NEWS RELEASE

Thursday, August 12, 1999

FORCIBLE CONSCRIPTION CONTINUES IN ERITREA

The Eritrean government is intensifying the campaign to force citizens to join the tenth round of military training, despite its acceptance of the technical arrangements of the Modalities for the Implementation of the OAU Framework Agreement.

According to reliable sources, people are viewing with suspicion their government’s professed ‘peace policy’ following moves to screen elements from among the war disabled former independence fighters for deployment in the war.

Teachers of elementary and secondary schools are also being forced to join the military training camps. The government has also decided to issue I.D. cards for youths above 15 years of age. I.D. cards used to be issued to youths of above 18 years of age previously. Eritrean people are fearful that this decision is intended to increase the number of conscripts.

Reliable sources have indicated that a total of about 30,000 secondary school students, in addition to adult militias of about 60 years of age, have already started entering the training camps and that youths abducted from different places have been sent to areas they don’t know to safeguard against possible disappearances.

These moves to intensify the draft encourage scepticism of the Eritrean government’s profession of peaceful intentions