Gedab News
In Tit-for-tat, Eritrea refuses entry visas to Americans
By Gedab News
Jul 17, 2006, 12:09 PST
Eritrean authorities have issued a new directive which denies entry-visas to Americans.
The timing of the new policy suggests that it is designed to impact mostly Eritrean-Americans who travel during the summer season.
Eritrean Americans previously had a choice to travel as Eritreans or Americans.
They now can only be granted entry visas as Eritreans and only if they possess an Eritrean ID.
Those who do not possess Eritrean IDs have to do the following:
Present three members of the PFDJ, the ruling party, to vouch for their Eritrean identity;
Pay all income tax in arrears, dating back to the effective date of the tax proclamation in 1993;
Pay all additional financial obligations such as the war bonds and “dollar-a-day” campaigns imposed by the government during the Eritrea-Ethiopia war of 1998-2000;
Pay $465 for the application fee.
Many Eritreans who hold dual citizenships, particularly those considered politically active or with history of participation in rival political organizations, prefer to use the passports of their adopted countries when traveling to Eritrea as it affords them some protection from arbitrary arrests.
The new directive would deny these Eritreans the safety net of their adopted countries and would help the Eritrean authorities raise much-needed hard currency.
Background of US-Eritrea Relationship
1940s - 1950s: After World War II, when the UN was seized with the issue of deciding the fate of Italian colonies in Africa (Eritrea, Somalia, Libya), the United States supported Ethiopia’s position in ruling for Eritrea’s federation with Ethiopia in 1952. Ethiopia dissolved the federation and annexed Eritrea in 1962. A year earlier, Eritreans initiate a liberation movement.
1960s – 1974: the United States is strongly aligned with Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selasse. The emperor employs brutal tactics to suppress Eritrean liberation movement, which he described as proxies for Arab nations.
1974 – 1991: Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selasse is overthrown. The new Marxist regime of Mengistu Hailemariam breaks relationship with the United States and aligns Ethiopia with the Warsaw Pact. The Soviets and their satellite states fully commit to supporting Ethiopia in its brutal campaigns against Eritrea.
1991 – 1998: US has warm relationship with the post-independence government of Eritrea and in 1994 the Clinton administration designated Eritrea, Ethiopia and Uganda as frontline states in the campaign against Islamic fundamentalism. The leaders of the three countries are described a “new breed” and the leaders of Africa’s “new renaissance.”
1998 – 2000: the US is very actively involved in trying to broker a peace agreement between two allies, Eritrea and Ethiopia, as the two nations escalate a border conflict into a major war. Both nations accuse the United States of showing favoritism towards the other. A peace treaty is signed in Algiers in 2000, with the US, EU and Algeria as witnesses and guarantors.
2001: In a post-war assessment, senior members of the Isaias Afwerki administration criticize the leadership of the president and call for democratic reforms and the implementation of the 1996 constitution. Their calls find resonance in the private media, in the army and among University of Asmara students. The Isaias administration arrests all of them and accuses them of spying for Ethiopia and the CIA. Anthony Lake, the Clinton envoy to mediate the Eritrea-Ethiopia peace agreement, is accused of being the facilitator of the spy network and the co-ordinator of a coup d’etat against President Isaias Afwerki. The United States demands that those arrested, including two of its own embassy staff, be brought to a transparent court.
2002–2004: US-Eritrea relations warm up again as the Isaias administration enlists in the “coalition of the willing” alliance in the Iraq war. The US sends its secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who provides a press conference in Eritrea that seemed to endorse the supremacy of national sovereignty and nation’s rights to do what they please with their citizens, over the importance of American values of civil liberaties and democracy. Eritrea hires two high-powered American lobbying firms in the US to strengthen its case in its border conflict with Ethiopia and to convince the US to base its Horn of Africa operations in Eritrea. The US closes down Himbol, an Isaias-administration-owned money-wiring service based in Washington, DC and confiscates nearly a million dollars found at its headquarters at the Eritrean Embassy in Washington, DC. The US also continues to publicize the human rights record of Eritrea with each year described as worse than the previous year.
2005: Displeased by the slow pace of the implementation of the Hague’s 2002 boundary ruling which awarded the disputed town of Badme to Eritrea, the Isaias administration initiates a series of moves to signal its frustration. It limits the movement of the UN peacekeepers and expels NGOs including USAID. When the Meles regime claims a win for its party in the Ethiopian elections held in May, Eritrea accuses the Meles Zenawi regime and the US State Department of engineering a massive election fraud in Ethiopia.
2006: In a series of public addresses and press conferences, President Isaias Afwerki criticizes the role of the Bush administration in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. He states that the US uses religion and human rights as a pretext to interfere in the internal affairs of nation states and of harboring ambitions of world domination. The US restricts the movement of Eritrean embassy officials in Washington, DC and rejects entry visas to PFDJ functionaries. Isaias Afwerki reconciles with his long-time nemesis, Sudan’s Albashir, and supports his stand against AU or UN presence in Darfur. In Somalia, the US and Eritrea support two antagonistic forces.
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