ERITREA: Rape, torture and persecution – Women Speak Out
11am Wednesday 16 June 2004 at Crossroads Women’s Centre
cnr Caversham Rd & Kentish Town Rd, London NW5 Tube: Kentish Town
Speakers include: Survivors of rape and other torture seeking asylum, Amnesty International, Black Women’s Rape Action Project and Women Against Rape

This year, over 100 Eritrean women seeking asylum, many rape survivors, mothers, ill from torture and often homeless and destitute -- have come to the All African Women’s Group, Black Women’s Rape Action Project, Legal Action for Women and Women Against Rape for help. In May, Amnesty International called on “the international community to provide full protection for Eritrean refugees” and documented compelling evidence of widespread, systematic human rights violations, including torture, arbitrary detention, religious and political persecution in Eritrea. In January, the UNHCR confirmed that all returned asylum seekers face the risk of persecution, disappearance and even death in Eritrea, and recommended governments “grant complementary forms of protection instead, until further notice.” Yet many hundreds of women, children and men who are seeking asylum in the UK after fleeing such horrors, are being denied protection by the Home Office and courts.

Women now face a fundamental injustice:
- Women’s asylum cases are routinely turned down by the Home Office (HO) despite compelling evidence of rape and other torture. Recent research shows just how arbitrary, careless and dismissive of torture many HO decisions are.
- Once women’s cases have been turned down they are no longer entitled to housing or support and are left destitute, dependent where possible on friends, charity or the kindness of strangers, and therefore entirely vulnerable – several women have been raped by men who offered somewhere to stay when they were sleeping rough.
- The HO insists that All applications from Eritreans are considered solely on their individual merits”“ , refusing to accept the UNHCR and Amnesty recommendations. Yet to pursue a new claim you need a lawyer and the HO legal aid cuts have ensured that there is now a disastrous shortage, especially of those who are reliable and not corrupt. Women have been asked for money or even sex by lawyers in order to take up the case. Most women could not represent themselves even if they wanted to because they do not speak or write English, and are therefore easy prey to unscrupulous professional who are not above rape.
- An Adjudicator has just overturned a Home Office refusal of a woman’s claim, solely on the basis of the UNHCR and Amnesty reports – this indicates that others could also win their cases if they could get back to court.

Letebrahan Yohannes, an Eritrean woman from the AAWG who was forced to flee because of her political activity against the government as a student says: “Many people in Eritrea are persecuted because of politics or religion, and for refusing to do military service; we have no right to speak out or write. It’s a dictatorship. Women are suffering rape in detention, our children, family and loved ones are detained without charges. Many have disappeared, or died in sea or desert trying to escape. The UNHCR and Amnesty International are finally telling the truth for all to see, but what are the results? The Home Office still says it is safe for us to go back and they don’t believe us. We are the proof of what is happening in Eritrea. If we had our human rights, we would not leave our loved ones, home and country.” 11 June 2004