Amnesty International Canada wishes the Qalna Eritrean Human Rights Group well as it begins its activities in Toronto. 

The terrible human rights crisis that has taken hold in Eritrea in recent years has claimed untold hundreds of victims and unleased a climate of fear and repression. 

Yet despite its severity this crisis has not attracted any degree of international concern and action. 

This must change.

Hundreds of prisoners of conscience - politicians, journalists, civil servants - languish in secret detention.  No opposition political parties, human rights groups or independent media are allowed to exist.  Thousands of young people flee to avoid having to serve in the country's brutal military, but many are caught, imprisoned and tortured.  Freedom of religion is violently suppressed and worshippers, including some 2000 Evangelical Christians, are repeatedly arrested and then tortured in an effort to force them to reject their faith.  Thousands of Eritreans have fled abroad in a desperate search for safety.  But safety is often elusive.  Many hundreds of Eritrean refugees, for instance, have been imprisoned in Libya, from where hundreds were forcibly sent back to Eritrea in 2004.

It is time for action.

Certainly it is time for the Eritrean government to release all prisoners of conscience, open up the country international human rights monitors and launch the comprehensive reforms needed to improve this dismal human rights record. 

The international community for its part must - in the short term - ensure that Eritrean refugees receive the protection they need.  And above all else, governments, including Canada, must make it absolutely clear that human rights violations in Eritrea must stop and begin to exert real pressure to that end.

The Qalna Eritrean Human Rights Group will play an important role in building awareness of these abuses and maintaining pressure for change.  Amnesty International wishes you well in your important work.

Alex Neve

Secretary General

Amnesty International Canada