding, ventilation or toilets.

As for torture, the Commission described it as a systematic practice rather than isolated incidents: severe beating, suspension from the ceiling for hours, sleep deprivation, and denial of medical treatment until death. It concluded that these acts may amount to crimes against humanity.

And most alarming of all, arrest reaches families: entire households are detained to pressure a son who fled national service, and fines are imposed on anyone who asks after the fate of a prisoner. In Eritrea a prison is not the destiny of the convicted.. it is an instrument of governance.

Hundreds of thousands of Eritreans fled over the past two decades. In 2015 alone the United Nations estimated that around five thousand people were leaving each month from a country of no more than six million — a rate that made Eritrea one of the world's largest sources of refugees relative to population.

The nearest diaspora is Sudan and Ethiopia, where camps have hosted millions since 1998. But the deeper tragedy happens on the routes: the Sinai desert, where organisations recorded kidnappings and torture for ransom by traffickers who exploited the desperation of the fugitives, and then the boats of the Mediterranean that swallowed thousands.

And in exile the citizen does not escape the state's hand: the 2% "development" levy is collected on the income of those working abroad, and consular services — renewing passports, registering births, even burying the dead — are tied to paying it, a practice the UN Security Council condemned repeatedly.

The Eritrean people did not choose exile; they were pushed into it. Every drowning in the sea, every young man wasting at a crossing, is a silent bill of indictment against a quarter century of rule without a constitution. The homeland was not left.. it was temporarily expelled from, and it will return.

Isaias Afwerki has led Eritrea as president since 1993, and since 2001 every space of participation has been closed one after another: the People's Front for Democracy and Justice is the single dominant party, parliament is suspended, unions and associations are under guardianship, and public gathering is banned without security permission.

At the level of daily life: there is no free internet and no independent media, communications are subject to surveillance and inspection, universities oblige most of their students to national service, and the economy is dominated by the army, the party and projects answerable to no published budget and no oversight.

And at the top, one man who answers to no one: no constitution in force, no constitutional court, no elections, no press. Decisions of war, peace and famine are taken in a single room, and the people pay in their years, their blood and their livelihood.

That is why human-rights organisations and democratic forces insist that the problem is not individuals alone but an entire system, and that the solution is not replacing one man with another, but replacing one-man rule with the state of law and the constitution.

After the border war with Ethiopia (1998–2000) that cost tens of thousands of lives, voices rose from inside the ruling front itself saying: enough. Fifteen leaders — ministers, field commanders and comrades-in-arms of the president himself — signed open letters demanding that the constitution be applied, elections held and those negligent in the war held accountable.

Isaias Afwerki's answer was to order, at dawn on 18 September 2001, the arrest of eleven of them, the closure of every independent newspaper at once — "Memitgnas", "Zemen", "Adaliss", "Setit" and others — and the arrest of their publishers and editors.

Since that day none of the detainees has been brought before a court, and no public charge has ever been issued against them. Rights reports placed a number of them as having died in custody, while the Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak has remained detained since 2001 without trial, in one of the longest cases of journalist detention in the world.

The outcome today: not one independent newspaper in the country, and Eritrea at the bottom of Reporters Without Borders' press-freedom index for years, behind even North Korea in some seasons. The word was silenced in a single day.. and the silence has gone on for a quarter of a century.

When national service was enacted in 1995 its length was eighteen months. But the 1998 war opened the door to turning it into open-ended conscription: an entire generation marched from the twelfth grade to the Sawa camp, and from there to the trenches, the farms or state projects, on symbolic wages that will not close a gap of hunger.

The UN Commission of Inquiry described this system as amounting to enslavement: open-ended forced labour under threat of prison and torture, in flat violation of international law.

And in the towns, raids take place that people call "Giffa": a security cordon around a neighbourhood or a market, and every young man without an exemption paper is taken in chains to the camps. As for those who try to cross the border, the United Nations documented orders to shoot at those who flee.

And so the homeland the young liberated became a prison guarded by the young themselves; no years for study, no years for marriage, no years for a dream.. the whole lifetime is a "national duty" that ends only in flight or in the grave.

In 1994 a constitutional commission was formed under the distinguished jurist Bereket Hapté Siassie, who travelled through the villages of Eritrea and its diaspora consulting the people, until the constitution was ratified in May 1997: party pluralism, separation of powers, periodic elections, a free press.

Not one article of it was applied. It was said that the 1998 war had "postponed" implementation, then that "the time was not right".. until the postponement itself became the country's actual constitution.

And today: no functioning parliament — the National Council has not met for years — no constitutional court, no party but the People's Front, and no president answerable to anyone. As for Bereket Hapté Siassie himself, the father of the constitution, he died in exile after watching his dream trampled.

A people who paid thirty years of blood for a homeland ruled by law now find themselves ruled by one man's mood. That is why we say: the battle of the constitution is not dead.. it is waiting for a generation to take it back.

No one needs an opinion poll to know how Eritreans judge their reality; it is enough to see the queues at the border. Hundreds of thousands fled over the past two decades, until Eritrea became one of the world's largest sources of refugees relative to population, and at the height of the crisis (2015) the United Nations estimated some five thousand departures a month.

And the road of flight is lined with death: the Sinai desert, where rights organisations documented human trafficking and torture for ransom, then the boats of the Mediterranean that swallowed thousands.

Instead of asking itself why its young are running, the system turned the tragedy into a revenue stream: a "2% tax" imposed on the children of the diaspora in exchange for consular services — a practice the UN Security Council condemned repeatedly.

Every boat that sinks and every young man wasting in a camp is a silent referendum on a quarter century of rule without a constitution. The people did not leave their homeland.. the homeland was temporarily expelled, and it will return.