Since the declaration of national
service in Eritrea in 1994 hundreds of thousands of people have gone to
military training and national service, originally for a duration of 18 months.
According to one of the earliest proclamations by the newly setup government, all
able bodied citizens between the ages of 18 and 40 would have to do national
service at one point in their lives. But in Eritrea, neither the early post independence
proclamations nor the 1997 constitution are respected by the government.
Since 1998 national service has
become indefinite in Eritrea, and the longest serving recruits have been there
for more than 21 years. The age limit for 40 years had never been put in to
practice. Many of those who were in their late 20s and 30s when they were taken
to national service in the 1990s are now grandfathers in their 50s and early 60s.
To date there is no hope that the government will release the hundreds of
thousands of national service conscripts who work for free for the army,
government ministries; and party sponsored associations and commercial companies.
Many of those who went to do national
service have children who have now reached recruitment age, and the number of
recruits per family increases as the years go on. Many children who were born
when national service started in 1994 have now themselves been in national
service for up to four years. This generation, like the earlier one, see no
hope for state sponsored forced labor to end. The government says threats to
the country’s existence from outside mean that nobody has the freedom to choose
how to live their lives. The future of anyone who turns 18 years of age is
predetermined by the state, and there are no details to it except that everyone
will have to work for the state indefinitely.
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| There is no limit for 'national-service' in Eritrea! |
Children as young as 14 have been
taken to military training, and on many occasions, and most recently since 2012, all civilians up to the
age of 70 have been recruited into local militias. These civilians being
trained for local militia are those left out of national service because they
were older than 40 years in the mid 1990s. Any person older than 18 who might
still be doing national service at civilian ministries also has to join their
ministry militias. People up to 70 years old who had been freedom fighters
before Eritrea’s independence; and national service recruits who had been
released due to physical limitations are also required to join the militias. Previous
members of the military who have been serving at civilian ministries are
retrained and have to carry guns like all militia recruits. Most older national
service members at civilian ministries have found the new militia and national
service arrangement very difficult as it leaves virtually no time for them to
attend to vital family and social matters. All civilians have militia duties on
top of the usual national service duties. At present, with the addition of
forced recruitment into local militias, every citizen from the age of 17 up to
70 is controlled by the military. Except government ministers and the highest
party officials, any person in Eritrea, from 18-year-old high school graduates
to department heads at ministries, are now forced to carry gun, participate in
regular military training and patrol random areas at night. Families have been
disrupted for decades and the traditional social fabric is disintegrating fast,
creating a nation of people in separation from its own society.
The only part of the society who are
exempt from this fate are people with noticeable mental challenges, severe physical
disabilities or very serious chronic illnesses. There are rumors in Asmara that
childrearing women will also be forced to join the militias. But there are
still thousands of people with serious physical challenges which the government
has not released on suspicion that they might be doing it to avoid indefinite service.
For thousands of women, the only way to ever get released from the military has
always been getting pregnant out of wedlock.
National service recruits are not
allowed to work part time or engage in any other regular activity. They are
paid between 2.7 euros and 18 euros a month from the government. University
graduates, the highest paid, get 18 euros a month, which is barely enough for a
family to buy food for a day. Part time work is punished severely by up to 6 months
of detention in metal sheet or shipping container military detention centers,
in the cold weather of the highlands or the extreme heat of the lowlands. Most
of the 2.7 to 6 euros most recruits get in a month is taken back to buy food supplements
by the army units. While recruits in the military are provided with some very
little basic supplies, recruits posted to civilian ministries have to cover all
their expenses. This puts a heavy burden upon families who have to support
their children who are posted in other towns. Health expenses are the most
difficult to cover. As the government doesn’t cover health expenses, most
recruits who come from poor families have to beg for donations from friends and
relatives.
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