TUESDAY, JULY 7, 1998

INTERNATIONAL

A top UN official urged Ethiopia to stop kicking out Eritreans last week.

Lara Santoro

Special to The Christian Science Monitor

ASMARA, ERITREA

Tesfaye arrived home on a discarded Aeroflot plane flown by a visibly

intoxicated Russian pilot. The plane was, and still is, the Eritrean

capital’s only connection to the outside world.

He made it with the clothes he had on - a ripped T-shirt and a pair of

pants - and his Eritrean passport.

Everything else had been taken away by Ethiopian officials, who -

after keeping him in jail for 10 days in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s

capital - appeared determined to ship him back to his country without

a minute’s delay.

"When I got out of jail, I called a friend of my brother, an Eritrean.

I told him I needed the money to get on this flight, I was told to

leave Ethiopia immediately," Tesfaye explains. "He came and brought me

the money. I called from the airport to thank him and tell him that

everything was OK, and his wife told me he had just been arrested."

Of the many stories Eritreans can tell about their recent exodus out

of Ethiopia, Tesfaye’s is a success story of sorts. He wasn’t beaten,

his stay in jail was relatively short and civil, and he wasn’t put on

a dangerously overcrowded bus whose journey to the border lasts more

than a day.

Most of the 1,100 Eritreans expelled from Ethiopia after the two

countries went to war in May over a border dispute were forced to

leave their homes and jobs, detained in camps where they were beaten,

and sent back to Eritrea without a penny.

Eritrean sources say "several thousand" Eritrean nationals are still

detained in camps throughout Ethiopia. According to government

officials in Asmara, Eritrea’s capital, the 1,100 Eritreans - many of

whom lived in Ethiopia for decades - were given a month’s time to

liquidate all their assets and get out. Their business licenses have

already been revoked.

"Is this the way to treat people?" Eritrean Foreign Minister

Amdemikael Kahsai asked as a second batch of roughly 800 Eritreans

were welcomed to Asmara by a crowd of 150,000 June 22.

The United Nations top human rights official, Mary Robinson, urged

Ethiopia last week to stop the expulsions.

Ethiopian officials insist there is no policy of automatic expulsion

of Eritrean nationals.

Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin says that only "certain

sections of Eritreans that pose security threats" had been "asked to

leave the country."

Among them, he adds, are former fighters of the Eritrean People’s

Liberation Front suspected of spying, Eritreans in high government

positions also suspected of spying, and "expatriates in the business

community."

The latter, Mr. Seyoum says, had "continued to support the war effort

of the government of Eritrea through financial or material means."

There are more than 500,000 Eritreans in Ethiopia. Many of them are

highly educated and either own businesses or have been appointed to

high-level posts in government and civil administration and

consequently fit Ethiopia’s description of those who should be

expelled.

But as more and more Eritreans like Tesfaye - who lives in Asmara and

happened to be passing through Ethiopia when he was imprisoned -

return to Eritrea, the story told by Ethiopian officials simply does

not seem to match the reality.

"Look, I can guarantee you every ambassador in this city has a horror

story to tell," a senior Western diplomatic source in Addis Ababa said

in reference to Ethiopia’s expulsion of Eritreans. "It has become

absolutely clear that Ethiopia is responsible for serious human rights

violations."

Reproducing the tit-for-tat logic that so far has defined the conflict

between two of Africa’s closest allies, Ethiopia’s foreign minister

denies the accusations and says that "more than 600 Ethiopians" had

been detained in Eritrean camps. "It is believed that some have been

killed and others tortured," he adds.

While some Ethiopians appear to have been expelled from Eritrea,

according to a Western diplomat in Asmara, "You cannot even begin to

compare the two phenomena," because there are "many, many more

Eritreans in Ethiopia than vice versa."