NEWS RELEASE

Monday, July 12, 1999

ERITREA'S BASELESS ACCUSATIONS

When the Ethiopian government deports Eritrean citizens deemed to be national security risks, the Eritrean government never fails to allege that a significant number of the deportees are actually nationals of Ethiopia and that the government is deporting its own citizens. In addition, the Issaias regime has repeatedly accused the Ethiopian government of ethnic cleansing. These allegations are completely baseless for the following reasons.

The Citizenship Issue

·        The individuals that have been deported by the Ethiopian government over the course of the past year are citizens of Eritrea. None of them are citizens of Ethiopia.

·        They are Eritrean citizens because they registered to vote in Eritrea's 1993 referendum on independence. The Eritrean Referendum Proclamation of May 1992 clearly limits participation in the referendum to naturalized citizens of the State of Eritrea.

·        In order to register, one had to provide proof of Eritrean citizenship, namely, an identification card issued by the Department of Internal Affairs, in accordance with the provisions of Eritrea's 1992 Nationality Proclamation.

·        Individuals who are citizens of Eritrea cannot simultaneously be citizens of Ethiopia because there are no provisions for dual citizenship.

·        According to the Constitution of the FDRE, when an individual adopts foreign citizenship (e.g., Eritrean citizenship), s/he loses his Ethiopian citizenship as a result.

·        Both the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments recognized that voting in the 1993 referendum signified one's Eritrean citizenship long before the current conflict began.

·        This understanding of Eritrean citizenship, which Ethiopia and Eritrea agreed on for purposes of the Ethio-Eritrean extradition treaty, is indistinguishable from the understanding of Eritrean citizenship that applies to Ethiopia's deportation policy.

·        The government of Ethiopia has a legal right to deport Eritreans deemed to be a risk to national security because they are citizens of a foreign country.

The Ethnic Cleansing Issue

·        The Ethiopian government is not engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing and it would be impossible for it to have such a policy since there is no such thing as an "ethnic Eritrean."

·        Eritreans are not members of a particular ethnic group, but members of a political entity (i.e., the State of Eritrea).

·        The major ethnic groups that reside in Eritrea also inhabit Ethiopia, so deporting Eritreans would not succeed in changing the ethnic makeup of Ethiopia, which, by definition, is the goal of ethnic cleansing.

·        If the Ethiopian government were truly trying to cleanse the country of Eritreans it would not permit thousands of Eritrean citizens to continue to reside in Ethiopia as it currently does.

In short, the Ethiopian government has only deported those Eritrean citizens who posed a security risk. Eritreans who were deported were either former EPLF combatants who posed a risk on account of their training, functionaries of the EPLF office and other party interests in Addis Ababa, or individuals who were engaged in spying or were mobilizing financial and other resources to support the Eritrean aggression. There has been no change in Ethiopia's policy regarding peace-loving Eritreans and many Eritreans continue to live and work peacefully in Ethiopia.