Open Doors asks us to help

Eritrean evangelical Christians have been harassed, arrested, tortured and even killed.

How far would you go to go to church? Risk arrest, imprisonment, starvation? Gathering as Church is easy in this country and probably overlooked. In other places it is a privilege worth risking life and limb for.

In May 2002, an Eritrean government decree outlawed all Christian activity which did not take place in the Lutheran, Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. Since then, a wave of arrests has seen at least 1,700 Eritrean Christians imprisoned solely for their religious beliefs.

Approximately 60 percent of the prisoners are kept in metal shipping containers, each containing around 20 people. These brothers and sisters are subject to freezing conditions at night and temperatures of up to 42 degrees Celsius during the day. They are given one cup of tea and a piece of bread each day and are allowed out only once a day for about 10 minutes, to relieve themselves. Others are held in underground isolation cells, or packed into tiny cells where there cannot straighten their legs when they sleep.

Prisoners are continually pressured to renounce their faith as they are told things like 'Do you know that your wife (or mother or father) is desperately ill? Why not just sign the form and you can go and care for them? Few sign the papers, perhaps one percent, but the vast majority refuse and remain incarcerated.

Even the authorised churches are not immune from persecution: three Orthodox priests are still in prison after being arrested in November 2004; and in January this year the Orthodox Patriarch, Abune Antonios was sacked, apparently in response to his criticism of the Eritrean government's interference in church matters.

Christians in the military are jailed for merely possessing a Bible and there is evidence of Christians being sent to the most dangerous positions during times of war in a bid to both test their loyalty to the government and to eliminate them. Even a Christian couple's wedding day is not sacred as the authorities take these opportunities to arrest large groups of believers.

Does this give you a new slant on how precious our freedoms are?

You can directly affect this situation by signing a petition campaigning against religious repression in Eritrea. See our website for details.