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afrol News, 2 August - During a recent fact-finding mission to Eritrea, a presidential official told a delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that eight independent journalists were currently imprisoned and held incommunicado. Although the presidential spokesperson Yermane Gebremesken, cited eight journalists, CPJ puts the total number of journalists jailed in Eritrea at 13. - The government acknowledgement comes more than 10 months after the authoritarian regime of President Isaias Afeworki shut down the tiny nation's private press and rounded up independent journalists in a sweeping crackdown on dissent, the New York-based media watchdog says in a statement. In an 18 July meeting in his office, the presidential spokesperson told the CPJ delegates that "about eight" news professionals were being held in detention facilities, whose whereabouts he however refused to disclose. According to CPJ sources, "a total of 13 journalists are currently held." Ten were arrested in September 2001, and three were detained in February this year. - Until March 31, all 13 journalists were confined in dingy cells at Police Station One in the capital, Asmara, the US group states. "At that time, they began a hunger strike to protest their imprisonment. Security forces then transferred nine of the hunger strikers to undisclosed detention facilities, and their families have since been denied any contact with them." CPJ's sources had reported that one of the hunger strikers, the Swedish national Dawit Isaac, was sent to a hospital where he was treated for posttraumatic stress, a result of alleged torture while in police custody. Yermane, the presidential spokesperson, would not guarantee whether all of the detained journalists were alive. Nor would he comment on their condition, beyond stating that they were not being mistreated, the CPJ statement says. - We arrived in Asmara during a new wave of military roundups of young men and women for national service, and based on what we witnessed, it is hard to believe that the jailed journalists are being treated any more decently than others, said Josh Friedman, a CPJ board member, who, along with CPJ's Washington DC representative Frank Smyth and CPJ Africa program coordinator Yves Sorokobi, was part of the mission. The delegation visited Eritrea from 16-21 July and held meetings with local and foreign officials, as well as with members of Asmara's tiny foreign press corps. At the 18 July meeting, Yermane defended the journalists' continued imprisonment by citing national security concerns, CPJ reports. "He also accused the private press of purchasing publication licenses with funds from foreign governments hostile to Eritrea." The presidential spokesperson had claimed that government security agencies had collected enough evidence to support the accusations but declined to make any information available to the CPJ delegation. Yermane also reiterated an earlier official statement that Parliament had created a special commission to draft a new media policy and revise Eritrea's current press law with the aim of curbing foreign funding of the press. "There should be limits to what can be said about government officials," Yermane asserted, in defending the government's actions. - At a time when Eritreans need all the information they can get to build their young nation, it is unfortunate that the authorities remain determined to control what can be said, said CPJ executive director Ann Cooper. "We oppose any government attempts to set standards for the press, and we call on President Afeworki to ensure that the jailed reporters are released immediately," she added. Sources: Based on CPJ
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