Justin Pearce
‘It was eight months ago the police took him away,” Maryam recalls. “First they take the husband to starve the wife.”
Maryam (47) and her husband are Eritreans who had spent all of their adult lives in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. They were part of a community of thousands who, during the 40 years following World War II when Eritrea was part of Ethiopia, found that work opportunities were better in the capital and established themselves there.
Even after Eritrean independence in 1993, those who gained Eritrean citizenship had no difficulties continuing to live and work in Ethiopia – until the war broke out.
Then the knocks started coming on people’s doors. “They come to your home at 5am – or they come to your workplace,” says Maryam.
As we talk, she checks almost instinctively that no one is standing in the alley outside the one-room, mud- plastered dwelling she now calls home. Having spent most of her life as a housewife, she relied on her husband for financial support. Now she goes out each day with a basket of sweets, peanuts and cigarettes which she sells to pay her 200 birr (R160) monthly rent.
All she hopes for is the chance to return to the land which has not been her home for 30 years. At least she knows her husband is alive – with telephones and postal services between Ethiopia and Eritrea cut off, she gets sporadic news via a relative in Saudi Arabia.
Wander round some neighbourhoods of Addis Ababa and the shuttered doors and windows are testimony to the gap in the city’s economy which has been left by the departure of the Eritreans. Here a pizzeria, there an import/ export business, there a hotel stand empty with repossession notices pasted on the outside.
“We were immigrants who worked hard – like the Jews,” is how Maryam’s nephew, Dawit, explains it.
Dawit (26) was a university student who enjoyed the same subsidy as his Ethiopian- born classmates until the war started – and suddenly his status was that of a barely legal alien. Lacking the subsidy, he had to abandon his studies.
Ethiopian government representative Selome Tadesse insists that nothing has changed since the outbreak of war: “Hundreds of thousands of Eritreans have been issued with identity cards,” she says. “They are living as though they were Ethiopians.”
But with the identity documents requiring renewal every six months, Eritreans fear they could be deported as and when the government wishes. At least 50 000 Eritreans have already been involuntarily removed from Ethiopia, according to diplomatic and humanitarian sources. “They can live here as long as they don’t participate in actions sponsored by the Eritrean government that put our nation at risk,” says Selome. “In the early months of the war Eritreans were fund-raising in Addis Ababa for the war effort.” She adds that Eritrea has expelled 150 000 Ethiopian citizens since the war began. “We say it is not necessary to do that.”
But diplomats and humanitarian agents in Addis Ababa dispute the government’s claims that it has only targeted political activists. In any case, as the loss of livelihood and the untimely departure of breadwinners persuade the Eritreans they would be better off in Eritrea, many of them are seeking to leave voluntarily – a tricky process when the border is officially closed because of the war.
Twice a week, hundreds of people gather in an open field in the suburbs of Addis Ababa, where they wait for their emigration applications to be processed by a committee drawn from the local Eritrean community. Many of them carry umbrellas – they know they are in for a long wait in the sun.
“We have friends and relations who are Ethiopian,” says one man, a lorry driver. “This is my second home.” The driver worked for a transport company owned by a fellow Eritrean in Addis Ababa. Then his boss was sent to Eritrea, and the company folded.
“They gave me a letter to leave my job,” says a man who used to work in a textile factory. “It didn’t say it was because I was Eritrean – just that they wanted to reduce their staff.”
The Ethiopian government and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have both given their support to the operation. But the process has already come close to crisis.
In October, plans were being made to take the Eritreans to Eritrea via the border near Bure in the north-east – probably the least militarily sensitive crossing point along the border. The Eritrean government said it could not guarantee the security of people travelling on that route, so the ICRC started to plan an airlift. The Ethiopian government responded by accusing the Eritrean government of shutting out its own citizens, and accusing the ICRC of giving in to Eritrean propaganda.
The Ethiopian authorities proceeded to bus 1 700 Eritreans to the border – a three-day trip which left them at the edge of a no man’s land between the two countries, in a desert region which regularly experiences temperatures of more than 40C. They eventually reached the Eritrean coast at Asab, a remote spot with no road connections to anywhere in Eritrea, where they faced a 24-hour journey on packed cargo ships to Massawa, the port nearest the Eritrean capital, Asmara. Although the ICRC kept diplomatically quiet about the incident, in private staff were furious at the unilateral move.
More are still waiting to go – the Eritrean committee in Addis Ababa said recently it had processed 4 500 applications. If they do get to Eritrea, the big question is, “What now?”
“Eritrea is a small country,” Maryam points out. “How can 50 000 people find work?”
A man waiting in the field is more cynical. “I have been in the teaching profession for 25 years, and now the government pushes me out of my job. I want to go to Italy.”