Undated photo of Dawit Isaak who remains in prison in Eritrea.www.freedawit.com/Supplied
It was an ordinary Sunday morning in 2001 when two large men, wearing similar suits, arrived at the entrance of a home in Eritrea. A young girl named Betlehem opened the door. The two men asked to see her father.
Her father, Dawit Isaak, politely invited the men to join the family for breakfast. Betlehem, who was seven at the time, remembers vividly what happened after the meal: “They said, ‘We have to go.’ And they took my father.”
More than two decades later, Mr. Isaak remains in prison in Eritrea. Nobody has seen him for many years. He has never been granted a trial. He is believed to be one of the world’s longest-imprisoned journalists – and a symbol of the crushed freedoms under Africa’s most repressive regime.
This week, a report by the United Nations Human Rights Council’s working group on arbitrary detention said Mr. Isaak’s long imprisonment was a violation of international covenants. It expressed “utmost concern” over his 22-year detention “without any prospect of trial” and voiced alarm over reports of his deteriorating health and the torture he has allegedly suffered in jail. It called on Eritrea to disclose details of his situation – including his exact location, which remains unknown to this day.
Mr. Isaak, who was also a playwright and novelist, had always dreamed of freedom and democracy in his homeland. The small country in the Horn of Africa had fought tenaciously to secede from Ethiopia, finally winning independence in 1993. He became the co-owner of Eritrea’s first independent newspaper, called Setit. But the newspaper was targeted by a harsh crackdown in 2001 when it dared to publish an open letter criticizing the government.
Dawit Isaak with wife Sofia Berhane, children Betlehem, Danait and Yorun.Milvi Olander/Supplied
Harassment of journalists by security agents was common, but Mr. Isaak believed that his arrest would be short-lived. A matter of hours or perhaps a few days, he assured his family.
Over the next year, his wife and children were allowed to bring food to him at a prison in the centre of Asmara, the Eritrean capital. They left meals for him and sometimes saw him. Betlehem remembers the prison’s vast garden. She once glimpsed her father’s cell.
“It was a very small room. I remember a lot of mattresses on the floor and maybe 10 people on the floor.”
As his imprisonment dragged on, Mr. Isaak began urging his family to leave the country to avoid a worse fate.
“You have to leave,” he told his wife, Sofia. “You have to take the kids now.”
It was an agonizing decision, but they finally moved to Sweden, where Mr. Isaak had become a citizen in the 1990s after fleeing earlier persecution.
His family has had no contact with him for more than 20 years, aside from a brief phone call in 2005 when he was released from prison for two days for medical treatment. Like many other Eritreans who have fled the oppression and poverty of the dictatorship, exile has become a permanent state for them. An estimated one million Eritreans now live abroad – about one-fifth of the country’s population.
Dawit Isaak, third from left, with colleagues in 1995.Karl Hoff/Supplied
The Eritrean regime banned all independent media in 2001, just days before Mr. Isaak’s arrest. The country ranks 174th of the 180 countries on the latest World Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders (RWB), a media freedom group.
At least 10 other independent journalists were arrested in Eritrea around the same time as Mr. Isaak. They, too, have been held incommunicado since then. Some have died in detention. They are, collectively, the world’s longest-jailed journalists.
“Their pain and plight are a standing reminder of injustice and a compelling call to action,” a coalition of international human rights groups said in a statement on World Press Freedom Day in May. They called for targeted sanctions to be imposed against senior Eritrean officials responsible for the imprisonment of journalists.
Eritrea has simply ignored all the international pressure to release Mr. Isaak – including a 2016 ruling by the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, which called on the regime to lift the media ban, and to free the imprisoned journalists or give them a speedy and fair trial. Eritrean officials have repeatedly walked out of meetings with foreign officials when Mr. Isaak’s case is raised, according to an RWB report.
Many critics, including RWB, suggest that the international community is not doing enough. They note that the European Union has continued to provide hundreds of millions of dollars worth of development aid to Eritrea without making the aid conditional on Mr. Isaak’s release.
Dawit Isaak has never been granted a trial.www.freedawit.com/Supplied
Dawit Isaak is a symbol of the crushed freedoms under Africa’s most repressive regime.TT News Agency / Alamy Stock Photo
Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian justice minister, has called for the United Nations Security Council to refer Mr. Isaak’s case to the International Criminal Court for possible prosecution of Eritrean officials.
Mr. Isaak’s daughter, Betlehem, is now a university graduate with a journalism degree, and the 29-year-old mother of a young son. Her long struggle for her father’s freedom, and for the human rights of the Eritrean people, has become almost a full-time job for her. But it has inflicted a heavy toll. Her therapist tells her that she has been suffering trauma for many years because of the endless fight.
“I’m very exhausted,” she told The Globe and Mail in an interview. “The doctor has been telling me to rest for months. They have done all the tests and can’t find anything, but sometimes I can’t even get out of bed because it’s so stressful.”
Western countries, she believes, could do much more to defend human rights in Eritrea. They could restrict its longstanding practice of collecting a mandatory two-per-cent tax from Eritrean citizens abroad. They could ban the fundraising festivals that are organized regularly by Eritrean embassies. But instead of pressuring the regime, the West has largely ignored its atrocities, including the widely documented massacres of Tigrayans by Eritrean troops in Northern Ethiopia in 2020 and 2021, she said.
“I’m angry at the world for not reacting with force. I get very depressed about it. I felt, ‘My God, we are alone in this.’”
Despite the trauma that it brings, she perseveres with her battle: “I feel that I’m doing important work. It’s a role that’s been given to me. We’re all part of it. Eritreans are pursuing the same struggle by fleeing from the country.
“I want to be a good example for my son and others: You don’t bow down to power.”
Geoffrey York