spending four and a half years behind bars for worshipping in a banned Protestant church.
Magos Solomon Semere, 30, reportedly died last week at the Adi-Nefase Military Confinement facility just outside the southern port city of Assab due to physical torture and persistent pneumonia, for which he was apparently forbidden proper medical treatment. He had endured a long period of severe illness in the months prior to his death, local Christians said.
When Semere became seriously ill he was reportedly told to sign a statement renouncing his faith in Christ to get medical treatment, but he refused to do so. Semere’s death is the third known killing of a Christian for his faith since last October, according to Christian rights activists.
On October 17, 2006, Eritrean security police tortured two Christians to death, two days after arresting them for holding a religious service in a private home south of Asmara, Compass Direct News agency reported.
"TORTURE WOUNDS"
Immanuel Andegergesh, 23, and Kibrom Firemichel, 30, died from "torture wounds and severe dehydration" in a military camp outside the town of Adi-Quala, Compass Direct News said, citing sources in the region.
Semere, who was a member of the Rema Church, was reportedly first jailed in the fall of 2001, when he was arrested for evangelizing and organizing church meetings with six other Christians. He had been released after 18 months in prison but was re-arrested three months later, apparently with a large group of Protestants caught worshipping together in July 2002.
Local Christians say the Eritrean authorities often give hard-labor work punishment and imprisonment to believers for preaching the gospel and starting fellowships. Roughly 2,000 people, most of them evangelical Christians, are known to be imprisoned in the African nation because of activities related to their faith.
Assab, near the facility where Semere died, was said to have been targeted for one of the first major crackdowns on Protestant Christians by Eritrean security forces five years ago. Three months later, in May 2002, the government categorically outlawed all churches not under the umbrella of the Orthodox, Catholic or Evangelical Lutheran denominations.
POLICE RAIDS
In the initial police raids in Assab on February 17, 2002, 133 congregants attending Sunday morning worship services at the city’s Full Gospel, Rema and Word of Life churches were arrested. Although all were released the next day, the 74 soldiers among them were rearrested two weeks later, news reports said.
These soldiers have allegedly been punished with severe floggings and other forms of what Christians described as "extreme torture" for months, often kept in tiny dark cells. Most still remain jailed without charges, subjected to hard labor without any hope of release, Compass Direct News agency said. At least 130 Christians are believed to be imprisoned now in Assab’s military and civil prisons for refusing to sign documents recanting their faith.
News of the tensions in Assab came as reports emerged that Sunday, February 18, security police in the capital Asmara detained 10 Eritrean Christians who were visiting a private home in Asmara’s Teravelo district to congratulate a new bride and groom after their wedding.
Seven members of the Medhan Alem renewal movement, a Sunday School ministry within the Eritrea Orthodox Church, and three members of the Full Gospel Church were taken into custody. The newly married couple, who were just concluding their honeymoon, were not jailed.
Six of the 10 new prisoners were said to be women. Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has denied wrongdoing saying he wants to protect his nation against dangerous groups. Religious repression also extends to the official Eritrean Orthodox Church which deposed its patriarch and took over the church’s administrative and financial controls, local Christians said. (With reports from Eritrea).
