Following up on its recent directive restricting the rights of parents to visit, send money or food parcels to their high school children at Sawa, the government has further prohibited students in Sawa from sending letters to their family. 

The purported reason is to allow students to concentrate on their studies and prepare for the March matriculation exams but informed sources indicate that the real reason is that the government wants to curtail the high rates of desertation from the military camp. According to the government, the funding and advice for their escape is facilitated by parents and immediate family members. 

Meanwhile, there is news in Asmara, so far unconfirmed, that an Eri-TV crew that had headed to Somalia in December to film the expected military triumph of the Somalian Islamic Court Union (ICU) is missing.  While officially neutral in the Somali civil war, the Eritrean regime had tipped its hand by describing the ICU as a force for unity and stability and their opponents, the TFG, as a "puppet government."