Christians who have been arrested, locked up and held without charge in Eritrea, were told by government officials “Renounce your faith or stay in prison”. The government officials are Communist, according to the report. The People's Front for Democracy and Justice is supposedly the governing group. It is not exactly clear what type of government they are, however they are routinely described as worse than North Korea.
International Christian human rights group Christian Solidarity International documents Eritrea’s incarceration rate in a separate report.
“There are 20,000 people imprisoned in Eritrea – often referred to as the North Korea of Africa,” the report said.
Christians are a large part of the prison population, and they often are held without due process, according to the report.
“Between 2,000 and 3,000 of them are Christians, imprisoned in inhumane conditions – without trial or charge – in detention centers where torture is rife,” CSI said. “Thousands of Eritreans flee every year, risking the government’s shoot-to-kill border policy in appalling bids for freedom.” (read it all at WND)
According to Wikipedia:
The registered religions are the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church (a monophysite Oriental Orthodox denomination), the Roman Catholic Church, Eritrean Lutheran Church, and Sunnite Islam. All other religions are persecuted, including other denominations of Islam, such as Shi'ism, and other denominations of Christianity, such as any of the myriad Protestant denominations. All denominations of Christianity enjoyed freedom of worship until 2002 when the government outlawed worship and assembly outside the 'registered' denominations. All groups who worship secretly in a house or other any unregistered place of assembly are arrested and imprisoned without charge or trial. Religious prisoners are often tortured in Eritrea. Freedom of worship is one of the top reasons thousands of Eritreans flee the country. There are thousands of Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia and the Sudan seeking asylum in Europe or another region of the West.[22] Eritrea is a one-party state in which national legislative elections have been repeatedly postponed.[23]
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